Frangipani

Plumeria rubra, winter sculpture and summer perfume, and one of the most quintessentially Brisbane plants there is.

Plumeria rubra · Also known as Plumeria, Temple Tree

Almost everyone says frangipani; the nursery label reads Plumeria. It is hard to think of a plant more woven into a Brisbane summer, the scent on a warm evening, the fallen flowers on a footpath, the bare sculptural branches through winter.

As a designer it's a gift, because it delivers a great deal of character while asking for almost nothing in return.

In a Brisbane garden

Frangipani is a feature plant, chosen for presence rather than to fill a bed. It brings sculpture in winter, when the bare pale limbs read like a piece of art, and perfume through summer. It suits the deep verandahs and high-set floors of a Queenslander, where you look down into and across the canopy.

It wants full sun, sharp drainage and warmth; the frost-prone hollows of the western suburbs can burn young plants, so give them a warm masonry wall at their back. Frangipani rust (an orange fungus on the leaves) is common in our humidity late in the season but is largely cosmetic, arriving just before the tree drops its leaves anyway.

How we design with it

We place a frangipani where it can be the one plant chosen purely for character, over a seating area, framing a view, or holding a courtyard. It anchors the layered look in our tropical garden design and earns its keep as the feature plant in the shortlist behind designing a subtropical garden.

Underplant it with something that reads well against bare winter branches, bromeliads, or a simple mass of groundcover, so the tree carries the scene in every season.

Where we write about frangipani

Common questions

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