Tag Archives: potted plants

safely in pots

Pitcher plants going crazy in the bog garden
Pitcher plants going crazy in the bog garden

The bog gardens have been looking really good this spring. Plants that I got as single-growth divisions are establishing themselves, and smaller seedlings are starting to approach their awkward but exciting teen years.

Magic Gopher Hole
Magic Gopher Hole
Compared to the rest of the garden–which this year has had the worst plague of gophers in recent memory–the bogs have grown up safe in their little green zones, insulated from the subterranean horrors of the garden by four inches of concrete. Apparently gophers aren’t great at chewing through four inches of concrete. Who’d have thought.

Rather than drag you down the rabbit gopher hole, let me show you some of this year’s successes in the bogs.

The bog by the upper waterfall pond
The bog by the upper waterfall pond
The planting above the pond features mostly taller, green-tubed forms of carnivorous species like Sarracenia alata and flava. There’s isn’t easy access to this garden, so the tall, green plants read nicely from a distance against the dark leaves behind them. This used to be a pond that leaked, but now filled with dirt and then plastic tubs buried up to their necks in the dirt and planted with the bog plants. The plants seem pretty happy.

The upper bog, closer up
The upper bog, closer up



Lower bog
Lower bog

Another failed pond morphed into this other bog, using the same planting techniques as the upper pond bog. These plants share the same tub of growing medium as five or six other plants. This bog you can walk right up to, so it features smaller growing plants are almost eye level. This is where many of the small all-green plants go, along with species or hybrids that really need to be viewed up close to appreciate them.

Two clones of Sarracenia (courtii x Green Monster), Robert Co hybrids
Two clones of Sarracenia (courtii x Green Monster), Robert Co hybrids


The bog bench
The bog bench
And then there’s this, the main growing zone, a long seating area that I built with an integrated wet bog. Basically the bog is a long rectangle, built up with eight inch sides, and waterproofed with pond lining. The plants each get their own pots and stand in a thumbnail’s depth of water.

This is where a lot of the big, splashy numbers go. These are plants that look good from across the garden or bear inspection from close-up while seated on the bench.

Up close and personal with Sarracenia flava var. ornata, Prince George County and Sarracenia excellens
Up close and personal with Sarracenia flava var. ornata, Prince George County and Sarracenia excellens

Yah, it’s been a tough year, with life sending us nettles and then gophers. But at least the plants in containers are thriving.

agonizing over the right pot

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that people often hate to go shopping with me. Plants, clothes, paint colors, cheese…it can sometimes take me a long time to make up my mind. I admit that these aren’t life-or-death decisions I’m making. But as far as I’m concerned that’s no excuse not to pay attention to the process. Some things in life are still very important.

During last week’s plant shopping adventure I picked up three little aloes I wanted to pot up for the back patio. I was surprised by how quickly I was able to pick between all the cool offerings. Some collectors like one of everything that catches their eye. By contrast I guess I like to collect one thing in depth. Accordingly I picked an interesting genus of plant (Aloe) and then decided on three contrasting but complementary examples. I was a little bothered that two of the three were unknowns, but I don’t begin to consider myself an aloe collector. They looked cool and the price was reasonable. Decision made.

Then came time to select pots for the plants and for the location where they’d live. The local Home Depot had some functional designs but nothing that excited me. Then I was off to my favorite local nursery. Even when I set some basic rules for myself (“nothing matching,” “a simple design not detracting from the plant,” “earth tones or glazed blue for color”) I ended up with lots of workable options. Since the nursery has a good return policy I picked six to take home to see how they looked on the patio and with the plants.

None of the pots were really pricey, but in all cases they were priced higher than the plants. A lot of the profits in the nursery and landscaping biz aren’t the plants themselves, but all the stuff that goes with them.

So in the end I kept four of the pots and rejected the center and right of the largest pots in the first photo. The extra pot now houses a little division of Aloe maculata (a.k.a. A. saponaria) that I dug up from the front yard. It’s typically an aggressive colonizer–the Matilija poppy of aloes–spreading underground via long stolons. I’m not sure how it’ll do in a pot, so this is an experiment.

Here’s part of the finished edge of the patio. Clockwise from the top: Aloe andongensis, A. saponaria, unknown red aloe.

And here’s the last of the aloes, yet another unknown, nearby in its new pot.

In my teen years I did some informal study of Japanese bonsai and ikebana, the art of arranging branches, leaves and flowers. Proportion proportion proportion were big themes in both, and one of the standard formulas was that the container should be approximately one and a half times the height of the plant material. In all my pots the plants seem too small, but as we all know plants do that amazing thing: grow. Since some of these are unknown species I have no idea how much they’ll grow. But I hope they’ll come to look more at home in their new digs.

Okay, now it’s time to worry about the next big thing…

altruistic plants?

It’s disappointing to put together a pot of several seemingly matched plants–even of the same species, only to have most of the plants dwarfed and out-competed by one of their pot-mates. Sometimes you want to throw your hands up and quote Rodney King, “I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? …I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it out!”

A study published last year by McMaster University biologist Susan Dudley sheds some light on the phenomenon. She found that sibling plants of the same species coexist nicely when grown in the same pot, being generally considerate of each other as they produced their root systems. But in contrast, plants of the same species that were “strangers” to each other produced highly competitive root systems that didn’t show the same level of cooperation.

sea rocket

“Though they lack cognition and memory, the study shows plants are capable of complex social behaviours such as altruism towards relatives,” says Dudley in the McMaster Daily News. “Like humans, the most interesting behaviours occur beneath the surface.”

According to the report, the study was done with one species, “sea rocket (Cakile edentula), a member of the mustard family native to beaches throughout North America, including the Great Lakes,” so its effects might be different with other species.

But the next time you assemble a container planting it might be interesting to see if cuttings of one plant or seedlings from the same clones develop a more cooperative living arrangement than wildly different clones taken from the entire vegetable diaspora of the same species.

Image from:USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database / Britton, N.L., and A. Brown. 1913. An illustrated flora of the northern United States, Canada and the British Possessions. Vol. 2: 196.

free at last

Someone John knew had a big Australian tree fern in a pot in his front entry. The plant got too big and we adopted it. At some point we repotted it into a fairly huge pot, something like two feet across. The fern seemed happy enough and kept growing. That was three or four years ago, and by October the fern was about to grow into the eight foot tall patio cover.

When we completed the new raised bed having a giant tree fern in the middle of it wasn’t in the plan. But looking at the fern, setting it free into the ground seemed like the right thing to do.

Moving the 200 pounder through the soft new dirt wasn’t easy. Neither was digging a hole deep enough to accommodate it. (Thanks, John!) But the beast is in the ground, and from all appearances, pretty happy with its new spot in the garden. In fact, it celebrated by unfurling new frond after new frond, more than doubling the number it had while in a pot. Seeing that, it seemed like the fern had been in suspended animation all the while it was in the pot, and now it was finally tasting life. Nature in a pot may be convenient for the humans, but nature might not be so thrilled…

Free at last
The new home for the fern…

New fronds
Some new fronds…