BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Container Gardening Flower Pics for Mary

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Just beautiful! What kind of plant is the first one? Connie

Ha, ha, ha! I sent the wacky aquarium photo as a joke!

For anyone who is interested, the top photo is the Clivia minata about which I have an article posted in Container Gardening. web page


The lower photo is of some foxglove that I had started from seed last year (in a container.) I wasn't at all sure that it really was foxglove last year, as there were no flowers and I hadn't worked with the plant. Was I cultivating a weed? (Again?) Nope! For the past 6 weeks there had been increasingly interesting flower spikes emerging and here is the payback!

From photos in garden catalogs and even many gardening books, you don't get much sense of scale on this plant. It is positively regal. The flower starts out yellow and matures to the light pinkish violet with maroon spotting on the inside of the flower.

It is really stunner. Started in container, planted out in confusion<G>, but a successful experiment by all accounts.

The aquarium? Wedding flowers left by the party...retrieved by dear spouse, and placed on a "waiting for fish" aquarium so they can benefit from the humidity. I can smell the lilies three rooms away in my office. It's like this with the wedding flowers from April until November. Ah, wedded bliss. My only sorrow is that these peak blooms aren't bearing any seeds! The florists know what they're about. I would be harvesting seed and planting, but there are none to be found on these beautiful cut flowers.

If only I knew tissue culture...

Thanks Deb, for posting the images for me.

Happy gardening!

The first photo is Clivia minata, Connie, one of the first to flower in the spring, indoors usually, if it was treated right in the winter. Otherwise, it waits until it gets outside in the spring.

What's treating it right? Benign neglect and cool temperatures, it's called the "vacation plant," because it so often blooms when not watered, not repotted, and let to get really chilly.

It also comes in yellow now, and hopefully the prices have come down. It used to (and may still be) frightening in price. The one you see in the photo was a gift from one of my sisters who fell in love with it at a flower show, bought one, and years later divided it. Unfortunately, hers hasn't flowered since. They don't like to be separated. They do like to be crowded.

The photo shows it as it is starting to bloom. By the time it was finished, the whole top of the plant was covered with blossoms.

It is just beautiful. Connie

I love it. The year after I divided it was so sad. No flowers. Then I put all the divisions back into one pot and the next season it was spectacular. My sister didn't believe it had bloomed, so I had to get a witness.<G> This year I showed her the photo and she was ecstatic. (When she didn't believe me, it wasn't mean. She was just surprised. I think she uses a pot that's too big.)

So many plants have their little peculiarities. I love figuring out what makes them happy, from birth to rebirth.

Best,
Mary E.

stargazers, astilbe and gladiolus are all easy to grow bulb flowers...as you probably well know so I wouldn't limit myself just to wedding leftovers Mary <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />
Also all 3 show up in late July/August.
Not so sure about the lizianthus though...

We moved (it will be 2 yrs on Thanksgiving) and since then my prayer plant refuses to bloom. I have moved it so many different places it isn't even funny! My mom said it will never bloom again probably. My ficus tree dropped 3 leaves after moving though. I worried that it would be upset. Also, my snake plant bloomed last year and this year it has 4 of those spikes on it. I guess it is very happy! I have an orchid I bought for $1 that wouldn't bloom and wouldn't bloom and finally a few months ago it did. Plants are so fun!

Connie

Don't worry, the wedding leftovers are the least of it! I just can't stand waste. After the first couple of weddings, I'm driving all over giving them to sisters and friends.

I prefer to see the plants in the garden or in a container. I don't really like cut flowers so much. A vase of phlox is nicer to me than a $200 "arrangement," but in the face of the sheer abundance and my husband's proud delivery, I have to take them in. I usually "rearrange" them, putting the flowers into a big vase and losing a lot of the ferns and other greenery. Sometimes, though, the designers will use dried heads of strange plants. I have some dried "pods" that are total mysteries. I'm waiting for the designer to come back so I can interrogate him on what he calls them.

Containers are the nurseries and extend the garden...and dress up the entrances and bare spots for the weddings (and for my own satisfaction.)

Best,
ME

Oh, Wendy, you can be sure the wedding flowers are the least of it!