One of my favourite memories from my growing-up years comes from my mom's garden. My mother is an avid gardener who turned a plain, suburban, postage-stamp-sized yard into a perfect floral paradise. Some of my earliest memories are walking out onto our deck and finding my mom seated next to it on the ground with a mug of black tea digging in the garden.
In spring, we looked eagerly for brave, green, shoots pressing up through the cold earth. In summer we were always allowed to make bouquets from the profusely blooming roses, daylilies, tulips, bleeding hearts, and many other flowers that were there. There were always flowers from the time frost left the ground, until the it returned in November. In fall we cut down many of the plants but enjoyed watching the goldfinches eat echinacea and cosmos seeds.
Now I am married and live in my own house. My parents just sold their home last month and are on the hunt for a place closer to my sister and I out here in the country. Mom will have to start over on her garden. I love flowers and am even more excited about them than vegetable gardens, I have never put effort into making this place thrive with blooms. It is not our forever home and I felt like I'd put all the work into the yard, only to leave and start over.
So I'm waiting, and planning. I want a wildflower garden and a sunny place where I can make a pattern on the ground with rock and succulents. I dream of arbors grown full of clematis and blue morning glory and a garden with an outdoor bath. And I dream about a room indoors with a dirt floor where I will plant my rubber plant in the ground, house my cacti, and let twenty or so budgies live. I'm not always very practical but I still think I have some beautiful ideas in my head.
For now, I house around twenty plants in my very tiny apartment. In the winter they crowd up to the sunniest window in the house; and dream about the hazy desert they were meant to live in. But in summer, is when they get their chance to explode into amazingness.
Each summer I move all of my plants outdoors to soak up the sunshine and become a beautiful rainbow of colour. The sun does great things for the succulents I have, etching them in red, turning the leaves from dull green to hot coral and lime, and frosting others in violet purple and sparkly pink. It's quite the sight and as good as a flower garden any day. And not only do the plants explode into colour, but they grow in leaps and bounds and sometimes, they even bloom.
Flower pot gardens are a great way to have a garden when you can't have a garden. Whether you hurt your back and just can't manage a large property, or you live in a high-rise in downtown Montreal, flower pot gardens are a great solution for you.
I like to pick plants that have pizazz and are colourful so I get to have "flowers" all year. I have plants like the bubblegum succulent, polka dot plant, croton, and several varieties of thicker-leaf succulents and cacti. Plants that are aromatic like herbs (basil, lavender, mint, thyme etc) or something like eucalyptus would also be very nice. Planting seeds is also fun especially if you start something like morning glory in a pot indoors in mid-spring and then move it outside to grow over your railing or up a trellis.
You might be wondering how you get the plants outdoor without burning them. I have a small side porch where I put all my plants after the risk of frost is over. I take a fitted sheet and hook it over the balustrades and then clothes peg it down for good measure (it gets quite windy in this spot sometimes due to the wind off the river). I leave the plants out like this for a week or two, sometimes pulling back the sheet for around fifteen or twenty minutes when the sun is out to help strengthen the plants resistance to sunburn. It's easier to get plants accustomed to the hotter sun if you think about them like people. If we go sit in the sun all day first thing in spring we burn to a crisp. But if we take it slowly, maybe fifteen minutes a day, our skin soon becomes accustomed to the sunshine.
When my plants are strong and hardy in the sun, I move them to my other porch and make my garden.
If you don't have a porch on which to string your sheet up, you can always hammer sturdy stakes in the ground and attach your sheet to those, or if you have only a few plants you can make a teepee with bamboo garden steaks from the hardware store and drape your sheet over that. The one very important thing is to make sure the sheet does not touch the plants as the sun will burn through and ruin whatever leaves it touches.
Flowerpot gardens can be something you start new on every year with plants from the garden center or seeds you plant indoors in spring, or they can be made up of indoor plants that you've had around for years. The nice thing about indoor plants is that you get to mark their growth and see them pop in the summertime under the hot sunshine.
Depending on what your space is like you might want to do a little research on house plants before you buy them. A house and porch that get next to no direct sun are not suitable for dessert plants, while very hot sunny windows and porches will kill more shade loving plants. Do your homework and decide what works best for your space.
Pros to flowerpot gardens:
-Great for a small or large spaces
-You can use any type of house plant
-No weeding required
-Easy to keep on top of
-Can be arranged in different patterns or designs without uprooting or transplanting
-Easy to keep a desired size
-If you use house plants to make your garden you don't have to spend any money on plants
Cons to flowerpot gardens:
-If you choose to buy plants each year, you must spend money
-Must be careful not to let the plants get too much rain (especially cacti and succulents!) which will result in rotting
-Plants must be moved outdoors and carefully reintroduced to the sun each year
When the day comes that I can have my own flower gardens, I will be a happy woman. For now, I am contented with my flowerpot gardens and will continue to use this method of gardening until a new chapter of my life dictates otherwise.
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