Belize is a country that is very colorful, in more ways than one. First of all from all the people, (believe me we have met some very colorful people here). Then there are all the different colorful plants and animals up in the jungle all the way down to the beautiful turquoise waters and colorful beach houses along the coast. This time I’m going to focus on some of the colorful plants up and around our property.

In the jungle surrounding us everything is green, and I mean every imaginable shade of green you can think of. From the palm trees, hardwood trees, wild vines and even the local crops, everywhere you look it’s green.

Besides all the greenery, the jungle plants will surprise you with some amazing colors at different times of the year. For example there are vines that will have the most beautiful yellow, red, white, orange or purple flowers on them at different times of the year. The problem is that once the flowers are gone they look like every other plant out there and you won’t know which one it was until it blooms again next time around.

Then there are trees that will just seem to change color over night. One day you will be driving and see nothing but green trees and then next time you go by it is like “WOW” where did that tree come from. They just seem to burst out with color overnight. Sorry at this point we don’t know the names of these trees and flowers, but we are working on that.

Around the house we have planted a lot of colorful plants to help break up some of the green and they are starting to bloom and show their colors. The Heliconia or Lobster Claws that we planted last year are starting to get shoots regularly now, as well as all the bird of paradise.

We have also planted a few of the Belizean Torches around the yard and they seem to be pretty fast growing with a lot of big red flowers that last a long time. This bush here is well over six feet tall and was only about a foot tall when we planted it not too long ago.

There are also some Cordylines we planted near the stairs by the porch which seem to be doing great and growing very fast. One of them is even starting to bloom with a lot of little white flowers. Here the locals say that they are “good luck“ plants, they must be working for us.

We also put in about 30 Crotons along the driveway that will some day form a very colorful hedge. In the meantime, they are about two feet tall and seem to be growing well. We do have other colorful plants and flowers around but, I thought this would be enough for now.

I know this is not a plant, but it does have to do with color and there are plants in the painting. We finally got around to putting some color inside our house. When we had it built we had all the walls painted white with the intention that we would add color where we thought it would work. Well, It’s been a year since we bought the paint, but we finally had some spare time to get it on the walls. We only painted one wall in the bathroom (blue) and one wall in the bedroom (yellow) as accent walls and chose to keep the others white to help keep a bright and open feeling in there.

Belize is home to over 4,000 flowering plants, 250 species of orchids and 700 different types of trees. There is a lot of colorful beauty hidden in all the greenery if you just slow down and look for it.