Greenhouse growing

It’s been a wet and blustery week so I’ve found myself sheltering in the greenhouse most days.  My Six pictures this Saturday are mostly greenhouse plants.  There’s a bit waffle about wattle, along with a bit of myrtle.  I’ll also be sharing Streptocarpus plug plants, Echiums and Jacranda mimosifolia.

To find out what other gardeners from across the world have been up to this week take a look at The Propagator and follow the link at the base of his post

Streptocarpus

This is my kind of arm candy.  I’ve never grown Streptocarpus before but I’ve always wondered about them.  I like the fresh green leaves, the exquisite flower shapes and of course the vivid blue colour range.  I’d like some flowers to join the ferns on the lower shelves of my greenhouse and I know Streptocarpus like this sort of setting.

When visiting a local garden centre I put a lovely large purple flowered Strep plant in my trolley but then noticed this variety pack of six plug plants for £16 and supplied by a nursery I recognised was famed for Strep – Dibleys.

I’ll be potting these on and will be really pleased to see them grow and flower – plug plants are much more fun than bringing a flowering plant home.

Jacaranda mimosifolia

I love this plant so much.  The feathery foliage is so very pretty and reminds me of Mediterranean holidays and the huge tree growing in the corner of my parents’ Sheffield greenhouse that eventually pushed the roof panes off.

I grew this plant from seed and realised I still had some in the packet.  Two weeks ago I  thought I may as well sow them. Hey presto one has already germinated.

Silver Wattle – Mimosa dealbata

Jacaranda mimosifolia’s name means that it has leaves “like mimosa”.  This week I set about getting my own Mimosa dealbata plant, having admired the appearance and scent of one this time last year in the Princess of Wales greenhouse at Kew.

My neighbour had a stunning large specimen with suckers at the base and he promised me a cutting.  It was outdoors and had lived there happily for years.  A week later the Beast from the East hit and the whole tree was destroyed.  A new plan was needed.

I remember hearing these were easy from seed so I bought these from Burncoose Nurseries and sowed them this week.  The packet warned that germination can take up to a year so I may be waiting a while.

Myrtle cuttings

This week I visited the garden of the hospice charity where I volunteer.  We’re in the process of developing a horticultural therapy project and I got chatting to the head volunteer gardener.  She has been tending the garden there for over twenty years, filling it with cuttings, plants from seeds, offsets from home gardens and garden centre bargains.  The garden will be open for charity this summer as part of the NGS open garden scheme.

We got talking about our favourite shrubs and she said hers was Myrtle, Myrtus communis.  I had to admit I was embarrassingly unaware of this shrub.  Keen on converting me she pulled off a couple of mini boughs.

The leaves are emerald green, small, glossy and fragrant.  The flowers will be pure white.  I was able to make many little cuttings from these – a process I really enjoyed, not least because it has a strong aromatic scent that filled the greenhouse.

More Myrtle

The day after I made my Myrtle cuttings a mail-order plant arrived and I realised it too was a form of Myrtle.  It’s a pineapple guava, Acca sellowiana.  The flowers are exactly the same shape as the ones my cuttings will hopefully produce one day but a pretty pink and red mash-up instead of pure white.

This plant is unlikely to be hardy in my part of the country so I’m going to grow it in a pot and move it into the greenhouse over winter.

Echium vulgare

These two plants were a gift from a friend. They’re really healthy plants but are currently under attack from slugs or snails in my greenhouse.  I don’t mind though as these are such large robust specimens, I know they can take it, whereas my seedlings can’t.  So these are my decoy plants luring the baddies away from my seedling benches.

Echiums are tremendous plants with gigantic purple flower spikes and often grown in tropical style gardens.  They can be hardy in my area so I will be planting these outside.

If you’re not familiar with this plant here’s a picture I took many years ago in a glasshouse with two small children for scale.