Impatiens

Meet impatiens, the flower for the corner no other bedding plant wants. Flat, round blooms in pink, red, orange, white and bicolours cover a mound of soft, juicy leaves, and they keep opening where the sun never quite reaches: under a pergola, along the north side of a villa, in a pot by a shaded door.

It comes from East Africa, and it has kept a liking for shade. NC State says impatiens performs best in part shade to full shade, that too much sun may scorch the leaves, and that the plant is sensitive to heat and wilts in hot, dry spells. In Dubai, where the winter sun is gentle and the summer sun is not, that makes it a cool-season shade plant and nothing more.

The mood is soft and lush rather than desert: a ribbon of pink under a tree, a shaded patio full of colour in January. Its price is attention to water. This is a plant that wants its soil evenly moist, and it tells you with a wilt when it is not.

Impatiens walleriana is a tropical perennial of the balsam family, Balsaminaceae, native to East Africa, from Kenya to Mozambique. Wikipedia gives its height as 15 to 60 cm and calls it perennial in frost-free conditions, usually grown in containers and bedding. It is known as busy Lizzie in the British Isles, and also as sultana or simply impatiens. NC State lists it as a tropical herbaceous perennial often grown as an annual, 15 to 60 cm tall, flowering in white, peach, apricot, pink and red.

The Dubai fit is shade, water and the cool season. Gulf News's 2006 list of annuals for Dubai puts impatiens under 'annuals that can endure shade or semi-shade'. NC State says it needs moist, well-drained soil enriched with organic matter, has low drought tolerance and can rot if overwatered. Plantsworld's listing for 'Impatiens-Impatiens Walleriana' gives an ideal growing range of 20 to 35 °C, which matches Dubai's mean highs of 24 to 31 °C from November to March but not the summer; in October, at 35.9 °C, it is at the limit. We found no Dubai Municipality or UAE nursery source on exact planting dates, so the windows below are our reading of the cool season.

One disease matters. NC State says impatiens is susceptible to downy mildew, and that fungicides used against other fungal diseases will not work on it; UF/IFAS says downy mildew took traditional impatiens out of nationwide production in the United States. We found no report from Dubai. NC State names Impatiens hawkeri, the New Guinea impatiens, as resistant, and UF/IFAS describes the New Guinea impatiens and SunPatiens as the mildew-resistant replacements. Buy healthy plants, water the soil rather than the leaves, and ask the nursery which type it is selling.