These two magnificent plants started life, in my house, anyway, as one single leaf. I didn’t like the shape of the first plant – there was one shoot standing straight up – so I cut it back and actually threw out the piece I had cut off. Then I repented, and stuck the decapitated piece into earth, where it duly prospered. I don’t usually give my plants names, but these could be Bill and Ben, or Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Any other suggestions?
Prone to get leggy without enough light, my lemon geranium seems to enjoy living on my bathroom window. It’s so-called because it gives off a delicate lemon scent when you rub the leaves. It also produces little purple flowers once in a blue moon.
This is a jade plant or crassula ovata. (A side-effect of this project is that I am learning the names of all my plants). I grew it from a tiny cutting from a venerable old plant at my previous employers. It lives in a shady corner of my bathroom and grows slowly and steadily. Like my string of hearts, it is a nice reminder of my lovely former colleagues.
Look! Three seedlings growing in one of my Busy Lizzies. What could they be? I am hoping against hope that they could be seeds from a great wych elm felled by Storm Arwen. I was given them in June during a retreat at the Northumbria Community. Of four or five seeds, one actually germinated but did not thrive. In the end, I reused the compost. But did I reuse it to pot up this Busy Lizzie? I can’t be sure. Anyway, one is now in a pot on its own and I will let you know if it grows into a tree.
This mint plant has had some ups and downs since I got it last year. It is the plant in my collection that is most likely not to cope with being neglected; its leaves just dying off when it is under-watered. But it is springs back gallantly when given the chance. I bought it in Ceres, in Fife, from a stall raising money for the local church (if I remember rightly) and what was quaint was that I paid for it (the princely sum of 50p) by posting the coin down a pipe into someone’s garden. Below are two views of the same plant.
Nothing much to say about this lovely plant except that it was a gift from a kind colleague. It doesn’t live all rolled up like this – it usually snakes along a string of lights and I have hopes it will continue to thrive so I can train it across some pictures further along the wall. Its Latin name is ceropegia woodii, but I think string of hearts is so much more evocative.
I love Busy Lizzies (impatiens) – easy to grow, communicative about their needs (they droop when they need water) but not needy (they perk up quickly), with pretty pink, red, orange and white flowers. What’s not to love? Well, the fact that they are terribly prone to greenfly, more than any other plant I have in my flat. My solution (literally) is to wash them in a mixture of water and washing up liquid but they don’t like it, coming out of the process like sheep that have been dipped. In the past I have had to throw plants away rather than risk an infestation of all my plants. The three smaller plants are probably all cuttings from the big one, which I grew from seed last year. They have all come through being washed and so far so good. I am hopeful they will flower (pink) again. Top tip: pinch out the fresh growth to make the plant sturdier (there is probably a sermon illustration there but I can’t quite see it).
Nobody ever mentions that one of the sacrifices of the missionary life is leaving your lovingly-tended houseplants behind in the care of kind friends. Twelve years later, back in my Edinburgh flat, I had to re-start my plant collection by scrounging cuttings from the same kind friends. In the best of cases, I was able to get cuttings from a plant that had originally been mine and that had flourished mightily in my absence. Such was the case of my Christmas cactus, now in flower.
