What's in your Garden (& Indoor Plants)

[Tom L.]

@KLS52 If you had trouble getting interested in it, you just had other things you wanted to do more. One nice thing about flowers is that you can get just a few flowers, but it's still worth your while, even if it doesn't look like something on the cover of "Better Homes And Gardens".

All my flowers are perennials (or maybe self-seeding annuals?), and some of them might be considered weeds. The bona-fide non-weeds are: pink peonies, an iris or two**, and sundrops- at least I think they're sundrops. When I moved in over 30 years ago, they were at the back of my lot, but a tree had started growing on the other side of the fence, it started getting too shady, and they started failing. So I moved them all to the front of the house and they've been doing fine ever since. All I have to do is keep the weedy-(but-pretty-and-edible) bellflower from over-running them, and maybe water them a bit in really dry weather. Some Forget-me-nots have been growing in my lawn since I bought the place, and I transplanted many of them to the foundation area too.

**-A few years ago, an iris plant was growing in a spot a few blocks away, where a new house was being built and the property was being totally dug up or cleared. So I dug it up and planted it on my property.

 

[Blues]

Well not in my garden ,someone’s lawn around the corner

 

[KLS52]

So far...for starters

 

[Tom L.]

@KLS52 Nice! And I think I see some irises coming up in the lower right corner of the top picture, though it will be a few weeks(?) before they bloom.

 

[KLS52]

@KLS52 Nice! And I think I see some irises coming up in the lower right corner of the top picture, though it will be a few weeks(?) before they bloom.

I'm not sure if they are irises...I can't remember! I'll have to take a picture and use the app to see if it can identify what they are. I have a ton of lily of the valley in the front that are popping up. And I do have some irises in the front as well.

 

[KLS52]

@KLS52 Nice! And I think I see some irises coming up in the lower right corner of the top picture, though it will be a few weeks(?) before they bloom.

This is what the plant ID app has to say about it. I do remember seeing day lillies. Everything here came with the house when we bought it.

 

[KLS52]

Not in my garden but I wish it was!!

 

[PTree15]

Not in my garden but I wish it was!!
View attachment 32428

That is so cool and pretty! What a lovely place to hang out.

 

[KLS52]

Not mine but my daughters. She has a butterfly garden and got certified as a wildlife habitat. This is one small section. She glued those beads in by hand and painted the stepping stones with my granddaughter.

 

[KLS52]

I stand corrected... the certification is for monarchs specifically not a general wildlife habitat.

 

[Tom L.]

There's something about plants that just.... energizes?... restores me?... I attended college back in the 70s. A fairly large greenhouse was built off one of the buildings, and I could hang out there a bit in-between classes (I asked the man in charge of it for permission first).

I've loved my companion animals. Every one of them needed and deserved the home I gave them. But they were always dependent upon me- unable to truly understand, let alone prevent, most of the many ways they could come to harm. And given their comparatively short lifespans, it was almost a foregone conclusion that I would outlive them. And I had absolutely no doubt that my animals felt affection for me, too. When I was much younger, I formed friendships for animals I had no responsibility for. The animals I adopted knew me as a provider of good things- food, water, strokes, snuggles, scratches in places hard for them to reach. But I'm certain there was something else there. I just couldn't help worrying about them.

But plants...

I am certain that plants are not sentient. It's not just that they don't appear to have sense organs or nervous systems. They move too slowly to escape or fight off an animal wishing to munch on them. Awareness or consciousness would have no point or survival value to an organism that was unable to do anything. (Amazingly enough, some of them do move visibly, and I'm not talking about a Venus' Flytrap: I remember one day I was carefully watching my Madagascar Jasmine plant: Stephanotis floribunda- a vine that makes clusters of white, fragrant flowers, and is in the same family as our native milkweed. It climbs by twining around anything it can reach. As I watched, the growing tip slowly- but visibly!!!- was moving in a circle, about as fast as the minute hand of a clock.)

And yet... even though I like taking care of them and being around them, I don't worry about them in the way I did about my animal companions. People sometimes don't realize just how awe-inspiringly powerful plants are. For one thing: In a way, they seem to be at least potentially immortal. They often can reproduce vegetatively- by forming a clump that either spreads on its own or can be divided: by cloning themselves. Or you can clone them by detaching a small piece/branch, helping it to form roots by keeping it in water or some sort of moist rooting medium like sand or vermiculite- and now, one plant has become two or more. Even if the original dies, it still lives in a sense.

Out in Utah, there is a grove of a tree common to North America: Quaking Aspen. It has been studied, and found to be one organism which has grown from one original seed. The last I knew, nobody had figured out precisely how old this grove is.

I get such a blast from working with them. Once, I came across a pot of palms that was being thrown out. I took them home, started watering them, and they grew for quite some time. I did something similar with a pot of Dracena fragrans being discarded because the tops had broken off: The bottoms sprouted and started growing; I put the tops in water, they rooted, and I potted them. I don't know how long they might have lasted if my cat Riley hadn't found their trunks to be such PERFECT scratching posts.

In my area, there are often large planters in the city sidewalks. Every Spring, they are planted with bedding plants such as morning glory, begonias, geraniums, impatients, coleus, and zebrina (that last has been known by the common name "Wandering Jew", but I think/hope that term is no longer used). These all die at first frost, so sometimes I break off a small piece from one of the plants in late autumn, take it home, and root it. No harm done to the planter- and my indoor jungle retreat is just a bit more lush.

 

[silva]

@Tom L. --- I see it as "wandering dude" now
That was a plant I did well with at one time--and spider plants, which I never liked for some reason.
I keep trying to like plants and gardening, but I just don't.

 

[1956]

Gardening is what keeps me alive since my husband died just over 11 years ago…
My love of plants started quite young… I grew up in Northern California on around 5 acres of land which my mother lovingly tended…
Although she had no formal training she was knowledgeable about many aspects of gardening and passed it on to me…

In the early 90’s I was fortunate to have a complete career change and became the head gardener at a retreat centre in the South of France…
Since then my love of plants and my view of gardening has developed and in the past few years changed dramatically - I have gone from primarily wanting to create Beauty to caring mostly about Biodiversity - Focusing on the Interconnection of All of Nature - Soil, plants, insects, animals etc…
This has had a profound impact on me… Once again placing me on the outside of the Mainstream… Which is fine -

Now, living here on the East Coast of Ireland in a senior citizen complex I have only a small patch of earth and some potted plants to tend…
It isn’t much, but I have tried to make it as Inviting as possible to the insects and birds which visit - choosing plants less for their beauty and more for their benefit which makes them all the More beautiful to me!

 

[Tom L.]

@silva "Wandering Dude"- I like it! I'll use that name if I grow it in the future, and give you credit.

Gardening is what keeps me alive since my husband died just over 11 years ago…
My love of plants started quite young… I grew up in Northern California on around 5 acres of land which my mother lovingly tended…
Although she had no formal training she was knowledgeable about many aspects of gardening and passed it on to me…

In the early 90’s I was fortunate to have a complete career change and became the head gardener at a retreat centre in the South of France…
Since then my love of plants and my view of gardening has developed and in the past few years changed dramatically - I have gone from primarily wanting to create Beauty to caring mostly about Biodiversity - Focusing on the Interconnection of All of Nature - Soil, plants, insects, animals etc…
This has had a profound impact on me… Once again placing me on the outside of the Mainstream… Which is fine -

Now, living here on the East Coast of Ireland in a senior citizen complex I have only a small patch of earth and some potted plants to tend…
It isn’t much, but I have tried to make it as Inviting as possible to the insects and birds which visit - choosing plants less for their beauty and more for their benefit which makes them all the More beautiful to me!

(bold emphasis mine) Please accept my condolences for the loss of your husband.

Biodiversity is important to me, too. One thing I do: I focus on propagating natural species when I grow indoor or outdoor plants, rather than artificially-originated hybrids. I don't mind if the plants are common, rather than rare. For example, I brought some Common Evening Primrose (a native wildflower) onto my property.

I even found a place for Ground Ivy (Glechoma hederacea), an attractive but aggressively-spreading member of the mint family which formerly grew in my lawn: In cities, the area between the sidewalk and the curb is sometime called the "hellstrip" because many plants have difficulty growing there. I started transplanting the ground ivy to the hellstrip, moving the remaining clumps of grass to the bare areas of my lawn. Now I have an attractive, low-maintenance ground cover in that area, and a nice lawn with only mostly dandelions as weeds (which I don't mind: they're edible, and I think they're attractive too).

 

[1956]

@silva "Wandering Dude"- I like it! I'll use that name if I grow it in the future, and give you credit.

(bold emphasis mine) Please accept my condolences for the loss of your husband.

Biodiversity is important to me, too. One thing I do: I focus on propagating natural species when I grow indoor or outdoor plants, rather than artificially-originated hybrids. I don't mind if the plants are common, rather than rare. For example, I brought some Common Evening Primrose (a native wildflower) onto my property.

I even found a place for Ground Ivy (Glechoma hederacea), an attractive but aggressively-spreading member of the mint family which formerly grew in my lawn: In cities, the area between the sidewalk and the curb is sometime called the "hellstrip" because many plants have difficulty growing there. I started transplanting the ground ivy to the hellstrip, moving the remaining clumps of grass to the bare areas of my lawn. Now I have an attractive, low-maintenance ground cover in that area, and a nice lawn with only mostly dandelions as weeds (which I don't mind: they're edible, and I think they're attractive too).

Hey @Tom L. well done for propagating the “so called weeds” which is what most people call the Aggressively spreading plants!

The large planters in your neighbourhood are probably rather pretty, however, they are also probably Not very useful for the environment - especially the pollinators! Most of the “bedding plants” are breed to be Pretty rather than to provide pollen, the insects will visit them, however, they don’t Really get Much from them! If it’s possible to communicate with the local folks who plant up the planters perhaps you could try to suggest that they look into which plants are Most beneficial for the environment? Also it is Far more cost effective to include at least a few perennials - the plants which come back Every year -
I do love impatients and even more so lobelia, but I only use them as Fillers! I mention this less for you - because You probably Already know this - but, rather for others who might have a bit of garden and plant mostly annuals… Small shrubs and perennials are So much easier to care for than bedding plants! And much More beneficial!!

You have an Excellent knowledge of botanical names of plants, I am curious how you became So knowledgeable?
With age I am finding that it takes me Longer to remember How a plant is called when I see it and I Know it’s name, but because I am no longer using its name Frequently it doesn’t come to me right away!

 

[Tom L.]

@1956 Thank you! Some botanical names stick in my mind, but I still have lapses now and then: I've forgotten something, but I know it's something I'm supposed to know! It usually comes to me after a short time. Anyhow. Part of my knowledge comes from my college studies back in the 1970s: I've always been interested in both plants and animals, but the plant study courses didn't involve cutting up animals.

I'm not sure I can explain why... but I also do not destroy plants wantonly. Being veg, of course I eat them. Also, sometimes I have to control weeds, or pull up plants that might be a problem in other ways- e.g., it's poisonous... or they might take over my property (like the *Norway Maple seedlings that my next-door neighbor's tree keeps producing, and would turn my 30`x100` property into a woodlot if they got the chance). Even so, I think I have a special respect for plants because animals couldn't exist without them. When I still had the rabbits I adopted from the local shelter, I noticed that the plants we usually consider "weeds" were the ones they preferred to eat: dandelion, plantain (this is a different plant than the edible plantain which is sort of a banana- evidently the plantain in my yard is edible for humans too, but I tried it and didn't like it. )

Your comment about the flowers in street planters not being a good food source for pollinators interested me. I thought there were insects that liked to visit them too, but I could be wrong: these flowers usually aren't native to my area, so maybe the critters that use them are back in whatever country they came from. But honeybees aren't native to my area either; maybe the bees of local honey producers use them if they're available.

*Norway Maple is an officially-designated invasive species in at least some areas. I just "googled" to make certain. There is also a Silver Maple next to the Norway one in my neighbors yard. I googled to see if Norway Maple seeds are edible, and my search result said they are- but I only see the squirrels eating the silver maple seeds and hardly ever see silver maple seedlings coming up! Also, the Norway seeds always seem to be flat, with nothing edible inside.

ETA: Sheesh! I just re-Googled, and this time the article I read said that Norway Maple seeds are edible, but they don't taste good AT ALL. You have to do something with them to make them taste better- but this article did agree with me that they didn't have as much edible stuff in them as other maples.