Chapter 13.. Planting and Care

PLANTING AND CARE

Whether your glassed-in garden is an artistic arrangement of plants or an actual garden, give your design a tryout by placing the plants on a temporary basis. Put them in place and appraise the arrangement. Don’t rush. You’ll save time by not having to do it over later.

In the case of containers rounded on the bottom, line them with thin sheets of moss. Turn the green side out. Next add an adequate layer of pebbles or sand, for drainage. A sprinkling of broken charcoal is particularly desirable. The close humid air may cause soil to grow “sour” without it.

Soil may be acid or not, heavy or light, sandy or humus-rich. It all depends on the type of plant to grow in it, and it will be moist when you use it. Please, make the soil deep enough to give the plants root-room. If you want to make it interesting, build it up gently into slopes or natural mounds. Flat land is dull, not nearly so interesting.

As you put in the plants, add the stones, pebbles, paths, or pools--whatever you have in your design. May I warn you--don’t dirty the inside of the glass. Once dirty, it is almost impossible to clean up later. Plant sparsely. Remember, your plants are going to grow. The finishing touch will be the addition of “sod” or moss on the bare areas. Most of the suggestions for dish gardens and model landscapes in earlier chapters apply here. Finally, polish the glass and spray the plants with a fine mist to clean off any soil that may be on leaves and stems. Water very gently.

According to tradition, partridgeberry bowls are arranged differently. The base of the bowl is lined with moss, and covered with drainage layers, charcoal, and then soil. Then the berried plants and any others to be combined with them are placed, one layer at a time, with their faces against the glass. Their roots are toward the center and covered with soil. Finish the top layer facing up; sprinkle any loose berries on top; mist the foliage gently; cover with glass, and deck out with a big bow of Christmas ribbon.

For a few days after planting, set a terrarium where the light is not bright. After that, it needs light or sunlight according to the requirements of the plants. If they grow lank, limp, and leggy, they are usually stretching out for more light. Window-sill plants may lean toward the window--remedy: simply turn the terrarium around, and alternate it every few days so that both sides get an equal share of light.

Temperature also depends on the plants. Hardy outdoor natives are best at 60 degrees or less, even if they are moved to a cool spot at night. Tropical plants, and many others, are happy at the usual living-room temperatures.

Watering can be tricky, but not if you are careful and rational. Obviously, if the top of your container is covered tightly, not much moisture can escape. It will condense inside the glass and drop back into the garden. Water will be needed less frequently. But don’t be too happy about this. If there is excess moisture, if too much collects on the glass, if the soil is always soggy, mildew and root-rot may result. Lift off the top for a while and let the inside dry out a little. Keep the soil on the dry side if the cover fits too tightly.

Here is another warning--soil should never become completely dry. (I am afraid I have you walking on a tightrope.) Again, take that handle of a spoon or fork and dig down through a bare spot so you can see how wet the soil is at the bottom. If water is needed, add it very gently. Remember, the small plants must not be deluged and dislodged; use just enough water to moisten the soil, not soak it. Sorry, but it is impossible to write down any definite schedule for watering. Frequency and quantity depend on the size of the terrarium and the size of the plants, on the outside temperature, and on other environmental factors. Even the weather and the season of the year are important. But, I’ll bet you need watering much less frequently than you think. You may feel you should fertilize the plants so they will grow more vigorously. Here is a word of warning on that score--few woodland plants appreciate chemical fertilizers (the powders you buy at the hardware store or in the horticultural supply shops). If you want to feed your plants, the best thing to use is a weak solution of manure water. I am always bundling up manure in gunny sacks, soaking it in a watering pot, and then using the water on my plants.

Glass-covered terrariums usually keep themselves clean inside, because dust just can’t get into them. You may need to remove fading flowers and leaves. If you have any plants, particularly creepers, that threaten to take over and smother the others, get a sharp pair of embroidery or manicure scissors and begin pruning. Aliens such as earthworms and slugs are out. Put on your sharpest-pointed heels and step on them.

CHAPTER 5

MINIATURE GREENHOUSE GARDENS

As far as I am concerned, the first part of this chapter is a dream. It is such a precious dream I shouldn’t even publish it until it comes true. I am afraid I must confess that parts of it have already been published in Flower and Garden. I was so carried away with the idea I rushed it into print, just so I could tell the world about a dream. It is a dream I hope you will dream with me. The magazine has given me permission to repeat the article I wrote for them.

The whole thing started when I began to get bored with prissy rows of pots in my own greenhouse. It is a forty-by-twenty-foot house and really isn’t ours. (It belongs to a neighbor who used to use it for the chickens. The chickens didn’t like being dispossessed, but they adapted themselves to the horse barn, where they are much happier.) My dream picked up emphasis when I tried a few “potless gardens” with plant roots unconfined and running freely in the soil. I immediately saw how much happier the plants were and how much more naturally they throve. I am a working girl. I have but a few years to go on my retirement plan, and then I can retire. Hence, I dream about my own personal greenhouse. My dream greenhouse.

I picture it as an extension of our recreation room so I can look out through the large window to the glassed-in garden a dozen times a day, every day of the year. There will be a convenient door for the many times I’ll be lured away from my typewriter. Any moment I wish, I can step into my garden to watch a bud unfold, tuck a wandering tendril back around a support, breathe in the fresh, moist fragrance only a greenhouse has.

My garden will be tropical. I love it that way. You, my reader, may wish a desert planted with fabulous cacti, or perhaps a cooler garden for alpine and hardier plants. But I love the exotics; and I will plant each one where it will grow according to its natural whims. Please, no more neat rows of pots on benches. My creepers will be planted where they can clamber over the soil and an occasional rock or rotted log. Climbers will have some picturesque support on which to climb. Epiphytes will have trees to perch on; and the danglers, baskets to hang from.

There will be variations of light, from full sun to patches of dappled or deep shade. If I can manage it, somehow I’d like to have variations in temperature in the different parts of my dream greenhouse. Some plants like the vigor of a cool corner; others revel in tropical warmth. Then there is the matter of moisture. For dry-growing plants there would be rock gardens and raised beds; for moisture-lovers there would be sunken, humus-rich bogs.

But you can’t have a greenhouse, dream or otherwise, without having utilities, heating plant, water pipes, and potting places. Those I would conceal under the shade of flowering vines. I think I should allow myself the luxury of a stool--perhaps even a rocking chair--where I can sit down to pot or propagate my plants.

Of course, there would be a pool in my greenhouse garden, with a water lily to flower in it. Around the edge would be arranged rocks to make a home for friendly frogs, salamanders, and turtles. I would teach them to be so friendly I could take them to safe quarters when I had to spray or fumigate. Restful ferns would frame that pool. A fountain would make the musical sound of splashing water. Perhaps the overflow would run into a tiny, winding stream. I’ll have to ask Fred, our plumber, about that.

I don’t know much about birds, but I’d like to have a canary housed in a cage. He’d be there only when the vents were open. Otherwise he’d be free to fly. I might even have a parakeet for his company. I’d have a radio to play softly--only classical, gentle music. Nothing with brass--mostly violins and soft ones at that. No telephone--never. I’d have a bench for my guests--wrought iron very likely, since I think it would fit the décor, but the sort that is comfortable. Somehow, I’m going to have to figure out a way of labeling my plants so the labels will not show. Perhaps, we can do it electronically. As I have said, I would have a rocking chair, an old and battered one. And the grandchildren--this being a dream I can have grandchildren (our own youngsters are still young). There would be a curiosity corner for them where they could touch the mimosa and see it fold, watch a pitcher plant catch a fly, pick fluffy bolls of cotton, or dig a small peanut crop.

My garden will be full of surprises. Any day of the year a visitor will find something new--a miniature orchid flowering on the branch of the bromeliad tree; iridescent Selaginella uncinata stalking on stilt-roots under a dwarf banana; carved columns, old urns, pieces of ceramic art I expect to pick up in my travels. Here, perhaps an old tree trunk sunk naturally in the soil; there, a log half buried as it would be in the woods; and then some stepping stones, two or three at the most to entice guests to look down on a mound of oxalis in full flower; overhead, a moss-lined basket of flamboyant epiphyllum in spring.

My planting, of course, will be carefully planned, but the plan will not be obvious. The shaggy fishtail palm, Caryota urens, would be placed in the perfect spot. The Mexican tree fern would look as if it had lived there always. The bromeliad tree would seem to have lived and died in my indoor jungle, and the plants rooted in its branches would look as if they had planted themselves, as they do in the tropics. Luscious-leaved philodendrons would climb and cover any obvious walls. Vines would be trained to soften sharp corners and provide some shade. In irregular beds I’d plant a natural arrangement of upright flowering and foliage plants--begonias, fuchsias, oleander, all kinds of aroids, a dwarf citrus or two. A walk might be edged with the tiny, delicious Corsican mint, Mantha requieni.

In a warm, partly shaded area I’d go crazy with gesneriads--flaming episcias covering the ground, tube-flowered aeschynanthus spilling down from above, fiery-flowered columneas in all their glory. And yes, I’d have African violets--not in pots, but in baskets, in strawberry jars, or sunk in the soil.

If (when?) I have my greenhouse, there are some plants I wouldn’t be without. Among vines--silver-leaved Cissus striata with its swinging curtain of stringy aerial roots; Clerodendrum thomosoniae, its blue-green leaves smothered in red-hearted white flowers in spring; Passiflora coccinea, the red passion flower, for glamour. I’d hang baskets of the new soft-hued fuchsia hybrids, and my favorite floriferous begonia, ‘Shippy’s Garland.’

For fragrance, I’d plant a jasmine, Stephanotis floribunda, and Osmanthus fragrans, the precious olive. For early spring refreshment, I’d force miniature and dwarf daffodils, bringing in pots of them from the cold frame and sinking them in the soil. I’d want the silky-soft foliage and royal-purple flowers of Tibouchina semidecandra, the glory bush; but I’d pinch and prune it, to keep it fairly low. I’d want a large basket floating airy fronds, one of the davallias, or rabbit’s-foot ferns, and a smaller basket for the variegated Abutilon megapotamicum, because I love its gold-splashed leaves strung neatly along wiry stems, and its dangling red-and-yellow lantern flowers.

Just one more thing to complete my dream. Near the door of my dream-greenhouse garden, I’d have a special box for my guests, a box filled with small plants from which they could choose a parting gift. (I know if this greenhouse works out as I picture it, I shall have guests. I shall be happy to see them come, and a bit wistful when they leave. I will feel better if they take a small token of my gardening with them as they go.)

Frankly, this idea of a dream greenhouse came upon me quite casually. Much as we love our home here in Redding, Connecticut, we discovered a place which we felt we would like even better--a manor sort of place with stables, pools, formal gardens, a very charming old house, and seemingly endless rock walls. My husband and I fell in love with it--he, I think, because of a quarter-mile of trout streams, I, because it had a most charming greenhouse, the one I have been dreaming about. At this writing the entire project is still very much in the future, but we have hopes.

To be reluctantly honest, my greenhouse garden is not a brand-new idea. Mammoth conservatories are often planted as gardens, and so are the “plant rooms” now built into the more luxurious contemporary homes. Both are often show places, with plants brought in for display at the peak of their flowering beauty and, as they begin to fade, returned to spend the rest of the year in more utilitarian growing quarters. My garden would be a year-round project, the plants allowed to live through their natural cycles of active growth and rest without disturbance. We follow this procedure out of doors when we plant annuals over the spring-flowering bulbs; why not indoors, too?

Tropical garden in early stages with room for creeping ground cover and growing trees.]

And, of course, there must be many hobby greenhouses already planted as gardens. I saw one near Boston, a fairly large one set into the side of a steep hill. It was a perfect piece of a desert, with the soil made suitably sandy and the curious cacti and other succulents growing as naturally as though they had never left home. Mrs. Ernesta Ballard has a small tropical greenhouse so realistically planted you feel as if you are in an exotic jungle the minute you step inside the door. But both of these places lack one important asset--room for the rocking chair and the radio with its soft music, things I hope I won’t have to be without.

A miniature garden in a glass-covered terrarium]

This complete greenhouse garden may not appeal to you, or it may not be practical or possible. In that case, I urge you to try a smaller naturalistic planting of some sort, if only to get that “garden feeling” and see how happy it makes your plants.

As a substitute for that Boston desert garden, I filled a small section of one of our greenhouse benches with a suitable soil mixture and planted it with small cacti and other colorful succulents, with here and there an interesting rock or two. These plants never flowered so freely when confined in pots, never showed off to such advantage. But I made one big mistake. I failed to make allowance for the more lusty growth, and planted the garden much too thickly. In just a few months the garden looked not the least like a sparse and frugal desert, but more like a menagerie of scrambling, hoydenish pets.

Dream greenhouse, delightful and enchanting]

Another garden that is not quite so wild and reckless is planted around a small pool under a greenhouse bench. The pool is actually a large plastic basin that must be emptied and cleaned with fastidious regularity. It would be better, of course, dug out and cement-lined, with a drainage pipe at the bottom. The plants are tropical, because they are in the warmth near the heating pipes; shade-loving, because a bench (even though it is slatted and admits some light) is above them. This is an excellent place for ferns, upright or climbing foliage plants, soft ground covers like selaginella. If I were to install fluorescent lights, I could add a number of flowering varieties.

The author’s succulent garden]

A soil-filled bench is the site of my husband’s pet project, a grove of miniature fruit trees. There always seem to be flowers or fruits on the small orange, lemon, kumquat, and pomegranate trees. But again, we erred. We did not realize how vigorously these trees would respond to having their roots free in soil. The dwarf banana and ever-bearing fig now threaten to exceed dwarf proportions at any moment, even to go through the roof.

Rampant greenhouse with citrus trees, banana tree, and birch trunk covered with bromeliads]

A naturalistic planting that occupies a minimum of bench space is a bromeliad tree fitted with a sturdy stand to hold it upright. (The stand we are using actually is a Christmas-tree stand.) For the tree itself, we selected the top of a birch tree which blew over in the woods behind our garage. The tropical green contrasts nicely with the white bark of the birch, otherwise our selection wasn’t too wise. Birch wood is soft and doesn’t last too long, hence we have been propping and wiring branches to keep them in place. Cracks, crotches, and pockets created for the purpose are packed with osmunda fiber tightly wrapped around the base of all kinds of brilliant bromeliads, some few orchids, a staghorn fern, and other epiphytic plants. The plants need not even be rooted if the osmunda is packed tightly around the base; if they’re wired in place so tightly that the spray from the hose can’t loosen them, they’ll soon be at home on the tree. Their roots will grow through the osmunda and they will attach themselves to the tree. Of course, the osmunda must be kept moist until the roots form. Once rooted they are fed by dusting the outside of the sphagnum with soluble fertilizer and watering it in. As a finishing touch, we threw strands of Spanish moss over the branches. The misty-gray moss thrives, and even flowers.

As further proof that many plants prefer freedom to being confined in pots, try planting just one creeper--an episcia, for example--in the center of a spot filled with suitable soil. See how soon it will garland the top with lush foliage, how freely it flowers. Many plants recommended for hanging baskets are really creepers and are better off when treated this way.

PLANTING AND CARE

Large or small, a greenhouse garden, like any other, should be designed carefully and never planted until you have the plan firmly in mind. Each plant should be given room in relation to all the others, and not merely at planting time but with maturity time in mind. Allow plenty of space for spreaders to spread and creepers to creep; and make sure every climber has its support. And, of course, plants in close proximity should have compatible cultural preferences in soil, moisture, light, and the like.

Light and Sunlight

It shouldn’t be difficult, in a complete greenhouse garden, to arrange for areas of full sunlight, partial or dappled sun, and shade, and to do it in a natural manner. Tall plants will get the sun first and for the longest time; but you could also build a slope, a sand dune, or a rock garden that would face the sun and get the most of it. Partial-sun plants could be placed where they are only lightly shaded by other plants or, if necessary, by shadings on the sections of glass above them. Shade-loving plants can grow under small trees and bushes.

Almost any greenhouse, in any area, should have shading applied to the glass in early summer. Several shading compounds are available, in white or green, and are mixed and applied with either a wide brush or a sprayer. These compounds are constituted so that they slowly weather away during the summer and leave the glass clear by autumn. But if you happen to have plants that need all of the winter sun possible, it is wise also to clean the glass.

Temperature

Greenhouses are generally classed as cool (40–60 degrees), moderate (50–70 degrees), or warm (60–80 degrees). This refers to the minimum night temperatures at which the thermostat is set to regulate the furnace or heater. In warm climates where an air-conditioner is used, it follows the same scale. Greenhouse plants are usually classified similarly. But if other cultural conditions are favorable, many plants will tolerate a much wider range.

In order to grow the widest variety of plants, I set my greenhouse thermostat at 60 degrees in winter. This is a little warm for some cool-growing items such as geraniums, and causes outdoor garden plants (annuals, perennials, and vegetables started from seed) to grow slightly leggy and lank. But they recuperate in a hurry when they are moved outside. This temperature is slightly cool for subtropical plants; some gesneriads merely hold their own through the winter, neither growing nor flowering; some extremely tender begonias are forced into dormancy, from which they awaken in warm spring weather.

Humidity and Ventilation

With such a motley assortment of plants, I try to keep relative humidity at 75 per cent or higher. The minute the gauge dips below that mark, we wet down the walks and benches. Of course, this happens only on bright, sunny days. During dark, gloomy weather we water and mist as little as possible.

Constant circulation of fresh air is extremely important all year long. Our doors and vents are wide open in summer. On quiet winter days we may open doors or vents just a crack for a short time. Automatic ventilation is a marvelous convenience in late winter and early spring when the sun suddenly seems to get very hot and threatens to scorch everything under the glass.

Soil

Whether a greenhouse garden is a small flat, part of a bench, or a large ground bed, soil should be prepared carefully to suit the kind of plant that will grow in it. You’ll find “recipes” of all kinds in any authoritative greenhouse garden book. Prepared soil mixtures should be at least a foot deep for beds in which you plan to grow plants of moderate size. For fruit trees and other larger plants, make it even deeper.

Fertilizing

The fertilizing schedule which works so well for my house plants, seems to do equally well for my greenhouse plants. I shall stay with it until I find something better. But it does seem possible that a large greenhouse garden, with large areas of carefully prepared and nutritious soil, would probably need feeding slightly less frequently than plants in pots. I shall have to try this, when my dream greenhouse comes true.

Watering

One of the “musts” in my dream greenhouse will be both hot and cold water, and a provision for mixing them as they flow into the hose. Thus, watering will be like a gentle summer rain. I’ll have an extra-fine nozzle to break the stream into a delicate mist. Warmed water in a fine spray surely should not injure tender foliage in any way. And think what fun it would be to water a garden this way, enjoying the slightly musty fragrance of a warm summer night when soil is moistened by rain--and all of this in January when the snow is piled deep in drifts and banks outside the house.

Grooming

These are the little everyday pleasures of gardening in a greenhouse--snipping back a wandering branch, chiding a creeper and pulling it back from crawling over a neighbor, picking off a faded flower, supporting a branch heavily laden with flowers or fruit. It is real fun, and makes the difference between an overgrown mass and a carefully tended garden in which each plant appears at its best and in harmony with the others. Cleanliness--the removal of all organic matter before it rots, the rinsing away of dust and dirt--is the best protective measure against infiltration of insects and disease.

Insects and Disease

When my retirement time comes, I may have to make a choice. Which do I want most--the convenience of fumigation with greenhouse “bombs,” or the presence of pet frogs, ladybugs, friendly insects, chameleons, and the like among my greenery? I am sure I will choose the latter, because I will have plenty of time to tend my greenhouse garden; and it’s not too much trouble to “spot spray” any plant that shows signs of problems. Anyway, it’s risky to use strong fumigants in a greenhouse that is attached to a dwelling, unless it is tightly closed in and has no cracks or fissures for leakage. And who could be sure of that. Anyhow, if I killed all the insects, what would the frogs find to eat.

GREENHOUSE PROPAGATING

Actually, I have two propagating cases in our large greenhouse. One is completely enclosed in plastic to keep the humid air even more humid. It has three or four inches of perlite on top of an electric coil to give it gentle bottom heat. The cuttings are inserted in rows so they are easier to manage and remove when their time comes. Here I root all cuttings from delicate plants and those with large leaves that need high humidity to keep from wilting and drying while roots are forming. My little plastic boxes of difficult seeds are also set there, where they will keep warm and protected.

The second propagating box is wide open--merely an extra-large flat filled with sharp sand. Here I root the more rugged, or succulent, plants, such as cacti, geraniums, semperflorens begonias, and anything that may rot if kept too moist. Indeed, the sand may dry out occasionally, but they don’t seem to mind. Both cases are shaded by some old bamboo blinds.

(All of the window-garden plants listed in Chapter 6 do very well in greenhouses. See also the forced bulbs in Chapter 13.)

CHAPTER 6

MINIATURE HOUSE AND GREENHOUSE PLANTS

My gardening friends certainly vary as to ability, inclination, talent, and aptitude. At one extreme there is Aunt Minnie, whose green thumb injects magic into every pot and for whom every plant grows to buxom, blooming perfection. At the other end of the scale there is the poor soul who tries so hard but can’t keep a plant alive no matter what she does. Why do some plant-lovers never fail, while others never seem to win? There are a number of reasons, including a difference in growing conditions, variations in the types of plants, and even the amount of practical experience or common sense Aunt Minnie is blessed with.

The truth is that there is no single, incontrovertible secret to success, but rather a combination of many factors of equal, or nearly equal, importance. The best soil in the world won’t make plants flower unless temperature and sunlight are right. The frequency with which you water plants should be affected by indoor temperature, humidity, and pot size. And don’t think it is Aunt Minnie’s favorite brand of fertilizer alone that keep her plants in good health.

In our house, and in countless others, it is not possible to make growing conditions as perfect as a plant might wish; but we try to come as close as we can, and find most plants are willing and able to make concessions. One more thing we do. We learn all about each plant’s natural home--desert, steamy jungle, Mexican mountainside--so we’ll know what combination of conditions it likes best.

CARE OF HOUSE AND GREENHOUSE PLANTS

Light and Sunlight

Plants need daylight to make energy; they can’t grow without it, or its equivalent in artificial light. They need some sunlight to set buds, and can’t flower without it or a substitute. Intensity and duration of light should vary according to each plant’s preferences.

No plant of ours is left to waste its life away on the fireplace mantel, where the light is too dim to read the printing on a book of matches. Granted, we might set it there for a day or so as a decoration, but we would return it to its bright window sill before it began to stretch out weakly in search of light. These are the signs of insufficient light--weak, lopsided growth; leaves that feel limp and look pale; new leaves, if any, growing progressively smaller and smaller; long leaf stems and long internodes.

Our window greenhouse, which faces south, is reserved for flowering plants that need all the light and sun we can give them, particularly in winter. This is Connecticut, remember; the winter sun seldom gets very hot or stays bright very long. And there are days on end when the sun simply does not show its face. California’s “shade plants”--begonias and fuchsias, for example--require full sun during a Northern winter.

For plants that are not quite so greedy for sunshine, we have the east-facing playroom picture window, which is lightly shaded by a high-branched deciduous tree in summer. For foliage plants, and a few others that will thrive on little or no sun, there are several other windows around the house where there is plentiful daylight, but the sun is seldom seen.

Your situation may be entirely different--perhaps a glassed-in porch that’s brighter than our window sills ever will be; or a contemporary-style glassed-in entry that lets sun stream in all winter long. Keep in mind that various plants have varying needs for light and sunlight; and the only sun that benefits a plant is that which falls directly on it. A south window may actually be shady in summer, and this is truer the farther south you go.

Temperature

Some plants grow their healthiest when the thermometer reads 50 to 55 degrees at night and 5 to 10 degrees higher during the day; some tender tropical émigrés suffer a chill when the mercury dips under 60 degrees at night. But the greatest number will tolerate a fairly wide range, and are quite content with whatever the house has to offer. This again assumes that other conditions, such as humidity, are kept up to the plants’ requirements.

Temperature tolerances are directly affected by the humidity in the air. Many plants will accept a temperature that is higher than average if the air is moist. Some will accept a temperature that is below average if the air is not too moist. In air that’s too hot and dry, leaf edges will often turn brown and crisp; when it is too cool, a plant may stop growing temporarily; when it is both too cool and too moist, there may be danger of rot. Don’t trust the thermostat that governs your house heating system to tell you whether the temperature is right for a plant; measure it on the very spot where the plant is growing.

Humidity

This is often a more crucial factor than temperature, and one that is more troublesome to change. Relative humidity is a measure of the amount of moisture in the air as compared with the maximum amount of moisture the air can hold at a given temperature. It is expressed in percentage figures.

Most plants find it difficult to breathe in dry air; they need some moisture around, on, and in their leaves. (People are better off when they have it, too.) Alone, or teamed up with unsuitable temperature, low humidity can cause leaves to wither, buds to drop before they open, and even an invasion of mites or some other pest.

A humidity gauge is not nearly so familiar a household item as a thermometer, but it is equally useful, usually better looking, and not much more costly. And it can come up with some eye-opening information. The humidity gauge will tell you very quickly, for example, when an air-conditioning system is missing its recommended mark of 50 per cent relative humidity. It will stop you from overwatering in muggy weather. It will show you that humidity can be dangerously low in the window where your plants are growing, even though it is perfectly acceptable three feet away. (Perhaps there is a radiator beneath the window.)

What you do to increase humidity depends on how low it is, and on what type of plant you are growing. At our house we have three systems for the humidity problem--the lazy, the halfway, and the necessary nuisance. The lazy way works fine for dry-air-type plants such as most cacti and other succulents. We simply grow them where the hot blasts from the radiator are strongest. They don’t wither, and when on sunny days we water them, we also mist them with a fine water spray. (For an easy misting device, we have an old Windex bottle with a spraying attachment in the cap. It does a fine job. Of course, there are other commercial products with built-in sprayers. Perhaps you have one in your kitchen.)

To go “halfway,” you set up some simple humidifying device. The containers which you fill with water and hang behind the radiators are effective to some extent. But don’t forget to keep them filled. Pans of water on top of the radiator also help. A steam kettle, such as you use when the kiddies have a chest cold, can be used for a few hours. But remember, that steam is hot, so be careful not to get it too close to your plants. Just keep it in the general vicinity; please, not too close! Here is something else we often use--put some gravel, sand, perlite, or vermiculite in a plate or platter, pour in some water, and put your flower pot in it. The water will evaporate and moisten the air around your plant. If you have a number of plants, get a metal or plastic tray. If you have a decorative garden, you might want to have a tray made to order, to fit your space. Paint it a pleasing color. I have seen such trays decorated with decals, but personally, I’d rather rely on my plants for the necessary decoration. In having a tray made--we’ve had several made by our tinsmith--the larger the tray, the better.

The “nuisance” system is usually necessary only for very delicate tropical plants that flourish in highly humid jungles and rain forests. They will need the platter, or tray of moist sand, plus some enclosure to hold in the moist air. For a single small plant, this can be an inverted bell jar, or a tent made from a polyethylene bag (the sort vegetables are often packed in) and propped over the jar and plant. A larger bag can be used to protect several plants. You can even use kitchen-type plastics such as Saran Wrap. A collection of tropicals almost calls for an indoor greenhouse, like the oldtime Wardian case. In our window greenhouse we can close the inside sash and, with the aid of pans of water, keep the humidity just about where we want it. On cold nights the electric-coil heater isn’t always adequate, so we open the sash to get the benefit of the heat of the room.

The plants that need this extra humidification are definitely in the minority; most are content with simple measures, or none at all.

Soil

When I first became interested in a wide variety of indoor plants, I prepared soil mixtures with the care and precision I had used in making the formulas for our children. It involved trips to the woods for leaf mold, sifting and mixing ingredients, and sterilizing the ordinary soil which we used in order to kill the seeds that are found in almost all soils. In our Long Island home we had an extra stove in the basement which we used for canning and other secondary purposes. I’d fill the oven with old baking pans and other receptacles which contained my potting soil, and light the burner. Frankly, it “reeked” and the reek was all over the house. It was as though we were burning feathers in the fireplace. Now that I am less energetic, and somewhat wiser, I buy prepared soil.

I find that for a reasonable number of plants the prepared soil is not costly and saves a lot of time and preparation. Of course, if you are a professional you may have your own ideas about soil, and your own formulas for a mixture. I’ll admit I do a little mixing on my own, but that is because I grow many different kinds of plants in pots, and each has individual preferences. Most cacti and succulents need something sandy that doesn’t hold moisture too long, as is natural in their desert homes. Tropical plants need a light, porous medium that is rich in moisture-holding humus, like decayed leaves on the jungle floor. Some plants get nourishment only from acid soil, some need alkaline soil, some like soil nearly neutral. I’ve found Michigan peat moss a good starting base regardless of requirements of individual plants.

I like to dish it right out of the bag. When done, I always pull the plastic inner liner together to keep it moist. In extra dry weather I often wet a sponge and put it on top of the mixture. Potting is a pleasure, because Michigan peat feels so soft, silky, and clean. At repotting time I discover well-developed, healthy root systems.

For plants that require better-than-average drainage--mostly succulents--I mix peat moss with builders’ sand. (Want to know where I got my last batch of builders’ sand?--from a contractor who was building a house down the road. He and his wife happen to be begonia lovers and he was charmed to know about my book All About Begonias.) The formula for the mixture is two-thirds soil and one-third sand. For even greater aeration, I may throw in a moderate ration of crushed charcoal.

On the other hand, some of my plants insist that their soil always be moist. For them I add coarse vermiculite, perlite, or Pelonex, and in a similar ratio. These soil conditioners have the ability to hold moisture without making the soil muddy or soggy.

There is another item on my potting-soil shelf--a jar of horticultural lime. This is for plants that dislike acidity. I either add it to the potting soil--a scant teaspoon per three-inch pot--or mix it with water, to be applied later. With or without these added ingredients, I feel that a good potting soil has sufficient nutrients for almost any plant for several months; so I seldom mix in fertilizer of any kind.

Potting

When and how to repot a plant should be the least of a gardener’s problems. Here is a case where hovering, pampering, and fussing usually does more harm than good. Plants are often better repotted mañana than today.

I know many of my plants have benefited from the fact that I have been too busy to repot them whenever the impulse came over me. I hate to think how many I have killed with kindness in my less active years.

Remember my Aunt Minnie? She embarked on a big repotting spree every spring, but not very often in between. Some of her most handsome specimens have lived in coffee tins and large juice cans for years. Instinctively she knows when a plant should be repotted. Don’t ask me how she knows it. And when that time comes, she goes about it in a firm, no-nonsense manner, firmly but tenderly.

There is one sure way to tell whether a plant needs a new pot. Turn the old pot upside down, tap the contents loose, and examine the soil ball. If it is completely covered with a network of roots, get busy with a larger pot. If not, don’t repot, just slip it back where it was before and give it a loving pat. If you happen to have a seedling you have great hopes of raising to a beautiful maturity, it will have to be repotted more often.

The kind of pot is a matter of personal choice. Plastics are lighter in weight, easier to clean, and capable of keeping soil moist for a longer period of time. This makes them suitable for moisture-loving plants, or for gardeners who have a tendency to forget the watering pot. Clay pots are porous, and because they let air seep into plants, they dry out faster. This makes them best for dry-growing plants, and for overwaterers (like me).

Actually, the size of the pot is more important than the type. It takes an expert to know how to water a plant when it is overpotted. You are not doing your plant a favor by housing it in a pot several sizes too large; in fact, you may even be signing its death certificate. As a rule, the new pot should be only one size larger than the previous one, thus leaving just enough room around the roots for some fresh soil. Pack the new soil firmly with your finger tips, a pencil, or a slim piece of wood. Be sure there are no empty air-pockets. Water it thoroughly and set it in a light, but not sunny, spot, for about a week. This will give it time to recover from any transplanting “shock.”

This discussion about overpotting applies to plants in general, but it is even more important with miniatures. Smaller pots will keep them down to natural, miniature size.

Fertilizing

Many people who have fewer plants than I--and more time--tend to make a fetish of fertilizing. I am afraid my methods are haphazard, and not to be recommended. Anyway, I will tell you what I do. Follow it if you like, but quite possibly you may have a better method which you prefer.

I keep two kinds of house-plant fertilizer on hand--a reliable brand of soluble commercial chemical plant food (it dissolves in water and has the note “trace elements added” on the label) and an organic food. This organic food is either manure water or fish emulsion. The fish emulsion comes bottled and is diluted with water. As an amusing sidelight, our tomcat goes slightly out of his mind when around a potted plant that has had fish emulsion for its dinner. The cat just can’t find the source of that aroma. Manure water, on the other hand, has no such fascination. It is easy to prepare. Simply wrap a portion of well-rotted manure in a section of cheesecloth or burlap, and steep it in the watering pot long enough to produce a “tea” fluid. Better do this out of doors, in the garage, or in the tool shed. It is usually “olfactorily offensive.”

Once a month I make a solution of the chemical fertilizer, at half the strength recommended on the label of the package, and feed plants as I water them. Two weeks later, and once a week after that if they need it, I feed with the organic solution. This, I think, constitutes a “balanced diet” for most types of plants.

Like overpotting, overfertilizing can lead to lost plants. It is my observation that an underfed plant usually doesn’t die quickly. It simply slows down until you have time to feed it. It is particularly important not to fertilize plants that have been repotted recently, plants that are unhealthy or are plagued by insects or disease, plants that are resting right after flowering, plants that are dormant or semidormant, as some of them are at certain times of the year. Do fertilize plants that are in active growth, setting buds, or in full bloom, plants that are aglow with good health, plants whose roots have filled, or nearly filled, their pots.

Watering

My children, who are learning to care for plants rather early, have been grounded in one fundamental fact--feel the soil in the pot to see if the plant needs water. If the soil is dry, fetch the watering pot (succulents can be an exception). I have been told my kiddies have had arguments at school about watering the plants which cluster on the sunny window sills. The usual procedure in our Redding school is to assign the care of the plants to a different child each day. He, or she, floods everything with water and then retires to his, or her, desk with the feeling of having done his, or her, good deed for the day. Plants, alas, are not like goldfish. They don’t care for swimming.

This brings up a question I am frequently asked about house plants: “How often should they be watered?” Even an IBM calculator with a thousand cards feeding through its maw couldn’t come up with a better answer than this simple statement: “Water them when they need it.”

At the risk of repeating myself, I will sum up my thoughts on this problem, and then go on to other subjects. Test the soil with your fingers, if it is dry, you can most likely water with impunity. If moist, more water is inviting root rot. When you water, make sure the entire soil ball is so saturated that excess water runs out the drainage hole in the bottom of the pot. Miniature plants are likely to require more frequent watering, because their pots are small and they are small. Frequency of watering: Here we get into an awful lot of tangibles, and some intangibles. There are such things to consider as the type of plant and its moisture needs, size of the plant and its pot, what sort of soil is in the pot, is the plant root-bound or not, is it in active growth or dormant, what is the weather like out of doors--is it warm or blustery, clear and sunny, dark and humid, or just another day. Remember, on hot dry days the moisture is going to slip away into the atmosphere. On cloudy days it will hang around longer; humidity will take care of that. If you feel your plant needs water and you are afraid of flooding it, you might try another device. Put some moist peat in a larger pot--or you can use vermiculite or perlite--and set the plant and its pot inside this larger pot.

Right now you may be wondering about hanging baskets and those plants that are wrapped in osmunda and mounted on slabs of wood. Give them a good dunking in the kitchen sink but let the excess water drain off before you hang them again, out of deference to your carpeting and furniture. Actually, the plants don’t care whether they spot your furnishings or not.

If all of this is confusing, may I sum it up in a phrase: “Just use your common sense” (horse sense may be a better term). I know I have written a few books about plants and gardening, and countless magazine articles, but here is a very candid confession. Until a very few years ago I knew practically nothing about the subject. What I know I learned by reading books and magazine articles, and “doing.” I know I killed a few plants out of ignorance, but I killed more with kindness. Every time a plant withered and died I felt badly. But I considered it a lesson in what to do, or not to do. I tried to find the cause for the demise. Today I have the satisfaction of having raised thousands of plants to beautiful bloomhood, and largely because of the sacrifice of some obscure begonia, or petunia, a few years back. I have been acclaimed as having a “green thumb.” Actually I do not have a green thumb. No one has. I thoroughly dislike the term. I dislike the implication that a person has a God-given quality which makes plants grow. Making plants grow and prosper is largely the mastering of a few rules, and the use of a lot of common sense. I’ll grant you, much of your common sense comes the “hard way.” But it is fun. I bow most respectfully to those plants which I killed with ignorance and kindness.

Grooming

This is the “beauty-parlor” treatment for your plants. Fading flowers and dying leaves are as unattractive on a plant as those unruly ringlets in a woman’s coiffure. In fact, they are even worse. They take strength from a plant and are unsanitary. Remove them as regularly as you can. You’ll be adding to the welfare of your plant. If the plant is of a type that needs to be pruned or pinched to keep it comely and compact, perform the operation before the branches get that gangly, middle-aged spread. Pinching out the new growing tips, either with sharp fingernails or sharper scissors, usually produces two new branches. If you pinch out the tips of these, you will most likely get four new branches and your plant will become pleasingly plump. The exception is the plant that blooms from the ends of new growth. Stop your pinching before the bud-setting season.

Not many miniatures need staking to keep them upright. If stake you must, do it as inconspicuously as possible and tie the stems neatly in their natural growing manner. Train miniature creepers in the direction you want them to grow, and miniature climbers up their supports. Rinse foliage with a fine spray (use that discarded Windex bottle I described earlier) as often as you can to wash away dust and dirt. Please, may I throw in a plea right here--recently I saw a commercial product which some people use to make their plants more green. It is a spray for foliage. For the moment it makes plants look green with its sheen. But it also clogs the pores on the plant and its leaves. For the moment it is beautiful; for permanency it is harmful. Decide, do you want your plant to live for the moment only?

Insects and Disease

Not long ago, when visiting a friend, I was taken out to her sun room to see her plants. She was proud, but I was shocked. What I saw was the most amazingly bug-ridden collection of fuchsias and geraniums I have seen in many a moon, plus a few poor distorted other flowers which were trying to survive. My poor hostess, honestly, I think she had no idea of her problems and the future of her plants. In fact, they had little future. I thought over that problem for a spell, and then told her the facts of life. Fortunately, she was able to save much of her greenery.

That poor gardener was on one end of the spectrum. On the other end are the overanxious ones who treat their plants with so many sprays and dusts that the leaves never get a chance to breathe pure air. Fortunately, in between there are the sane, sensible growers who are able to cope with the insects and diseases which beset house plants. As for myself, I have been at both extremes.

I now find prevention is the best protection. That is an old saw, but the best one I know. I keep plants and pots clean, remove dead flowers and foliage before they decay, and use germ-free potting soil. People often give me plants. I accept them most politely, and gratefully; but I am cautious about mingling them with my other residents of the greenhouse and window garden. I keep them in a quarantine section for a few weeks. No use asking for trouble, and I trust my friends understand.

For immediate and reliable treatment, I rely on an “all-purpose” house-plant spray or a dip. As long as I am careful to keep it up, I seem to have no great problems. When I get careless, as humans are wont to do, I regret it.

It is very convenient to rely on the new aerosol bombs--those that are specifically marked for house plants, and not those for household insects. There are several reliable brands, each listing on the label what they are to be used for. If there happens to be an added fungicide, so much to the good. That will cover just about everything.

A few words of caution about the use of aerosol bombs. Follow the instructions on the label to the letter. Hold the bomb at least eighteen inches away from your plant, maybe more. Some of those fluids come out of the can at a very low temperature and have the same effect as a blowtorch on foliage. Try to make sure the spray hits all parts of the plant. Remember, leaves also have an underside. Don’t let bugs use that underside as a hide-out.

There was a word of caution on each aerosol container I have seen: “Do not throw into an open flame when empty.” My husband wondered what would happen if he did. He tossed an empty can into the trash burner and got behind a tree. The explosion sounded like a hand grenade left over from World War II and he had to get a new lid for the burner. Please take my word for it and don’t take that chance. Let him be crazy if he likes, but not you. I don’t like to lose readers so early in my book.

I know I take precautions, but in spite of everything my plants become infected at times. When that happens it’s helpful if you can recognize the symptoms, diagnose the ailment, and apply the cure. With your interests in mind, I have put together a list of sorts which includes the most prevalent house-plant insects and diseases, the telltale signs of their arrival, and the insecticides and fungicides which will send them to their happier hunting grounds. If I have skipped anything, my apologies. If you are having special problems, phone your local county agricultural agent. He is a good man to know anyhow. But please, unless you have something that is out of hand, don’t bedevil the man. He is probably concerned with ticks on sheep, ringworm, hog cholera, breachy cows, grubworms, and forty people who want to know why their hollyhocks didn’t bloom.

PROPAGATING HOUSE PLANTS

It’s hard to tell which provides the warmest pleasure, to give a friend or visitor a rooted, potted cutting of some plant she has admired, or to come home with a gift cutting of a new plant you have admired and coveted. There is a thrill also in adding a new plant to your collection by growing seed from a seed house. And I always have another thrill when the church or the school asks me to contribute plants for the annual bazaars. Fortunately, I usually am able to anticipate these requests far enough in advance to have a supply ready and waiting.

PESTS AND TREATMENT

Symptoms Treatment

Aphids Little louse-like This is an easy one to (Nasty plant insects. get rid of, but likely lice) Green in color in to return if you don’t our area. watch out. Use a solution Clustered on new of Black Leaf 40 leaves, on flowers, (nicotine sulfate) in a and around stems combination spray with lindane or pyrethrum and malathion. Or you can use any of them alone

Mealybugs Little white dabs of Dip an artist’s paint (Don’t let them cotton clinging to brush or a cotton-wrapped frighten you) tender joints, stems, toothpick in a solution and the underside of of malathion. Remove the leaves pests one by one

Mites Buds and new leaves Dip plants in a solution are puckered and of malathion, Kelthane, distorted. The or Tedion according to underside of the the directions on the leaves may show fine, label white silky webs

Mildew Silvery dust Dust plants with sulfur, disfigures the or spray with one of the leaves, most likely new fungicides like in dark, muggy summer captan, zineb, etc. Give weather plants more space and increase air circulation

Scale Hard brown, or green, Dip plant in a solution scales irregularly on of malathion. Repeat the underside of according to directions leaves

Slugs Slimy villains, like Use special slug-bait shell-less snails, containing metaldehyde which hide in soil or according to package under pots by day and directions come out to chew holes in leaves at night

Thrips Brownish blotches Dip or spray with under leaves. malathion all-purpose Disfigured flowers mixture containing lindane, pyrethrum

White Fly Minute flies swarm Spray or dip in in the air about the malathion, or an plant when disturbed all-purpose mixture

Since I fashioned my first crude propagating box--a square cake-tin with a rickety frame covered with kitchen plastic--I’ve always had some sort of similar device in operation. They have been of many sizes and shapes, and have included an aquarium vacated by the children’s goldfish, and a fruit crate from the grocery with cut-to-measure glass sides and top (I use masking tape to hold the corners). The one thing common to all of these boxes is the three-inch layer of some moist propagating medium, ready to receive seeds and cuttings.

The latest and most attractive box I’ve used is the Gro-Master--a ready-made plug-in propagator with an electric coil in the bottom to provide gentle bottom heat. Several similar devices are also available. With something like this one can hardly miss germinating even the most difficult house-plant seeds, or rooting even the most delicate cuttings.

The choice of a propagating medium is all yours. I’ve used vermiculite, perlite, and Pelonex with unqualified success. I tried sharp sand but discovered that it dried out too fast for anything but succulents. Peat alone, or mixed with sand, tends to pack and rots rather quickly. I tried a blend of equal parts of peat, vermiculite, and perlite. It held up rather well, but I seldom bother to mix it. Regardless of what you prefer to use, have the medium moist when you use it, and water just enough to keep it barely moist during the rooting process.

Of course, with many types of plants, you can root “slips” in a glass of water on your kitchen window sill. But in any kind of propagating box, where the air is kept humid and the delicate plants are protected from drafts and drying-out, you have a better chance.

House Plants from Seed

African violets and other gesneriads, all types of begonias and geraniums, and many other indoor plants can be grown quite easily from seed. I like to plant each variety in its own small plastic refrigerator dish with a half-inch or so of soil (moist, sterilized soil that is) in the bottom of the dish. Sometimes I use plastic ice-cube trays. When planting powder-fine seeds, I usually add a thin layer of moist, finely-milled sphagnum moss and make it very smooth. Dust the tiny seeds over this surface, but don’t cover them with soil. Larger seeds should be covered with soil or more moss. Next, cover the container tightly and set it in a warm spot. That is when you will appreciate a propagating box. If the moss and soil begins to dry out, moisten it by gently running drops of water down the sides of the container. Please be gentle and tender. Tiny seeds and seedlings should not be disturbed.

When the seedlings have developed one or two true leaves of fairly substantial size, pick them out very gently and transplant them to another “community” container, or to individual thumb pots. Keep them humid and protected until they are big enough to need transplanting again. After that, they should be nearly ready to become adjusted to grown-up growing conditions in a window, or some other indoor garden.

One of the neatest tricks of the year is the Water ‘N’ Watch indoor garden developed and sold by Peggie Schulz, an attractive plastic planter complete with soil and planted with fourteen types of seeds. You simply follow her instructions, add water, and watch the seedlings germinate and grow. Gradually you remove the plastic dome when the plants are large enough. At transplanting time, remove the seedlings to separate pots, or leave a few to mature in the planter. This device is just about as work-free a method of growing house plants as there is.

Stem Cuttings

This is the most familiar way to propagate house plants, and the method that works best for most kinds of plants. With the exception of miniature orchids, stem cuttings can be taken from any house plant mentioned in this book, and your chances for success are very good if you have a propagating box for them.

Generally, stem cuttings are the ends cut from branches that are in healthy, active growth. Each should be more than a mere tip, and have at least two nodes, or “joints.” The large, bottom leaves are stripped off very gently and the cut end of the stem is inserted, to about half of its length, in the propagating medium. When you see evidences of new growth, or when roots have developed, dig under it with a spoon and remove it for potting. (Here is the test to determine if roots have developed: Pull on the cutting, very gently of course. If you feel resistance you know it has roots which are holding it down.) Pot your new plant very carefully in soil that is suitable for it; and please, don’t add fertilizer to this soil.

For stem cuttings, and most other methods of propagation, there are now certain hormone rooting preparations. They speed up rooting, make it more certain, and help to develop larger and healthier root systems. Be sure you get the correct type for softwood cuttings, or indoor plants. In using these new hormones, follow the directions on the package carefully.

Leaf Cuttings

It is a well-known fact that African violets will reproduce themselves from a single leaf. However, it is not so well known that there are dozens of other plants that will do the same. For example, more than once I have taken a succulent leaf, laid it out flat on moist sand, and had it grow roots and a small new plant. Leaves of peperomias, and many other plants, can be cut, with or without a piece of stem, and will grow bushy new plantlets. Some kinds of begonias will send out roots from the end of the stem, or new plants from the point above where stem and leaf join.

Except for some succulents, leaf cuttings are usually inserted with their stem ends in a moist propagating medium, with their leaves standing nearly upright above. (Again, you are safer if you have a propagating box, even though it be a crude one.) When they are well rooted and the new plants are of fair size, the cuttings are potted with the old leaves intact. The parent leaf is removed only when the new plant is strong enough to grow on its own. Of course, in the case of African violets, where more than one plant is produced at the end of the stem, the babies must be separated and each put into its own pot.

Root and Rhizome Cuttings

Sections of roots are sometimes cut to propagate house and greenhouse plants, but the practice is more common with hardy garden plants. But pieces of thickened, stemlike, or rootlike rhizomes can be taken from many types of indoor plants. Rhizomatous begonias, and rex begonias of rhizomatous habit, are familiar examples. Each piece of rhizome should have at least two, but preferably three, “eyes,” or scars from which leafstems have grown. The piece is placed half in and half out of the moist medium in the propagating box. Roots grow from the bottom down into the medium; stems and leaves shoot up from the eyes on top.

Layering

There are two general methods of layering, and in each case the plant is completely rooted before it is cut away from the parent. In “air layering” a thick stem, or cane, is slit, wrapped with moist sphagnum moss, and enclosed in plastic until roots are produced. This method is usually practiced on large, overgrown plants such as dieffenbachias, and truthfully is not necessary, or practical, for most miniatures.

But ground layering is a safe and sure way to propagate almost any plant with lax stems, and is particularly useful on temperamental plants such as some miniature ivies, which are reluctant to strike roots on stem cuttings. It is very simple. Just pin down the stem, not too far from the growing tip, in the soil beside the mature plant. If you like, you can put it in a pot of its own and thus be one jump ahead by having the roots where you want them. I usually steal a hairpin out of my “bun,” but a section of wire bent into a U will do. When the stem has rooted, cut it off on the side next to the parent plant. Unless it is already rooted in a pot, dig it out and plant it.

Division of Crowns and Roots

One African-violet plant may grow several crowns, or main stems complete with rosettes. Since single-crown plants usually are more shapely and bloom more abundantly, the extra crowns can be cut off and rooted like ordinary stem cuttings. This is one of the more popular methods of dividing an old plant and getting several new ones from it.

Some plants will eventually make such dense, bushy growth that they not only look obese and unattractive, but are prey to all sorts of rot. Root division not only gives these plants a new lease on life, but also provides several new plants. Remove the overgrown plant from its pot, and very gently, try to split the matted roots and stems into separate sections. Do this with your fingers and not a metal instrument. If you work slowly and with care, several will most likely pull free. If you can’t do it with your fingers, you may have to resort to a clean sharp knife, in which case cut down past the stems and through the roots, making several separate sections. Discard any damaged leaves. Pot up the divisions, and keep them shaded and protected for a week or so until they recover from the shock.

Runners, Stolons, and Offsets

Many plants are continually propagating themselves by producing new plants in clusters around the old ones, sometimes at the ends of underground stolons or above-ground runners. Saxifraga sarmentosa was named “Strawberry begonia” because it continually produces new plants on runners, strawberry-style. Episcias and chlorophytums are other examples.

Any of these offsets make new plants easily. Pin them down in soil, give them time to root, and then cut them off and insert them in a propagating box. Next, you pot them. Sometimes you’ll find the roots have already formed and the new plant is ready for potting and you didn’t even suspect it.

DESCRIPTION OF HOUSE PLANTS

Some pages back I told you that the question asked of me most frequently is “How often should I water plants?” A close runner-up is the question, “Where can I get out-of-the-ordinary plants?” Believe it or not, that question is easier to answer. Local florists and greenhouse people often have plants tucked away--something exotic and special. Most of the people in the industry cherish these plants and are hesitant to part with them to run-of-the-mine customers. But if the person is a genuine plant-lover, a sale can usually be made, even though it is a reluctant sale. Just demonstrate that you are vitally interested and you will be surprised at what you can buy. Try it.

I have a number of catalogues from mail-order suppliers in all parts of the country who carry unusual plants, and in a variety that increases year by year. Do you know where I came upon their names?--from small advertisements in horticultural magazines. Read those small ads. Often the advertiser is so small, and so specialized, that he can’t afford too much space. But he has the treasures you want.

Mail-order plants are naturally young and small. Large plants are too difficult to pack and ship for any distance. Plants that are small usually cost less, and you have an extra dividend in the pleasure of seeing them grow to maturity. You would be amazed at the progress that has been made in packing and shipping in the past few years. Plants that I have ordered recently have come through the mails in from excellent to perfect condition--even plants from the Pacific Northwest. You simply unpack them--carefully, I’ll admit--water them if necessary, and keep them out of hot, bright sun and draft for a few days until they are acclimated to their new surroundings. Should any plant seem weak or mildly injured, pop it into the propagating box and usually it will be back on its feet again in a few days. If the damage is too serious, report it to the post office, the express company, or the shipper. I have yet to register one of these complaints.

I have been general in the preceding pages of this chapter. Now I will be more specific and offer a list of plants and their growing requirements. All of the following plants can be grown in the greenhouse. But given proper light, humidity, and/or other special care, they can be grown in the house where you live--even the most delicate types. The information on culture is abbreviated, but consistent use of the same terms, I feel is justified. The following are used in the sections on care under each plant.

Full sun

The sun actually falls on the plant for most of the day.

Partial sun

The sun touches the plants for only a few hours in the early morning or late afternoon in summer, but for longer periods in winter (tropical areas excepted).

Little or no sun

Bright daylight is sufficient to keep some plants healthy.

Temperature

Any figures that are quoted are for daytime. Night temperatures can usually drop about five degrees. (Cool is 40 to 60 degrees; moderate, 50 to 70 degrees; warm, 60 to 80 degrees.)

Humidity

This is noted if the plant needs more than average humidity (50 per cent).

Soil

The plant may prefer a potting mixture that is humusy, extra-rich in organic matter; average, like the potting soil I have described on other pages; sandy, with an extra ration of sand, or a similar substitute. Or it may be epiphytic and grow in some suitable medium such as osmunda fiber or sphagnum moss.

Dry

Let the soil dry thoroughly before watering.

Moist

Water when the soil in the top of the pot feels dry to the touch.

Wet

Never allow the soil to dry out.

* * * * *

Methods of propagation are also summarized and, if possible, listed in order of preference. The terms are the same as those used in the sections on propagating house and greenhouse plants.

For most plants, there are short notations on special uses for which they are especially suited, i.e., growing under artificial lights, dish gardens, model landscapes, terrariums and other gardens under glass. Included also are some small tropical trees and shrubs for the small greenhouse. Among the precious miniatures described in Chapter 17, varieties suitable for forcing are so noted. Forcing procedures are also covered.

=Abutilon hybridum savitzi= Malvaceae Flowering Maple

Delicate tropical shrubs with thin, soft, maple-shaped, dove-gray leaves lavishly splashed with creamy white, and sometimes white all over. (I’ve never seen it produce the typical dangling lantern flowers.) It grows slowly, keeps plump and bushy, and is content with a small pot for several years.

CARE. Full sun, moderate temperature, and average soil kept constantly moist.

SPECIAL USES. Artificial light, dish gardens, model landscapes, terrariums.

=Achimenes= Gesneriaceae

A large group of utterly charming plants related to, and grown like, African violets--except that their scaly rhizomes (like minuscule pine cones) are completely dormant in winter. Most have velvet-soft leaves and all produce an overwhelming display of tubular flowers flaring wide-open at the end. None grow to great size. A single rhizome would probably be happy in a two-inch pot; several are usually planted together for a bigger show. The following are among the smallest varieties, upright unless otherwise noted.

‘Charm’--Luscious pink flowers, gold in the center.

coccinea coccinea--Trailer with notched, oval leaves and plentiful flowers of deepest scarlet, half the size of a dime.

‘François Cardinaux’--Flowers in two tones of blue.

‘Little Beauty’--Similar to ‘Charm,’ but in another glowing shade of pink.

‘Masterpiece’--Flowers royal, reddish purple.

‘Miniata’--Ruffled flowers in changeable violet tones.

‘Misera’--Many small white flowers spotted with drops of wine, yellow in the throat.

‘Patens Major’--Orange throat blending into rich plum petals.

‘Peach Blossom’--New dwarf with peach-pink flowers.

‘Violacea Semi-Plena’--The only semidouble-flowering variety in deep, glowing purple.

CARE. Partial sun, warmth, humusy soil kept moist. In late winter, or early spring, pre-root the tiny rhizomes in a light, porous mixture such as vermiculite and peat, barely moist and over bottom heat, or in warmth (65 to 70 degrees). When new growth is about two inches high, pot in light soil enriched with leaf mold or some similiar organic material. Pinch out any growing tips or trailers once or twice to encourage branching. In early fall, after flowering has ended, let the pot and soil dry out gradually. Clean the rhizomes, and store them in a polyethylene bag filled with dry peat at a temperature of 50 to 60 degrees. Check the little fellows occasionally. You may be amazed, but sometimes they’ll send out new sprouts in this dark, dry storage, and want to be rooted and begin growth again.

PROPAGATION. Rhizomes will multiply spontaneously. Also use stem cuttings, leaf cuttings, seeds.

SPECIAL USES. Artificial light.

=Acorus gramineus variegatus= Araceae

Neat, sweet little water-lover, like a miniature grass, with flat fans of slender, four-inch leaves striped lengthwise with sparkling white. It spreads eagerly.

CARE. Partial sun, cool, average soil kept wet.

PROPAGATION. Division of creeping roots.

SPECIAL USES. Artificial light, dish gardens, terrariums. Pretty bog plant for the miniature garden pool.

=Adiantum bellum= Polypodiaceae Bermuda Maidenhair Fern

Elfin version of the maidenhair fern with ruffly leaflets like upside-down wedges, the points attached to the dark, wiry six-inch stems. The foliage is surprisingly dense for such a delicate, airy effect.

CARE. Little or no sun. Warmth, humidity, humusy soil (lime if acid), kept moist, and wet in winter. The plant seems to rest in summer.

SPECIAL USES. Artificial light, terrariums.

=Allophyton mexicanum= Scrophulariaceae Mexican Foxglove

Perky combination of oval, dark-green five-inch leaves beneath upstanding stems bearing several long-tubed, flaring half-inch flowers of pastel lavender blending into white, violet in the throat. Blooms in spurts throughout the year.

CARE. Partial sun, moderate warmth, humidity, average soil kept moist.

PROPAGATION. Seeds.

SPECIAL USES. Artificial light, dish gardens.

=Alternanthera= Amaranthaceae Joseph’s Coat

Enthusiastically branching, bushy plants with leaves of many colors, and convolutions, like small, contorted coleus. They’re often kept dwarfed by regular shearing, so the white flowers seldom form.

amoena--Bushlet with crisp, oval leaves haphazardly daubed with bright shades of red and orange. It seldom tops four inches.

bettzickiana--Tongue-shaped leaves blotched with cream, yellow, salmon, and red. This is the one that’s used for formal carpet bedding. Its green-and-gold variety, aurea nana, makes a round three-inch mound.

versicolor--A gnome with gnarled, wrinkled leaves. It is basically green but brightened with shocking pink and white. It can grow six inches high, but stays lower if pinched regularly.

CARE. Full sun (for best color), warmth, average soil kept moist.

PROPAGATION. Stem cuttings, division of roots.

SPECIAL USES. Artificial light, dish gardens, model landscapes, terrariums.

=Anthurium scherzerianum= Araceae Flamingo Flower

This is a baby in a family predominantly of giants, but it won’t outgrow a three-inch pot for years. This exotic tropical plant has leaves like varnished green shields and flowers like a golden Jack preaching from a flamingo-pink pulpit.

CARE. Little or no sun, warmth, humidity, humusy soil kept moist, or even wet.

PROPAGATION. Division of suckers and seeds.

SPECIAL USES. Artificial lights.

=Babiana stricta= Iridaceae

Winter-flowering, South African bulb for forcing in the greenhouse. Grown outdoors only in frost-free climates. Clusters of red or lavender fuchsia-like eight-inch stems above fuzzy, slender leaves indented at the veins. A dwarf variety, ‘Blue Gem,’ has deep-blue blooms.

CARE. Full sun, moderate warmth, average soil kept moist. Plant in fall for winter flowering.

=Begonia= Begoniaceae

There are enough miniatures in this big happy family of plants to make a sizable collection, and enough variations to keep the collector fascinated. Botanically, begonias are divided into three classes--fibrous-rooted, rhizomatous, and tuberous-rooted. Among the tuberous types, the best-known are the summer-flowering garden beauties--not available, as far as I know, in miniature. Each of the other classes contains miniatures that divide naturally into two general types of begonias with separate personalities, habits, and cultures. You could almost consider each type a completely distinctive group of plants, only technically related to the others.

SEMPERFLORENS BEGONIAS

Fondly known as “wax begonias,” and often called “America’s favorite house plant.” These are bustling, buxom, freely branching plants with watery stems and crisp, nearly round leaves gleaming with a high polish. They cover themselves with continual bursts of white, pink, or red flowers. The furiously flowering singles are the oldest, best-known, and toughest, often used for edging semishady garden beds. The semidoubles (crested or thimble type) have a raspberry-shaped center extending out from a circle of petals. The doubles (rosebud or camellia-flowered) are fluttery, full-petaled spheres. Foliage may be clean green, bronzy, or mahogany.

‘Adeline’ (‘Improved Darling’)--Free-blooming soft, single pink; green leaves.

‘Andy’--Deeper, more luminous pink flowers; green leaves.

‘Little Gem’--Double, rosy-pink flowers; very dark red leaves; small, slow-growing.

‘Pied Piper’--Baby pink, semidouble flowers, the crest sometimes touched with gold; bronzy leaves.

‘Snowdrop’--Smallest I’ve ever seen, has never topped three inches for me, just grows bushier and bushier. Double white flowers like minute snowballs; dark-red foliage.

tausendschoen (‘Thousand Beauties’)--A group of green-leaved, single-flowering dwarfs available in red, pink, or white. Easily grown from seed.

‘Winkie’--Fully double, old rose flowers; masses of dark leaves.

CARE. Partial sun, moderate warmth, average soil kept on the dry side.

PROPAGATION. Stem cuttings (best taken with a branch, so the plants will be self-branching), seeds (singles), division of root and crown.

MISCELLANEOUS FIBROUS-ROOTED BEGONIAS

Some miniatures are of the angel-wing, cane-stemmed type; some are from the hirsute, hairy-leaved group; some can’t be categorized.

albo-picta--Small angel wing with low, arched branches; silver-spotted, sharp-pointed slender leaves; clusters of off-white flowers.

bartonea (‘Winter Jewel’)--This one’s a flirt, flaunting its leaves and tiny pink-tinged flowers one wintry day, collapsing completely the next. It can’t bear dry air or chills but will grow up again cheerfully from the roots. The foliage is finely scalloped on the edges, washed with russet in the center and along the veins, and completely overlaid with silver sheen.

‘Dainty Spray’--Impudent dwarf with little angel-wing leaves, bouquets of face-powder-pink flowers dripping from the drooping stems.

dregei--Maple-leaf begonia with sharply cut, thumbnail-sized leaves bronzy with purple veins, white flowers. This is a semituberous type, the main stem swelling to look like a bulb above the soil at the base. Pinching regularly keeps it fairly small. May be dormant in winter. The variety macbethi has smaller leaves completely green, white flowers.

‘Dwarf Houghtoni’--For me, this stays under six inches high and covers itself with pointed leaves upholstered with sheer, tawny-pink velvet. The clusters of large white flowers with pink whiskers are almost too heavy for the branches to hold.

‘Medora’--Miniature angel wing with two-inch, flat silver-spotted leaves and white flowers. Also available as ‘Green Medora,’ with plain green leaves and watermelon-pink flowers.

richardsiana--Another semituberous maple-leaf type, the leaves smallest of all and deeply cut almost into lace. Flowers are faint pink.

CARE. Partial sun, moderate warmth, average soil kept on the dry side. The semituberous types take more moisture during the active growing season.

PROPAGATION. Seeds (for some species), stem cuttings, division of root and crown.

RHIZOMATOUS BEGONIAS

Here’s where the hybridists are creating the most intriguing new varieties, because they have more miniature parent species to work with. The leaf and flower stems grow straight up or out from the rhizome, a swollen, scarred rootstock that creeps over the top of the soil, usually sending down roots as it goes. Sprays of trembling flowers stand well above the foliage in late winter or early spring.

aridicaulis--Mounds of tiny, sharp-pointed, lettuce-green leaves seldom over three or four inches high. Small, white, two-petaled flowers like fairy pocketbooks.

boweri--Better known as the “eyelash begonia” because of the black stitching around the edge of the lettuce-green leaves, marked with bristly black hairs. Flowers are small, baby-pink, and plentiful. This is the seed parent of a whole group of popular namesakes; star-leaved ‘Bow-Arriola,’ chocolate-stitched ‘Bow Chance,’ dark-complexioned ‘Bow-Joe,’ bronzy ‘Bow-Nigra.’ All have the eyelash edging and pink flowers, and are happy plants for the window garden or greenhouse.

hydrocotylifolia--“Miniature pond-lily begonia” for the terrarium or shallow basket or pot. Shiny, penny-like leaves overcast with bronze, dark along the veins; pink flowers on six-inch stems.

‘Maphil’ (‘Cleopatra’)--Most famous boweri offspring, more dwarf than miniature, just right for small window gardens and baskets. The starlike leaves are satiny, irregularly marked chocolate on chartreuse; the flowers, rich pink.

mazae--Bronzy, half-dollar leaves with light veins that meet at the stem end to make a white eye, wine-red beneath. Pale-pink, red-spotted flowers.

rotundifolia--Very similar to hydrocotylifolia except for the bronzy cast and dark veins. May be the smallest of all.

‘Spaulding’--Extra-bushy dwarf with medium-green leaves shading to dark green, edged with whiskers, and oxblood beneath. Showers of pink flowers.

‘Virbob’--Reddish star leaves with yellow-green leaves, bright red beneath. Short stems hold the leaves close to the pot.

‘Spaulding,’--an extra-bushy dwarf begonia]

In the past few years, Mrs. H. E. Dillard of Tropical Paradise Greenhouse has introduced a number of delightful new dwarfs and miniatures. Among them:

‘Baby Perfection’--Star leaves splotched mahogany on green.

‘Black Falcon’--Darkest red-brown star leaves, silvery along the veins, whiskery along the edge.

‘Chantilly Lace’--One of my favorites, with cupped, chartreuse leaves stitched with black around the edge.

‘China Doll’--Pointed yellow-green leaves striped brown along the veins.

‘Kathy Diane’--Pointed oval leaves brown splotched with chartreuse.

‘Midget’--Nearly black star leaves silvery green along the veins.

‘Oriental Music’--Dwarf with pebbly apple-green leaves.

‘Persian Brocade’--Green star leaves intricately laced with black along the edge.

‘Raspberry Parfait’--Pointed, velvety, olive-green leaves lighter along the veins; new leaves flushed with bright pink.

Group of dwarf begonias: lower left, ‘China Doll’; upper left, ‘Silver Jewel’; upper center, ‘Bow-Chance’; upper right, ‘Bow-Arriola’; lower right, ‘Bow-Nigra’; center, ‘Chantilly Lace.’]

CARE. Partial sun, moderate warmth, humusy soil kept moist.

PROPAGATION. Rhizome cuttings, leaf cuttings (slow), seeds (for some species).

MINIATURE REX BEGONIAS

These begonias are also rhizomatous, but the brilliant patterns of their leaves put them in a class by themselves. Few other foliage plants have such startling combinations of peacock colors.

‘Baby Rainbow’--Crinkly, jewel-like leaves with bands of royal purple, emerald green, silver, raspberry, amethyst. Grows and shows off best in glass.

‘Dew Drop’--Thin, ivy-shaped leaves completely overlaid with shimmering, lavender-pink mother-of-pearl.

‘It’--Branching, upright rex type with silver-splotched green leaves, multitudes of large pink flowers. Likes some sunlight.

‘Lorraine Closson,’ ‘Louise Closson,’ ‘Lucille Closson,’ ‘Lucy Closson’--A group of aristocratic dwarfs with taffeta-textured leaves in varying patterns of black, purple, red, pink, silvery green.

‘Pansy’--Small, pointed, deep-green leaves with sharp zone of lighter metallic green.

‘Peacock’--Jet-black and scarlet leaves on short stems. Stays small if fed sparingly.

‘Red Berry’--Sheer, shimmering satin leaves of unrelieved claret.

CARE. Little or no sun, warmth, humidity, humusy soil kept moist. Many rex begonias may go partially or completely dormant in winter, dropping some or all of their leaves. Simply keep them warm, with the soil slightly dry, until signs of new growth appear.

PROPAGATION. Rhizome cuttings, leaf cuttings. Seeds will produce an unpredictable mixture, seldom like the parent plant.

=Bertolonia= Melastomaceae

The slowly spreading stems look like fat little top-of-the-soil rhizomes; but the foliage is like nothing else on earth. Perfect pointed ovals seem fashioned of sheerest silk; the skeleton of veins is sunken and strikingly marked. Such daintiness, to be endowed with bristly whiskers! Wee flowers cluster at the top of short upright stems. None of the bertolonias are very large; these are the available miniatures.

maculata--Sheer leaves deep green shading to light, pencilings of silver along the lengthwise veins, wine red beneath.

pubescens--Many veins pucker the leaves like small-scale seersucker. Colors are copper over green, plum purple down the center.

CARE. Partial sun, warmth, humidity, humusy soil kept moist.

PROPAGATION. Stem cuttings (in warmth), seeds.

SPECIAL USES. Artificial light, terrariums.

=Boea hygroscopica= Gesneriaceae

Six-inch tropical gesneriad with fresh green, quilted leaves and clusters of violet-like flowers campanula-blue, with yellow centers, on willow stems.

CARE. Partial sun, moderate warmth, humidity, humusy soil kept moist.

PROPAGATION. Division of crown, seeds.

=Bouvardia longiflora humboldti= Rubiaceae

Two-foot tropical shrub to perfume the dream greenhouse in fall and winter. The luxuriant, glossy, evergreen leaves are a fine foil for the celestial white flowers--trumpets with long, slim tubes flaring out into perfect four-pointed stars. Florists grow the larger-flowered variety, ‘Albatross,’ for cutting.

CARE. Full sun, moderate warmth, humidity, humusy soil kept wet except when the plant is resting after bloom.

PROPAGATION. Stem cuttings of new wood with heel (in warmth), root cuttings in early summer.

SPECIAL USES. Greenhouse shrub.

=Buxus microphylla japonica= Buxaceae Box, Boxwood

Slow-growing boxwood with small, prim, shiny green leaves filling out the plump shrub shape. It is hardy outdoors, but nice in pots and frequently found at plant counters in variety stores.

CARE. Full sun, cool temperatures, average soil mixture kept moist.

PROPAGATION. Stem cuttings of half-ripe wood.

SPECIAL USES. Artificial light, dish gardens, model landscapes, terrariums, indoor bonsai.

CACTI AND SIMILAR SUCCULENTS

Generally, I prefer to grow a spicy variety of plants. But I am certainly in sympathy with the hobbyists who find enough stimulation in this one group to keep them collecting for a lifetime. Such a weird assortment of shapes, from barrels to humping inchworms. Such unusual patterns and colors of either leaves or stems that have taken on the shapes and functions of leaves. And such flowers! Some like daisies or water lilies, in incredible neon-bright colors, sometimes three times the size of the plant.

Among cacti and similar succulents are some of our smallest plants, plus plenty more that grow so slowly they’re miniature for many years. Here are selected samples, only a small portion of the number available from specialist-growers and other sources.

CARE. Most succulents need full sun, moderate warmth, a sandy soil mixture (not pure sand) kept on the dry side. They need more water and warmth in summer, less in winter when they are resting. If soil is very acid, neutralize with lime.

PROPAGATION. Stem cuttings, leaf cuttings, division of root or crown, seeds.

SPECIAL USES. Dish gardens, model landscapes (with other dry-growing plants), a few for indoor bonsai.

=Aeonium caespitosum spathulatum= Crassulaceae

Clump-forming succulent with rosettes of leaves like the hen-and-chicks, silvery green sparsely spotted with darker green.

=Agave victoriae-reginae= Amaryllidaceae

Miniature “century plant” with a stiff rosette of thick, sharp-pointed dull-green leaves with white piping along the edge and streaked with white between. Mature size, six inches.

=Aichryson (Aeonium) domesticum variegatum= Crassulaceae

I’m not quite sure how high and wide this pretty succulent will grow if left to its own devices. Mine has stayed in a two-inch pot for more than a year, and filled itself out with thin, round green leaves edged with creamy white, blushing faint pink in warm sun. The leaves huddle in tight, overlapping rosettes all around the branching stems.

=Aloe= Liliaceae

Symmetrical clusters of thick, heavy, sharp-spiny leaves; fall and winter flowers held aloft like a torch. One of the smaller species is A. brevifolia, with leaf rosettes about three inches across. A. variegata can eventually reach a foot high, but very slowly; and its white-marbled leaves are striking in the meantime.

=Aptenia cordifolia (Mesembryanthemum cordifolium)= Aizoaceae

Creeping, clustering succulent with thinnish, round-pointed, gray-green leaves in pairs along the stems; brilliant fuchsia-purple daisy-shaped flowers. The variety variegata is embellished with creamy-white leaf edgings.

=Astrophytum= Cactaceae Star Cactus

Thick stem-bodies divided neatly into five sections but still attached together, growing very slowly to four inches across. Outlandishly large, flat, daisy flowers in summer. Try A. myriostigma, bishop’s cap, or A. asterias, sand dollar, both spineless; or silver-dotted A. ornatum, with swirling lines and tufts of curved spines.

=Cephalocereus senilis= Cactaceae Old Man Cactus

A good bet for beginning collectors. This is a columnar cactus covered with a shaggy coat of snow-white hairs, growing up to forty feet high in the desert, but approaching that height at a snail’s pace indoors. Flowers are rosy-pink, about two inches across.

=Chamaecereus silvestri= Cactaceae Peanut Cactus

Gay ground-hugger, sending out in all directions thick green two-inch joints with soft white spines, and keeping its miniature proportions except when it’s top-heavy with long-tubed orange-scarlet flowers.

=Conophytum= Aizoaceae

Very tiny succulents with clusters of plump bodies that are, actually, two leaves joined completely except at the tip. The plant barely reaches one inch high and is content in a three-inch pot for years. Ridiculously large and brilliant flowers pop out through small slits in early fall. Then the leaves look like little dumplings sitting under a daisy. Of the several species available from specialists, C. ornianum is light green with darker freckles, lavender-rose flowers; C. aureum has gold flowers.

=Coryphantha vivipara= Cactaceae

Symmetrical two-inch sphere covered with evenly spaced bumps, each like a miniature sun with white rays and a spine sticking up from the center. The fringed rosy or carmine flowers pop out on top, in June; bright-red berries appear in fall. Native to, and hardy in, Manitoba, down to Texas. In time it will form clustered mounds.

=Crassula= Crassulaceae

An oddly assorted group of succulents including many roguish miniatures of fascinating form. C. cooperi has tufts of small, pointed leaves with black blotches, little clusters of pale-pink flowers. C. lycopodioides mimics the club moss of the woodlands, with slim stems encircled with little needle-like leaves. ‘Morgan’s Pink’ is a variety of dense clusters of spear-shaped leaves, crinkled like gray seersucker, coral flowers. C. schmidti makes a three-inch mat of pointed, pinkish leaves, with generous glowing pink flowers.

=Echeveria= Crassulaceae

Perfect rosettes of succulent leaves in many lustrous colors, some silk-velvety or contrastingly trimmed on the edge. Clusters of brilliant tubular flowers top short stems. The following grow low, with four-inch rosettes.

derenbergi--painted lady--Translucent green leaves with silvery sheen, touched with red at the tip, yellow-orange flowers.

elegans--Mexican snowball--Light blue-green leaves frosted with white, pure white on the edge, coral-pink flowers.

pulvinata--chenille plant--Dusty-green leaves of sheer velvet, trimmed with brick red on the edge, scarlet flowers.

=Echinocereus melanocentrus= Cactaceae Hedgehog Cactus

Small, spiny globes with brilliant carmine flowers from the side of the ball. At its three-inch maturity, the flowers are still larger than the plant.

=Echinopsis= Cactaceae Easter Lily Cactus

Small, round plants with thick ribs and formidable spines, the lily-like flowers usually opening in the evening. A popular species is E. kermesiana, with glowing red flowers. E. grandiflora is described as only two or three inches across, with five-inch rose-pink flowers.

=Euphorbia= Euphorbiaceae

Two small relatives of the poinsettia that show little family resemblance.

caput-medusae--Medusa’s head--Sneaky, snaky-looking plant with tangles of twisted, gray-green branches, occasionally tipped with small leaves.

splendens bojeri--dwarf crown of thorns--Compared to the sprawly species that grows four feet tall or more, this is really a midget. Mine has kept its six-inch bushy contours for nearly two years. The upright grayish branches are fairly well supplied with roundish, dark-green leaves; the scarlet flower-like bracts are plentiful at intervals all summer and fall.

=Faucaria= Aizoaceae Tiger Jaws

Low, crowded succulents with thick, triangular leaves toothed with spiny hairs, unmistakably resembling an animal’s mouth. In late summer or early fall, golden daisy-like flowers pop up and make fun of the plant’s ferocious appearance.

tigrina--Silvery green leaves flecked with white, two-inch yellow flowers.

tuberculosa--Darker green leaves with little white knobs.

=Fenestraria= Aizoaceae Baby Toes

Clusters of cylindrical leaves, larger at the top, like little flat-tipped baseball bats. The nearly colorless tops feature tiny transparent “windows.”

aurantiaca--Three-inch orange daisy flowers more than twice as wide as the clustered leaf-colony.

rhopalophylla--Leaves more blunt, smaller white flowers.

=Gymnocalycium mihanovichi= Cactaceae Chin Cactus

Just one of many available miniature, globe-shaped cacti with spines on regular shelves, or “chins.” This one produces chartreuse flowers bigger than its body, starts to bloom while quite young.

=Haworthia= Liliaceae

Tight pinwheels of thick, pointed leaves intricately studded with varied patterns of pearly pinheads. The whitish flowers are not a main feature.

fasciata--Zebra-striped succulent often seen in dish gardens.

margaritifera--Slightly larger, dark green with a more scattered pattern of white dots.

=Kalanchoe= Crassulaceae

Among these congenial succulents are several that grow to considerable size in their native homes, but keep pleasantly small in pots or dish gardens. The leaves are fleshy, with indentations along the edge. Lantern-shaped flowers appear in winter.

blossfeldiana--Well-branched bush with overlapping, fresh green leaves, flowering in winter when days are short and nights are long. ‘Tom Thumb’ is a dwarf variety that smothers itself with scarlet blooms for Christmas. Greenhouses grow it from seeds sown in spring, and so can you.

marmorata--penwiper plant--Leaves fold in around the stem and are spattered on both sides with purple blotches.

pumila--Leaves like a doll’s spoon, notched on the edge and sugar-frosted; plum-colored pitcher flowers.

tomentosa--panda plant--Fat leaves covered with white felt, distinctly marked with chocolate at the teeth on the edge.

(Kitchingia) uniflora--Miniature creeper or dangler for small hanging baskets, with round green leaves marching up and down the stem and rosy or red urn-flowers hanging from thin, short threads.

=Kleinia= Compositae

Curious even among succulents, each of these oddly shaped or strangely decorated plants has a personality of its own and no need for daisy-like flower heads to make it interesting.

pendula--inchworm plant--Weird, round, leafless stems snake up and down over the soil; flowers brilliant red.

repens--Low and somewhat trailing, with thick leaves like long canoes, unbelievable blue.

tomentosa--Cylindrical cocoon-like leaves tapered to sharp points and covered with pure-white down; gold or orange flowers.

=Lobivia aurea= Cactaceae Golden Easter Lily

Squat, round, prickly cactus like a small echinopsis, except that this one opens its friendly water-lily flowers in the daytime. Dozens of different species and varieties are available.

=Mammillaria= Cactaceae Pincushion Cactus

There are many mighty midgets in this group, and in fascinating variety. They’re mostly round, from squat to columnar, but all are primly neat. The spines may be soft or not, but are always arranged in a perfect pattern. The flowers are not overlarge, but are arranged in a crown and ripen into attractive, berry-like fruit.

bocasana--powder puff--Soft, white-woolly globes, only one and a half inches across when mature; beige flowers.

elongata--golden lace--Small branching pillar, nicknamed for its tatted pattern of bright-yellow spines.

hahniana--old lady--Fond name for a small, white-haired cushion.

=Notocactus= Cactaceae Ball Cactus

Plump balls with prettily colored spines and large, showy flowers in late spring.

apricus--sun cup--Golden-yellow flowers, Oxford-gray spines.

graessneri--Butter-yellow spines and flowers.

ottonis--Indian head--Reddish spines.

rutilans--Rosy flowers.

=Opuntia= Cactaceae

This is a “crazy, mixed-up” group of cacti. They come in so many sizes, shapes, and forms that any generalized description is impossible. Many optunias are hardy even in Northern gardens.

mamillata--boxing gloves--Resembles a little tree whose branches turn into cockscombs at the tip.

microdasys--bunny ears--Flat, long-oval pads with tiny tufts of soft yellow hairs.

=Parodia= Cactaceae

Fat little balls covered with glistening spines and sending out unbelievably large flowers although the plant measures only an inch across the middle. Even in old age, they’re never larger than three inches.

aureispina--Tom Thumb cactus--Gold spines, orange flowers.

mutabilis--Shining yellow flowers.

=Portulacaria afra variegata= Portulacaceae Rainbow Bush

After planting this little tree-like succulent in a dish garden when it was only three inches tall, and finding it less than half an inch taller nearly a year later, I was mildly amazed to learn that it is a version of the twelve-foot elephant bush, or purslane tree, of desert gardens. It’s difficult to imagine the fat red stems and fleshy, cream-splashed, red-rimmed leaves ever adorning a plant of such monstrous proportions.

=Rebutia= Cactaceae Crown Cactus

Flat, fat balls with whiskery spines, spreading out into clusters. Each ball, when mature, is circled by large, wide-eyed flowers coming up from the base, often as large as the four-inch plant.

minuscula--Best-known species, with fiery red flowers.

senilis--Orange flowers with turned-back petals.

violaciflora--Rose-pink flowers.

=Sedum= Crassulaceae

Tender relations of the hardy garden sedums, not so numerous but equally varied.

adolphi--Rosettes of fat, yellow-green leaves, white flowers.

hintoni--Oval, grassy-green leaves covered with prickly white hairs, like clumps of tiny porcupine tails; white flowers.

lineare--Many branching, trailing stems covered thickly with needle-shaped leaves. The variety variegatum is a gem, each leaf more creamy-white than green.

multiceps--little Joshua tree--Unbelievable bonsai-like plant with trunk, branches, and tufts of needly dark-green leaves like the smallest conifer imaginable.

pachyphyllum--jelly beans--Fat, juicy, berry-like leaves clustering close to the branching stems; yellow flowers in spring.

rubrotinctum (guatemalense)--Christmas cheer--Thick layers of small, green, drumstick-shaped leaves turning holiday red in full sun; yellow flowers.

stahli--coral beads, Boston beans--Faintly hairy, beady, reddish leaves strung closely together on branching stems; yellow flowers in summer and fall.

=Titanopsis= Aizoaceae

Stone-mimicking succulents with thickly clustered leaves lavishly spotted with white, wart-like tubercles, and short-lived daisy flowers in fall or winter.

calcarea--jewel plant--Lustrous gray-green leaves sparkling with white spots, gleaming gold flowers. Leaf rosette only two inches in any direction.

schwantesi--Even smaller cluster of blue-gray, liver-spotted leaves, lemon-yellow flowers.

=Trichodiadema densum= Aizoaceae Desert Rose

Picture a bunch of tiny, smooth green pickles, each tipped with a triple crown of ridiculously long, bristly, white hairs. Now, smother this leaf colony under two-inch red daisy flowers. A really outlandish plant!

SUCCULENTS

=Caladium= Araceae Elephant Ears

Bicolor Varieties. Gorgeous arrow-leaved foliage plants for small gardens in the South or sheltered areas where summer temperatures are not likely to drop below 60 degrees for long. The patterns, colors, and contours of the leaves get fancier every year. Many are hybridized for larger and larger size, but specialists also offer a good selection of dwarfs that will stay under eight inches. Among them:

‘Candidum, Jr.’--Bushy low version of the standard favorite with green-netted, white leaves.

humboldti--A gemlike species for the connoisseur with willowy stems topped by diminutive deep-green leaves splotched with silvery transparent white between the center veins and the edge. Needs more humidity than the bicolor hybrids.

‘Little Rascal’--Leaf more lance-shaped, wine-red.

‘Miss Marveen’--Pearly-white tinged and blotched with pink over heavy drab green.

‘Mrs. Arno Nehrling’--Bronzy-green, red veins.

‘Pink Radiance’--Small and bushy, leaves centered and veined with shades of pink, pink-flecked on the edge.

‘Sea Gull’--White at the midvein and frosted all over.

‘Twilight’--Glowing flame-pink leaf finely netted with green.

CARE. Partial sun; if in a greenhouse shade against burn. Temperature: warm (75 degrees). Humid. Soil: rich, acid (azalea type). Keep moist. Fertilizer: feed liquid manure on alternate weeks.

PROPAGATION. Seeds.

SPECIAL USES. Terrariums, window boxes, specimens.

=Calathea (Maranta)= Marantaceae

There’s only one available true miniature in this group of richly colored and patterned tropical foliage plants, but many other species will stay small in a three-inch pot for years. The fact that they’re suitable for lush but restrained effects in far Southern gardens is my other excuse for including them.

These plants are maranta-like, the leaf tufts with markings a peacock could crow about, silky-velvet or iridescent sheens that outshine the gowns at a coronation ball. They are reluctant to flower but nobody cares. The following is only a sampling of the available riches:

argyraea--Low and compact, the blotched green leaves overlaid with silver and horizontally level.

insignis--Narrow, permanently waved leaves perfectly patterned with chartreuse, wine red underneath.

louisae--Leaves perpendicular and perky, feather-marked with yellow-green.

micans--Miniature with oval leaves about an inch long (four inches in the tropics), lustrous deep green banded with silver at the center, paler underneath.

picturata vandenheckei--Satiny dark green banded with silver white in center. Wine red on the underside. A new form, ‘Wendlinger,’ is even more startling. The centers are sterling silver, edged with deep green.

CARE. Provide warmth, humidity. Soil: loam, leaf mold, and sand. Feed heavily for best colors. Shade from direct sun.

PROPAGATION. Divide crowns; tubers and spring cuttings.

SPECIAL USES. Tropical gardens, pots, terrariums, dish gardens.

=Callopsis volkensi= Araceae

This is a perfectly proportioned miniature “calla lily” only four inches high, the white porcelain flowers centered with a gold, spear-like spadix, and substantial but small heart-shaped green leaves quaintly crinkled. It grows from an underground rhizome. It branches freely but compactly and is winter-blooming.

CARE. Shade, humidity, humusy soil kept evenly moist.

PROPAGATION. Rhizomes.

SPECIAL USES. Terrariums, dish gardens.

=Carex elegantissima (Morrowi variegata)= Cyperaceae

Lady-like little grass with airy tufts of slimmest leaves, bright green with a white stripe along each edge.

CARE. Loamy garden soil, filtered sun, wet. Intermediate temperature.

PROPAGATION. Seeds.

SPECIAL USES. Terrariums, dish gardens.

=Carissa grandiflora nana compacta= Apocynaceae Natal Plum

When is a dwarf not really a dwarf? In the two years or more I’ve had this plant it has grown so slowly I have no idea what ultimate height it has in mind, or when it will reach it. It is still about six inches tall, with round, green, overlapping leaves with the shiniest glassy polish of any leaves I have ever seen. Off and on during the year it gives sensual delight with richly fragrant china-white flowers, none of which, so far, have been replaced by scarlet plums. This form is blessedly without spines, always refreshing, and particularly appropriate for Oriental planters and miniature indoor gardens.

CARE. Almost any soil, warmth, light shade, moist, spray leaves. Resents repotting.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings, layers.

SPECIAL USES. Bonsai, planters.

=Ceropegia= Asclepiadaceae

Among the few hanging or climbing vines of suitable size and form for truly miniature baskets, or supports--succulent and easy to grow to boot! Their effect is always dainty, never bold; thin wiry stems may grow long, but never the leaves; waxy tube-like flowers inspire close inspection, but are never showy. Here are four of the daintiest species:

barkleyi--umbrella flower--A climber with pointed wing-shaped leaves feathered with a network of silver; purple-veined greenish flowers like parasols.

caffrorum--Pairs of green heart-leaves march down the threadlike stems; greenish flowers intricately marked with plum.

debilis--Green needle-like leaves penciled silver along the center; green-and-purple flowers.

woodi--rosary vine, string of hearts, hearts entangled--Matching pairs of thick silvery valentines every inch or so along the dangling stem, identically traced with a precisely patterned design. The little pink-lavender flowers are shaped like pixie pipes or urns.

CARE. Soil: loam, leaf mold, sandy and humusy. Intermediate temperature, filtered sun. Moist in summer, on the dry side in winter.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings in spring; tubers, seeds.

SPECIAL USES. Hanging baskets.

=Chaenostoma fastigiatum= Scrophulariaceae Little Stars

Cheerful little tropical herb which keeps its compact contour by branching freely, and covers its stems with myriads of half-inch fragrant leaves. All year it twinkles with a sprinkling of starry white flowers, outdoes itself in the summer months.

CARE. Loamy garden soil, bright light, moist.

PROPAGATION. Seeds, cuttings.

SPECIAL USES. Edgings.

=Chamaedorea elegans bella= Palmaceae

Slow-growing dwarf palm tree, so slow it can be a granddaddy in a six-inch pot and takes eons to top two feet. The reedy green stems cluster in a rosette and curve gracefully at the ends. Leaves are thin, fresh green, airily divided.

CARE. Warm, loamy garden soil, moist, shade.

PROPAGATION. Seeds.

SPECIAL USES. House plant, dish gardens.

=Chamaeranthemum= Acanthaceae

A choice, exclusive threesome of tender tropical creepers with small supine leaves embroidered with dainty patterns.

gaudichaudi--Forest-green, long oval leaves of sheer velvet, silver feathers down the center and out along the veins.

(Stenandrium) lindeni--A bolder, golden feather marks the larger, perhaps even sheerer, leaves.

venosum--Symmetrical, oval leaves more broad than slender, dark powder-blue with thin leaves of silver on the network of veins.

CARE. Warm, humid, loamy garden soil, filtered sun, moist.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings.

SPECIAL USES. Terrariums, dish gardens.

=Chlorophytum bicheti= Liliaceae

Spidery little pot plant with tapering, grassy-looking leaves about six inches long, arching somewhat stiffly, with cream-white tidy stripes along the edge and sometimes down the middle. Always looks prim and precise.

CARE. Intermediate temperature, needs fresh air, loamy soil, filtered sun, moist.

PROPAGATION. Division.

SPECIAL USES. Indoor gardens, artificial light.

=Cissus striata= Vitaceae Miniature Grape Ivy

This lacy little climber looks less like grape ivy, more like woodbine, but it certainly does look and act like a miniature. The reddish stems turn and twist at angles, trying to touch the tiny tendrils to a support they can curl around. The one-and-a-half-inch leaves are like five fat separate fingers delicately joined in the center, scalloped or toothed near the rounded tip, burnished green and lined with wine beneath.

Cissus striata--a genuine miniature climber not unlike woodbine]

CARE. Intermediate temperature, humid, loamy garden soil, filtered sun, moisture in the pots.

PROPAGATION. Roots and cuttings.

SPECIAL USES. House plant, miniature gardens, artificial light.

=Citrus= Rutaceae

These are true miniature citrus trees, varieties that are naturally dwarf, or grow so slowly they’ll flower and fruit in smallish pots indoors.

aurantifolia--lime--Spiny little tree with small leaves, small tartly acid, thin-skinned, green fruit. The Persian lime is a variety called “one of the most beautiful of all citrus trees.”

limonia ‘ponderosa’--ponderosa lemon--Oblong, glassy, evergreen leaves; stiff sharp spines; large waxy, fragrant flowers; heavy (to two and a half pounds) pear-shaped (to five inches long) lemons at intervals through the year, beginning when the tree may not be much more than a foot tall. Supposedly, one lemon “gives enough juice to make a pie.”

mitis--calamondin--Bushy little tree, not prickly, dense with glassy green leaves; flowers fragrant, small and white. May bear fruit all year but usually in winter it produces bright oranges, about one and a half inches in diameter, thin-skinned and somewhat flattened on the end. The lime-like flavor of the juice is reportedly pleasant, but my tree looked so pretty I didn’t pick the fruit. A calamondin can, and often will, fruit in a two-and-a-half-inch pot--a mighty midget.

nobilis deliciosa--tangerine, mandarin orange--Small, nearly thornless tree with willowy leaves; sweet fruit, with loose skin that peels off like a kid glove and segments that separate freely.

taitensis--otaheite orange--Neat little bush for pots, with plenty of two-inch, wavy-edged leaves, few if any spines, and fragrant pink-tinged flowers in January. By Christmas, even if the tree is only eight inches high, the oranges are ripe. They are the size of a plum, shaped like a lemon, tartly flavored like a lime.

CARE. Intermediate temperature, needs fresh air, loamy soil, bright sun, keep on the dry side. For fruit, pollinate. Humidity, not too much fertilizer, not too much water. Sudden temperature changes causes leaves to drop.

PROPAGATION. Seeds, grafting, cuttings (for pot varieties).

SPECIAL USES. Seedlings for miniature gardens and greenhouses.

=Columnea microphylla= Gesneriaceae

Velvety trailer, suitable for small hanging baskets, with soft little mouse-ear leaves. But wow! the fiery-red flowers never heard of the word miniature. Their long slender tubes stand straight up from the dangling stems, flare out to a wide mouth through which you can look to see the yellow throat inside.

CARE. Warm, humid, humusy soil, filtered sun, moist.

PROPAGATION. Seeds, stem and leaf cuttings.

SPECIAL USES. Hanging baskets.

=Cryptanthus= Bromeliaceae Earth Stars

Not many bromeliads can rightly be called miniatures, and grow either in air or in soil to boot. These are low flat rosettes of stiff painted leaves, often with prickles on the edge and always unusually colored. From the heart, wee white flowers peep out, usually in summer. Some suppliers offer a grab-bag selection of hybrids, “no two alike.” Or you can buy these smaller species if you wish.

acaulis--Thin gray fuzz over rather mottled green leaves.

bahianus--These leaves are slimmer, curving at the tip and wavy on the edge, flushed or margined brick red, more upright than flat.

beuckeri--Asymmetrical arrangement of ladle-like leaves tapered to a sharp point, dark green marbled over light.

bivittatus minor (roseus pictus)--Faintly banded dark-green leaves completely flushed bronzy pink or salmon.

bromelioides tricolor--Slim, pointed leaves with bands of rich cream and green, shaded cherry pink along the edge and in the heart.

lacerdae--‘Silver Star’--Definitely star-shaped and definitely silvery; the only green is in the two stripes down each side of the center.

CARE. Warm, humus, filtered sun, dry side, good drainage.

PROPAGATION. Offsets or cuttings. Peel off one or two basal leaves from stem; pot and root for two to three weeks.

SPECIAL USES. House plant.

=Cryptbergia meadi= Bromeliaceae

Everything said about the cryptanthus applies here. This is the result of crossing a billbergia with a cryptanthus. The leaves are slim spear-shaped and sharply pointed, upright in the center and arching out around the side. The basic green is rather drab. Made more appealing by a bronzy sheen and faint dark mottlings.

=Cyanotis= Commelinaceae

Succulent creeping or trailing cousins of the inch plants, with similar botanical characteristics, but each an individual in its own right:

kewensis--teddy-bear plant--Brown-woolly all over the stem and the tiny pointed-ear leaves.

somaliensis--pussy ears--The fresh green leaves are bent into boat shape, clasping tight to the stem and covered with velvety white fuzz.

veldhoutiana (Tradescantia villosa) (Tradescantia pexata) (Tradescantia sillamontana), and known in the trade as tradescantia ‘White Velvet’ and also ‘White Gossamer’--This tiny plant, more trailing than creeping, has lettuce-green leaves, and stems clothed in long silky silvery-white hairs. It has so many names I fear it would be lost to view if all of its labels were placed around it. I quote all of them in order to avoid confusion and controversy. But according to the Institute de Biologia in Mexico, the correct name is Tradescantia sillamontana.

CARE. Intermediate temperature, needs fresh air, loamy soil, bright light, dry side.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings.

SPECIAL USES. Miniature tropical gardens, greenhouses.

=Dionaea muscipula= Droseraceae Venus Fly Trap

Never let anyone tell you this little bug-eater will “trap flies on your window sill.” Don’t poke at it to see it close its trap. Avoid disturbing it; let it feed itself naturally. And now that the negatives are covered, do try this braggart elf (give it conditions in which it can grow), for the pleasure in its intricately devised mechanism, one of nature’s wonders. Basically, there’s a five-inch-wide rosette of wide flat stems, a two-part leaf at the end of each making a flat burnished bronze oval with a fringe of thick whiskers. When an insect steps onto this dance floor, the hinges in the center fold the two halves together fast, and that is the end of the bug. White flowers top the tallish stems in spring.

CARE. Cool, humid, sun, soil rich in humus with sphagnum, wet. Dormant in February and March before flowering. Most vigorous growth in spring and summer.

PROPAGATION. By roots or seeds. If seeds are used, start them under a bell jar.

SPECIAL USES. Terrariums.

=Dracaena godseffiana= Liliaceae

Small tropical foliage shrub, slow-growing and bushy, with glassy, leathery leaves haphazardly splotched with white. The named variety ‘Florida Beauty’ is even more dwarf, takes years to fit a four-inch pot, and boasts golden-yellow splotches.

CARE. Warm, loamy garden soil, filtered sun (more light for color), moist to wet.

PROPAGATION. Pieces of stem with several joints; tip cuttings; air layering.

SPECIAL USES. Miniature gardens.

=Drosera rotundifolia= Droseraceae Sundew

The whole plant can often hide under a half-dollar--the smallest of all the insect-eaters. Flat stems radiate out from a central crown, expand at the ends, become flat spoon-shaped blades covered with reddish hairs that are tipped with drops of glue. Any insect landing on the surface gets his feet stuck while longer hairs on the edge act like tentacles to entangle him even more. Spring flowers top stems that grow straight up in the center.

CARE. Cool, humid, humusy soil made acid with peat moss if necessary, moist but not soggy, good drainage, room temperature is adequate with some direct sunlight but not enough to raise temperature in terrarium to a dangerous level. Transplanting or shipping may retard growth several weeks; don’t get soil on leaves. May go dormant after flowering. Do not try to grow in ordinary room without glass cover or a plastic bag. Small amount of plant food (such as Vigoro). Rain water preferred.

PROPAGATION. As in Dionaea muscipula.

SPECIAL USES. Terrariums.

=Dyckia= Bromeliaceae

Small, stiff fountains or sprays of spiny-edged leaves, spikes of orange or yellow flowers like a miniature version of the pineapple in various sizes and shapes. Some are not very dwarf. The dwarfs, to the best of my knowledge, are:

altissima--Light-green, tapering leaves armed with brown spines and yellow flowers.

fosteriana--Dense circle of sugary gray leaves with purplish sheen.

rariflora--Slim, sharp-pointed six-inch leaves with minute silver scales, spines soft and black.

CARE. Intermediate temperature, humusy soil, filtered sun, dry side.

PROPAGATION. Easiest from offshoots when suckers are large enough to handle. Root in sphagnum peat. Seeds, germinate on tissue napkins in a shallow tray covered with glass. Keep in light at 65 to 70 degrees.

SPECIAL USES. House plant.

=Episcia dianthiflora= Gesneriaceae

Although none of the episcias grow very high, they do spread out to make wide, handsome pot or hanging-basket plants. This is the only species that can reasonably be called dwarf. Its leaves are the size and shape of my little fingernail, olive green and softly velvet, reddish along the center vein, first forming a tidy rosette. Soon the branches start stretching, rather stiff and woody for an episcia, with new leaf rosettes forming as the branches grow. The silky tube-flowers are pure white and fringed on the edges.

CARE. Warm, humid, humusy soil, filtered sun, moist.

PROPAGATION. Seeds and cuttings.

=Exacum affine= Gentianaceae

This is a compact, free-flowering plant of the gentian family. The flowers are blue with golden stamens and very fragrant. A herbaceous biennial, it can be treated in a greenhouse as a perennial. It has bushy green leaves, ovate and tiny. A dark-lavender form is the variety atrocaeruleum.

CARE. Warm, humid, humusy soil, filtered sun, moist.

PROPAGATION. Seeds. Can be planted any month, but a February planting will produce flowering plants for autumn and winter.

SPECIAL USES. Window gardens and greenhouses.

=Ficus= Moraceae Creeping Fig

Here are two delightful foliage creepers that keep their miniature proportions, although the large-leaved form of the first often covers large walls in the South.

pumila minima--Tiny valentine leaves patterned and crinkled with a network of sunken veins, deep green and refreshing.

radicans variegata--Much larger, slim pointed leaves basically silvery green, but marked with creamy white, starting at the edge and blending off irregularly. Like many variegated plants, it’s not very vigorous and thus is suitable for terrariums, where it will get the humidity it needs.

CARE. Warm, needs fresh air, loamy soil, filtered sun, moist.

PROPAGATION. Division of the rooting stems.

SPECIAL USES. Terrariums, hanging baskets, outdoors in the South.

=Fittonia verschaffelti= Acanthaceae Nerve or Mosaic Plant

Flat-creeping tropical plants with jewel-like foliage netted with veins of contrasting color. The oval or rounded paper-thin leaves may be large--up to two inches long--but the plants grow slowly and seldom exceed dwarf proportions, particularly if there are any slugs within miles. Fittonias are one of the critters’ favorite foods.

You have a choice of three color schemes: The species is dark green with carmine veins; its variety argyroneura is emerald with silver; the variety pearcei, light green with pink.

CARE. Warm, humid, loamy soil, filtered sun, moist.

PROPAGATION. Stem cuttings.

SPECIAL USES. Foliage plants in greenhouses.

=Fortunella= Rutaceae Kumquat

Smallest, and hardiest, of the evergreen citrus trees or shrubs, with typical glassy, leathery leaves and flowers at intervals during the year, sometimes coincidental with the thin-skinned fruit. The species vary in size, habit, and fruit, some taking a lifetime to reach ten feet. But before they achieve that altitude, they can long pass as dwarfs or miniatures. Who wants to wait a lifetime to watch a kumquat outgrow a three-inch pot?

hindsi--Small spiny tree with small (less than one inch) pea-shaped fruit.

japonica--marumi kumquat--Small tree, well branched and shapely, with perfectly round, somewhat sweet fruit nearly one and a half inches in diameter.

margarita--nagami kumquat--Most frost-resistant and dwarf. Nearly thornless, with sour-sweet, egg-shaped fruit.

CARE. Intermediate temperature (any sudden changes in temperature may cause the leaves to drop), soil on the dry side (not too much fertilizer), bright sun, pollinate if you wish fruit, maintain humidity.

PROPAGATION. Seeds, grafting, cuttings.

SPECIAL USES. Potted plants, seedlings for miniature gardens.

=Fuchsia magellanica= Onagraceae

This “hardy” fuchsia, when given a chance to develop, can hardly be called a miniature. It can cover a wall twenty feet high, I have been told. However, in a climate like that near Philadelphia, it is only “root-hardy” and even then has to have a protective winter mulch. In the spring it has to start new growth all over again. Then it assumes miniature proportions. I’ve seen it in a small hanging basket, the leaves less than one-third the size of the typical hybrid fuchsias, the stems thin and wiry, the red-and-purple flowers quite small. Even more like a miniature is the slower-growing variety variegata, with creamy blotches and streaks on the leaf edges. Then there is the slender, more airy and lax variety, gracilis, also available in variegated form.

CARE. Cool, needs fresh air, loamy soil, shade, moist.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings of soft green wood.

SPECIAL USES. House plants, hanging baskets.

=Hebe buxifola variegata= Scrophulariaceae

This is a charming little plant I have grown in my greenhouse. Although it has some larger relatives, my specimens have been delightfully small. The leaves are about one-half inch long, waxy green with creamy white edges which overlap into a nice pattern. I love the small white flowers which appear frequently.

CARE. Little sun, humusy soil, moderate warmth, moist.

PROPAGATION. Stem cuttings.

SPECIAL USES. House plants.

=Hedera helix= Araliaceas English Ivy

As long as I’ve grown house plants I’ve always had ivies, sometimes only a few pots of my favorite varieties (when my growing space was limited) but more often a collection of a dozen or more. Once when preparing a magazine article, I had thirty-seven scrambling around the greenhouse! The foliage always is fresh green and glossy, delightful the year round; the climbing or trailing stems are graceful and willing to be trained in just about any pattern. In the tiny-leaved miniatures there is a particular fascination in the intricate formations of lobes and points, edges which are waved or crinkled, and the markings, which may be dainty, pert, or bold.

(MEAGHERI GREEN FEATHER)

Hedera helix meagheri--a fine small specimen]

These variations (actually mutations) of the ubiquitous evergreen ground or wall cover, are less hardy than the species from which they have sprung. Their outdoor use is best limited to moderate or mild climates--but never where it is hot and dry. Some slow creeping types like the variety conglomerata are delightful in not-too-hot rock gardens. Indoors, of course, you can have any or all of them, and you have many to choose from. Here is a representative selection to tempt you:

‘Goldheart’--Deepest green leaves centered with a heart of gold.

‘Itsy Bitsy’--Lacy leaves half the size of a fingernail.

‘Ivalace’--Fresh green with a crocheted edge.

‘Jubilee’--Gray-green spattered with white.

‘Needlepoint’--So sharply cut there’s nearly no leaf at all.

‘Shell’--Waved and crinkled on the veins.

‘Tear Drop’--A baby’s tear at that.

‘Telecurl’--Tight as a brand-new “permanent.”

CARE. Cool, needs fresh air, loamy soil, shade or semishade, moist.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings, layering, seed. (Seeds may take as long as two years to germinate.)

SPECIAL USES. House plants, ground cover, rock gardens, miniature gardens.

=Helxine soleiroli= Urticaceae Baby’s Tears

Millions of tiny, button-like leaves hug close to the thready stems of this wee creeper that covers soil, or a pot, in incredible haste. The growth twines and intertwines thickly as if it were weaving a fresh green carpet for a doll’s house.

CARE. Intermediate temperature, needs fresh air, humidity, humusy soil, filtered sun, moist.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings of rooting stems.

SPECIAL USES. Ground cover, rocks and walls. (Outdoors only in mild climates.)

=Hoya bella= Asclepiadaceae Wax Plant

Definitely a dwarf, as wax plants grow, and not climbing, as most others are, little H. bella has arching, rather than woody, stems with thick, heavy somber green leaves on either side and clusters of incredible flowers at the tips, porcelain-white, waxy, and fragrant, with a wheel-shaped purple “crown” in the center. Best in a basket because the flowers droop, and the view is prettiest from below.

CARE. Warm, needs fresh air, loamy soil, bright light, dry side.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings in spring.

SPECIAL USES. Good house plant.

=Impatiens repens= Balsaminaceae

This precious creeper bears so little superficial resemblance to the popular “patient Lucy” it’s hard to believe it’s a close kin. I loved it when I first saw it at the Montreal Botanical Gardens, and was delighted when it became available to us here. It is a creeper with red stems, plump button-shaped leaves, and yellow flowers.

CARE. Intermediate temperature, needs fresh air, humusy soil, bright light, moist.

PROPAGATION. Seeds, cuttings.

SPECIAL USES. Good house plant, miniature gardens.

=Koellikeria erinoides= Gesneriaceae

This one is a gem--clusters of pert green-velvet leaves with indented veins and sprinkled with silvery star dust; on short stems, tiny two-lipped bell flowers of creamy white and red, in summer.

CARE. Warm, humid, humusy soil, filtered sun, moist.

PROPAGATION. Seeds.

SPECIAL USES. House plant.

=Lantana camara= Verbenaceae

Here is a plant I have long enjoyed around the greenhouse. It is a small hairy shrub with angled branches and rough bristly leaves and is sometimes prickly.

Helxine soleiroli, baby’s tears--a delightful little crawler]

Its blooming habits have always delighted me, and it is a prolific bloomer come summer. The verbena-like flowers open pink or yellow and later darken to red or orange. Often several different shades will be found on the same plant at the same time.

CARE. Moderate greenhouse temperatures, or out of doors in the summer. Needs fresh air, loamy garden soil, bright light, and does best on the dry side.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings and seed.

SPECIAL USES. House plant, pots, and containers.

=Malpighia coccigera= Malpighiaceae Miniature Holly

Small glossy leaves sharply toothed like holly, and adorable as a foliage plant, but in addition provides the sweetest white-pink blooms which in its native West Indies produce red, edible fruit rich in vitamin C.

CARE. Partial sun, warmth, humusy soil, moist.

PROPAGATION. Stem cuttings.

SPECIAL USES. House plant, indoor bonsai.

=Manettia bicolor= Rubiaceae Firecracker Vine

Small, sharp-pointed leaves, tube-flowers only a half-inch long, fine thready twining stems--everything about this tropical vine is miniature except the height to which it will climb in the greenhouse, or outdoors in the South. Although its inclination is to climb, it is sold most often as a plant for hanging baskets. Perhaps the lack of a support helps keep it small. The leaves cluster thickly around the intertwining stems, making a massed background for the impertinent flowers, yellow at the tips, fire-engine red at the base.

CARE. Cool greenhouse, needs fresh air, humid, loamy soil, filtered sun, moist.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings over heat, of young growth. Seeds.

SPECIAL USES. Trellis and rafter vines for the greenhouse, hanging baskets.

=Maranta= Marantaceae

Exotic tropical foliage plants, laying their large oval leaves almost flat on the soil, only technically different from the calatheas, and sometimes offered under that name.

(Calathea) bicolor--Really should be “tricolor,” I think. The silky, six-inch leaves are silvery in the center, feathering out to points at intervals, and fading into a dark-green zone which gives way to the basic blue-gray or gray-green that extends to the edge.

leuconeura kerchoveana--rabbit tracks, prayer plant--There’s a similar grayish feather in the center of the leaf, a lighter silver green to the margin; but in between, mahogany blotches where a “hippity-hopper” might have planted his paws. The leaves fold up in prayer at night.

leuconeura massangeana--A picture is a more vivid description than any word I can call on. The center is silver, the thin curvy lines silvery pink. The basic color is mahogany near the middle, blending into blue-green. The leaves are tissue-thin with a silky sheen and lined with plum beneath.

Leuconeura massangeana--a most beautiful foliage plant with a silver center and basic mahogany blending into blue-green]

CARE. Warmth, minimum night temperature of 60 degrees; humid, and use mist spray; rich soil; use liquid manure (except in winter). Filtered sun (plant will scorch in too direct sunshine), moist. Partial rest in winter, dry out between waterings. Repot in spring, with the crown high in the center; use charcoal in pot.

PROPAGATION. Divide crown.

SPECIAL USES. Foliage plant, artificial light. This plant is prettiest when young. Markings may disappear in older plants.

=Myrsine africana= Myrsinaceae African Boxwood

This is a shrubby, dark-green-leaved plant of the boxwood sort. It is small, neat, and trim and may be shaped into many patterns to resemble the true boxwood.

CARE. Partial sun, moderate temperature, humusy soil, moist.

PROPAGATION. Stem cuttings.

SPECIAL USES. Formal miniature gardens, dish gardens, indoor bonsai.

=Myrtus communis= Myrtaceae Greek Myrtle

This is a fragrant close-leaved evergreen shrub native to the Mediterranean region but raised in most of Europe and this country as a potted plant. It grows out-of-doors in the South. Fragrant white flowers and purple-black berries. In size, Greek Myrtle ranges from dwarfs to ten and fifteen feet in height.

communis microphylla--dwarf myrtle--This compact form, with brown twigs and needle-like dark-green leaves, is a favorite for bridal bouquets, corsages, and decorations. It has a lovely white flower of pleasing fragrance. This sentimental association with the marriage ceremony makes it a favorite house plant.

CARE. Partial sun, cool to moderate temperatures, average soil, keep moist.

PROPAGATION. Stem cuttings.

SPECIAL USES. House plant, indoor bonsai.

=Oxalis= Oxalidaceae

Although most of the familiar varieties with clover-type leaves and fine-petaled buttercup-like flowers stay within our allotted limits for height, they are not miniatures as far as spreading width is concerned. But here are two small indispensables for terrariums and dish gardens.

hedysaroides rubra--firefern--Correctly, a tropical shrublet, but slow-growing and willing to be kept down by pinching. The silky thin leaves are deep wine colored and shrink from your touch. The little flowers, like golden twinkling stars, are frequent and fairly plentiful.

herrerae (henrei)--Curious, densely branching succulent for small hanging containers. The sturdy stems are gray-green and swollen, tipped with three thick leaflets. Small yellow flowers in clusters on long stems.

martiana aureo-reticulata--Shamrock leaves of emerald green thickly traced with interlacing veins of gold, easy flowers in loose clusters.

CARE. Cool, loamy garden soil, needs fresh air, bright light, dry side. (O. hedysariodes rubra requires more warmth and semishade.)

PROPAGATION. Bulbs, division of roots, seeds.

SPECIAL USES. House plants, hanging containers.

Oxalis hedysaroides rubra]

=Parochetus communis= Leguminosae Shamrock Pea, Blue Oxalis

It’s neither a shamrock nor an oxalis, although it has three-part leaves resembling both and is marked with a mahogany quarter-moon in the center. But, the blooms are pea-like, all right, with ocean blue blending into pink on the two side petals. It’s a tender tropical trailer never more than three inches tall with creeping stems rooting over the soil.

CARE. Sun, intermediate temperature, average soil.

PROPAGATION. Seeds in March and April. Division in March.

SPECIAL USES. Rock gardens in mild climate, baskets, miniature gardens, edging.

=Pelargonium hortorum= Geraniaceae Geranium

How minute is a miniature? How small is a dwarf? Here is one case where I really don’t care. However you classify them, these small-scale geraniums are bewitching. And actually, their stature depends largely on how you grow them.

Their leaves may be as small as your thumbnail, but they are shaped, edged, veined, zoned, and often variegated like their larger relatives. In most varieties the size of the flowers has been cut down proportionately, but sometimes a cluster is as large as the entire plant. With age the stems may become gnarled and twisted, almost bonsai-like.

As a sort of yardstick, if you are very much concerned about height, miniatures are from two to three inches. Anything above that is a semidwarf, usually up to six or seven inches. There are many varieties within these limits, and by the time you read this there will most likely be dozens more. For the moment, here are some varieties you can start on your window sill; they will stay small and meanwhile bloom their heads off.

‘Black Vesuvius’--Single, orange-scarlet.

‘Dopey’--Large rose-red with white center. Free-blooming. Semidwarf.

‘Elf’--Dark leaves, zoned red and black, yellow on edge, single.

‘Epsilon’--Large flowers light pink with dark-pink phlox eye, semidwarf.

‘Fairyland’--Dull-green leaves with cream on the edge, single, touched with rose-red.

‘Fairy Tales’--Flouncy white with lilac at the center.

‘Fleurette’--Strong robust free-blooming dark salmon. Semidwarf.

‘Goblin’--Outstanding blooms bright red. Free-blooming, dark zoned.

‘Imp’--Very miniature salmon-pink. Dark foliage.

‘Kleiner Liebling’ (‘Little Darling’)--Variegated, single, pink.

‘Minx’--Purple-crimson blend, pretty blackish ruffled leaves.

‘Mischief’--Orange-red curled and twisted poinsettia-type petals.

‘Perky’--Single, red with bright white center.

‘Polaris’--Free-blooming white with pink edge. Single.

‘Pride’--Very large full rounded salmon. Robust semidwarf.

‘Prince Valiant’--Purple-crimson with orange flush. Semidwarf.

‘Robin Hood’--Semidwarf, strong growing, dark red. Good for outdoor planting. Double.

‘Rosy Dawn’--A different shade of salmon-orange-red. Dark foliage.

‘Ruffles’--Semidouble, small, ruffled, light salmon. Very miniature.

‘Salmon Comet’--Somewhat shaggy, single, salmon.

‘Saturn’--Bright scarlet, good bloomer, dark foliage.

Three dwarf geraniums: ‘Salmon Comet,’ ‘Pride,’ and ‘Pygmy’]

Dwarf geranium, ‘Robin Hood’]

‘Small Fortune’--Double, pure white, blushing pink in center.

‘Sneezy’--Large bright scarlet with white center. Semidwarf.

‘Snow-White’--A pure-white single that blooms and blooms.

‘Sparkle’--Free-blooming bright rose-red. Semidwarf, dark foliage.

‘Sprite’--Small silvery-and-white leaves sometimes pink-tinged, single, salmon.

‘Tiny Tim’--Pink or red, tiny blooms. Miniature foliage.

‘Twinkle’--Bright rose-pink, double. Dark foliage, semidwarf.

‘Variegated Kleiner Liebling’--Small green-and-white leaves. Small single pink blooms.

CARE. Sun (in winter artificial light), fresh air (air-conditioning if possible), cool greenhouse or cool part of dwelling-house, garden soil (lime if soil is extra acid), on the dry side.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings, seeds.

SPECIAL USES. Excellent house plant, artificial-light gardens.

=Pellaea rotundifolia= Polypodiaceae Button Fern

Take a piece of wiry brown yarn and string it with shiny, dark-green, leathery polka dots on either side and you’ll have a model of a frond of this tropical fern. The fuzzy stems arch gently but stay close to the soil as the small rhizomes slowly creep around. It’s all very un-fernlike but exceedingly sweet.

CARE. Intermediate temperature, humid, loamy soil, shade, moist.

=Pellionia= Urticaceae

Two delicate tropical creepers with attractively colored and patterned leaves lined up and lying flat along the thickish stems. No one cares whether they produce their drab clusters of small greenish flowers or not.

pulchra--Precise oval leaves are dusty blue-gray, with broad lines of black over the network of nerves, violet underneath. Juicy stems look lavender-pink.

repens (daveauana)--Young leaves nearly egg-shaped, metallic copper-green, nearly chartreuse on both sides of the center nerve. Leaves of the mature plants become slimmer and pointed on the end, with more green in the center zone and less copper along the edge.

CARE. Filtered sun, warm and humid, loamy soil, moist.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings, division of rooted stems.

SPECIAL USES. Terrariums, artificial light, hanging baskets.

=Peperomia= Piperaceae

Since almost all of these succulents, with their “catkin-like” flower spikes, fit within our miniature measurements, I’ve enjoyed picking a few to serve as a sample of their modest but much varied appeal. I like them, and hope you will also.

Twenty-three varieties of Pelargonium hortorum, miniature and dwarf: 1. Fleurette 2. Snow White 3. Dopey 4. Mischief 5. Robin Hood 6. Minx 7. Epsilon 8. Prince Valiant 9. Polaris 10. Saturn 11. Sparkle 12. Kleiner Liebling 13. Small Fortune 14. Goblin 15. Variegated Kleiner Liebling 16. Fairy Tales 17. Rosy Dawn 18. Pride 19. Sneezy 20. Twinkle 21. Ruffled 22. Imp 23. Salmon Comet]

‘Astrid’--Layer upon layer of glossy green, pointed oval leaves creased down the center by the main vein, making a dense, symmetrical cone-shaped mound. In fact, there are so many tight branches that the leaves can’t always find room to fill out to full size. Then ‘Astrid’ turns into a version called ‘Pixie.’ To reverse the cycle, root a single stem of ‘Pixie’ and see how it returns to being ‘Astrid’ again.

‘Caperata’ (‘Little Fantasy’)--One perfect little heart leaf, its end pointing down, perched at the top of a sturdy stem. The entire leaf is so deeply wrinkled and crinkled that the basic Kelly-green looks almost black in the indentations, and silvery on the edges. Its big brother, ‘Emerald Ripple,’ is half again as large but otherwise identical.

‘Mamorata’ (‘Silver Heart’)--These heart-leaves taper to a sharper point and are rippled in a much more modest way. There is so much silver on the surface they look plated.

metallica--Upright and branching with slim-oval leaves pointed at both ends and colored chocolate with a coffee luster. There is a wide green stripe straight down the middle.

ornata--Handsome and stately despite its small stature. The cupped, pointed-oval leaves are somber green on top and enlivened with lines of light green along the curved veins. Underneath, the veins become raised ribs and are wine red.

prostrata--Personally, I have my suspicions about this sprightly creeper. When it is young, discontented, or ailing, its fat little button-leaves along the thready stems are a plain light green. It looks so much like the species rotundiflora (nummularifolia) that you can’t tell the two apart. But when prostrata is happy and romping around in its favorite environment, the leaves turn blue-green and wear an ornate embroidery of silver over the veins. Botanically, I’m probably wrong. See what happens when you grow it.

rubella--Rosettes of tiny oval moss-green leaves stand out at intervals up and down the straight stems and all the branches. The undersurface is gaudy red, and so are the stems. Pinch often to keep it bushy.

CARE. Warm, loamy garden soil, filtered sun, dry side. Water with care. Drainage to prevent rot.

PROPAGATION. Leaf cuttings, stem cuttings, division of the plant or rooting stem (roots at joints), seeds.

SPECIAL USES. Excellent house plant, dish gardens.

=Pilea= Urticaceae

With one exception, this is a genus of creepers, crisp, fleshy--spreaders, and bushlets for dozens of decorative uses indoors (and outdoors in tropical climates). Their common characteristics are much-branched stems bearing a full measure of variously colored, patterned, and shaped foliage, and very greenish flowers in flat clusters at the branch tips.

cadieri minima--Dwarf form of the popular aluminium plant, or watermelon pilea, eagerly branching into a plump bush. The quilted deep-green leaves are splotched with aluminium-silver. And the splotches are faintly reminiscent of watermelon markings.

depressa--Crowded stems spill over the pot, bearing round sea-green leaves neatly toothed on the edge. Stems root where they touch the soil.

Pilea depressa--a creeping, dish-garden favorite]

involucrata--panamiga--Fuzzy pointed oval leaves deeply quilted by a tight network of veins, piled pair on pair along branching stems. Foliage colors darkest green in shade, tinges of bronze in bright light. Flowers pinkish, nestled close to the last pair of leaves.

microphylla (serpyllifolia)--artillery plant--Tiny, pointed fresh-green leaves on spreading, somewhat upright branches. The male flowers explode their clouds of pollen when dry.

nummulariaefolia--creeping Charlie--Stem-rooting creeper with crinkled round, or broad heart-shaped, leaves, pale green and fuzzy.

pubescens (‘Silver Panamiga’)--Oval leaves overlaid with silvery blue, grayish beneath, the veins indented sharply.

repens--blackleaf panamiga--Prostrate and creeping, the branches spreading and bearing nearly round, thin, bronzy leaves lined with violet beneath. This one holds its beady flowers atop tall stems.

seripillacea--Habit like a perfectly proportioned shrub but in most miniature proportions. Small round leaves and plentiful branches, light green and succulent. Flower clusters held out from the foliage by stems.

‘Silver Tree’--Copyrighted name for a species with brown-green leaves marked with a broad silver zone on each side of the center vein, corrugated by indented veins.

CARE. Easy, warm, humid, loamy soil with humus, filtered sun, moist.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings, use sharp sand, 65 degrees.

SPECIAL USES. Dish gardens, terrariums.

=Polyscias (Aralia) fruticosa= Araliaceae

Tropical shrub or tree (eight feet or less) better known in Northern greenhouses for its intricately cut, lacy foliage, and growing so slowly it is nearly permanent (and unquestionably picturesque) in a planter or dish garden. The elegant horticultural variety ‘Elegans’ has leaves cut as fine as a feathery plume. I covet the newly named variety ‘Parsley’ because it is ruffled, to boot, and because its habit is so restrained, and its form so compact and plump.

CARE. Warm, needs fresh air, loamy soil, bright light, moist.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings of firm wood, eye-cuttings (over bottom heat).

SPECIAL USES. Dish gardens.

=Polystichum tsus-simense= Polypodiaceae

Definitely a dwarf fern, keeping its size moderate in a three-inch pot but not always a subject for terrariums unless they are a larger-than-usual size. It has a tidy habit, always looks clean and refreshing. The small fronds are substantial and taper to a needle-sharp point.

CARE. No sun, cool, humid, loamy soil, moist.

PROPAGATION. Divisions, buds, or offsets.

SPECIAL USES. Hanging baskets. Terrariums.

=Sansevieria= Liliaceae Snake Plant

Here we have some of the most fortuitous “sports” in the history of plants. The tall, stiff, ungainly but omnipresent snake plant has produced spontaneously mutant growth that turned into neat, low, bird’s-nest miniatures that are really most attractive. First came the variety named ‘Hahni,’ a flat spiral of broad leaves tapering to a sharp point, dull green marked crosswise with splashy bands of lighter green. Another sport, ‘Silver Hahni,’ abandoned most of the crossbands and plated its green with pewter. Even more striking is ‘Golden Hahni,’ with lavish bands of creamy yellow running lengthwise of the leaf on either side of a center stripe of mottled green. And to top it all, these picturesque plants are just as easy to grow as the rugged species from which they sprang. Flowers, whitish or yellowish. Slow-growing.

CARE. Filtered sun, warm, loamy soil, slightly moist.

PROPAGATION. Division of clumps. Leaf cuttings (three-inch piece in sand, shade, and 65-degree temperature). Makes stolon-like buds that form the new plants.

SPECIAL USES. Dish gardens. Good house plant.

=Sarcococca ruscifolia= Buxaceae Sweet Box

Sweet box is a small, free-branching evergreen with attractive leathery leaves, broad at the stem but coming to a point. Has tiny fragrant white flowers.

CARE. Intermediate temperature, fresh air, loamy soil, filtered sun, moist.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings.

SPECIAL USES. Dish gardens, indoor bonsai.

=Saxifraga sarmentosa= Saxifragaceae Strawberry Begonia or Geranium

One of the few hardy perennials that will thrive indoors the year round. Round, hairy silver-veined leaves grow in a rosette from the crown, which also sends out slender red stems, strawberry style, with new little plants that root and grow wherever they touch soil. In late spring the fall stems are topped by cloudlike soft clusters of small white flowers. ‘Maroon Beauty’ is slightly darker, and larger.

More miniature, and more tricky, is the variety tricolor, sometimes called ‘Magic Carpet,’ with smaller, basically gray-green leaves, red-rimmed and variegated with wide areas of creamy white, purple underneath. In cool air and sun, the cream is strongly tinted pink.

CARE. Humid, cool, poor soil, dry.

PROPAGATION. Runners.

SPECIAL USES. Dish and sink gardens.

=Schizocentron (Heeria, Heterocentron) elegans= Melastomaceae Spanish Shawl

Mexican creeping perennial with thickly branched stems rooting at the joints, making a plush carpet of tiny, teardrop leaves. In summer the one-inch open-faced, royal-purple flowers seem unbelievably large and rich. This one is very nice in a small hanging basket, but its natural inclination is to creep and it really goes to town when it can cover soil or some sort of porous support such as a moss totem pole. It should be spectacular covering a hanging ball filled with sphagnum moss.

CARE. Intermediate temperature, humid, loamy soil with humus, filtered sun, moist.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings, division of rooted stems.

SPECIAL USES. Small baskets, miniature gardens, ground cover.

=Selaginella= Selaginellaceae

Soft, fluffy foliage plants in all shades of green, including metallic, and with all kinds of growth, low and creepy, upright, even climbing. They bear more resemblance to each other than they do to their cousins the ferns.

emmeliana--sweat plant--As the nickname hints, this ferny plant languishes unless it is “perspiring” in high heat and humidity. In fact, once the fine-lace fronds turn dry and brown, they won’t be fresh and green again.

kraussiana browni--Scotch moss--Soft, symmetrical cushions of bright-green leaves, slowly spreading into larger mounds.

kraussiana (denticulata)--spreading club moss--Branching, rooting, creeping stems thickly set with needlepoint leaves.

lepidophylla--resurrection plant--Antithesis of the sweat plant. When the fan-shaped branches have dried out and curled into a ball, immerse them in water and they will come back fresh and green as ever.

martensi--Young branches stand upright, may drop or creep with age. The variety variegata has eye-catching white splashes, splotches, or tips and supports itself on stiff aerial roots from stems to soil.

plumosa--Foamy creeper with short, branching stems overlapped by foliage of fresh woodsy green.

uncinata--Foliage sparse but shimmering peacock-blue in shade. The running, branching stems have a ludicrous way of sending down stilt-like roots into the soil, so they seem to be running above the soil, not in it.

CARE. Fern culture; warm, humid, humus, shade, moist.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings in pots (several pieces per pot), in spring. Put on top of medium and cover with glass at 70 degrees until roots form at joints. Spores, division of rooted stems.

SPECIAL USES. Terrariums, greenhouses, ground cover.

=Serissa foetida (japonica)= Rubiaceae

A boxwood-like plant with tiny white-margined leaves clustered on branchlets. White funnelform flowers to one-half inch long.

CARE. Partial sun, average soil, moderately moist.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings.

SPECIAL USES. Artificial light, dish gardens, indoor bonsai.

=Sinningia pusilla= Gesneriaceae

If ever a plant was a miniature, this is it. The tuber is hardly as large as a grain of wheat. The soft round leaves, not even a quarter-inch across, make a flat rosette on the soil in a thimble, or any tiny pot. From the crown arise the thread-thin stems, to the great height of one inch. And from the tip of each stem stands a slim flaring, tube-like flower, pale orchid with violet veins and lemon in the throat. This plant is quite obviously close kin to the familiar gloxinia (G. speciosa hybrids), but you almost need a magnifying glass to compare the characteristics.

CARE. Warm, humid, humusy soil, filtered sun, slightly moist.

PROPAGATION. As for the gesneriads (Gesneriaceae).

SPECIAL USES. Terrariums, miniature gardens.

Miniature of miniatures, delightful Sinningia pusilla]

=Streptocarpus= Gesneriaceae

When limited growing space frustrates the hobbyist who admires the great, glorious gloxinias (sinningias), here’s a selection of pleasing and precious substitutes. In general these plants are distinguished by the fact that the flower stems grow out from the base of the leaf where it joins its own stem (axil). The flowers are typical gesneriad trumpets, usually nodding; the leaves are mostly rather round and velvety. The following are fibrous-rooted:

hybridus--Botanical name for groups of hybrids called “as complex as the garden geranium,” with quilted light-green leaves and a wide selection of flower colors. One strain of particularly attractive low plants, the German Weismoor hybrids, has fringed and crested flowers up to four inches across, often contrastingly veined or blotched.

rexi--Long-oval, velvety leaves lie very flat. Six-inch stems hold two-inch funnel-flowers, pale orchid with purple throat.

saxorum--Leafy-stemmed species, the stems branching continually, making dense mounds of plump, one-inch oval leaves curled under on the edge and covered with soft silk-velvet. The lavender-flushed white flowers stand out at the end of wiry three-inch stems.

CARE. Cool, humid, loamy soil with humus, filtered sun.

PROPAGATION. Seeds (plant in early spring for flowers fall and winter), leaf cuttings, some offsets.

SPECIAL USES. Artificial light.

=Tillandsia= Bromeliaceae

There are several entrancing dwarfs and miniatures among these tree-perching bromeliads with curved, leathery, often quill-tipped leaves. For two of the newly listed species (T. argentea and T. tricolepsis) I can simply say that the leaf rosettes resemble airy, long-bristled cones; they have not yet flowered for me.

circinnata--The silvery leaves, broader at the base, overlap and form an urn-shaped, tuber-like swelling. Tight, flat spikes of glowing-orchid flowers in late winter.

ionantha--Three-inch tuft of pewter-gray leaves turn fiery red at flowering time, January-February. The inflorescence is an incredible paddle-shaped composition of fat, flat, tightly overlapping bracts, and the plant sends out large violet flowers day after day.

stricta--Shaggy “head” of very narrow, every-which-way leaves silvered with finest gray fuzz; short-stemmed spikes with shocking-pink bracts and blue-violet flowers.

CARE. Warm, humid, orchid-growing medium, wire to board with orchid peat. Moist during spring and summer. Dry in dark winter months, when plant is semidormant.

PROPAGATION. Offshoots.

SPECIAL USES. “Log” gardens, tree slabs.

=Tradescantia= Commelinaceae Spiderwort, Inch Plant, Wandering Jew

Most varieties of the inch plants that cheerfully romp all over indoor gardens are, of course, too rambunctious to be called miniature. But there are two species of much more modest proportions and habit.

multiflora--Unmistakably an inch plant, but with stems more threadlike than succulent; small, slim (even quite thin) leaves plain dark green, tinted purple beneath; and clusters of tiny white winking flowers. The effect is, believe it or not, delicate and “ferny.”

navicularis--China plant--Curious succulent creeper with very thick stems threaded through widely spaced pairs of clasping leaves folded tightly down the center; rose-purple flowers.

CARE. Easy culture, intermediate temperature, needs fresh air, loamy soil, filtered sun, dry side.

PROPAGATION. Cuttings of growing shoots, seeds, division.

SPECIAL USES. Baskets.

CHAPTER 7

MINIATURE ROSES, INDOORS AND OUT

Men, women, and children; gardeners, nongardeners, and the family cat--everyone is captivated by a four-inch rosebush with precise little leaves and thorns, studded with button-size buds and flowers, twinkling in its pot on the window sill. On her weekly visit the cleaning woman checks on its health and welfare. The baby-sitter has her boy friend come in to see it. The milkman wants to know where he can get one like it for his green-thumbed wife.

But if I had a dime for every eager buyer who has found these midgets disappointingly difficult to grow indoors, I could start building my dream greenhouse tomorrow. There are simply too many floriferous pictures with thimbles to show how cute the flowers are, and too few responsible growers who give specific cultural directions with every sale.

In the garden there’s no problem. These are by nature outdoor plants, mostly sturdier and more winter-hardy than the full-sized hybrid teas and floribundas. For some reason, they even seem to be less subject to the depredations of insects and disease. I can pick handfuls of Japanese beetles from the regulars in the rose garden, but few from the miniatures little more than a hundred feet away.

I’m not implying that miniature roses are impossible indoors. One of the most perfect blooming bushlets I’ve ever seen came to our flower show from a sparsely windowed, steam-heated Brooklyn apartment. I simply want to spread the gospel that, to avoid risking disappointment, everybody should know what kind of cultural conditions they need.

Potted miniature roses are positively precious in cool, sunny window gardens, with rows of matching pots on glass shelves up and down the window, or singles or small groups in mixed arrangements on the sill or in a window greenhouse. Although they are not the most adaptable subjects for growing under artificial light, I’ve known several people who have been successful, particularly when the plants were started under lights from seed.

In a harmonious decorative container, a flowering miniature rose makes a small plant-and-container decoration to inspire the prettiest compliments. With suitable environment a tiny bush can be used as a center of interest in an indoor model landscape. A small greenhouse should hardly be without one of these brightly blooming babies.

Miniature roses have many uses in sink or trough gardens, as single specimens, pairs or quadruplets in formal plantings, even hedgerows kept carefully trimmed. I don’t know whether anyone has ever tried them for miniature bonsai. This would be a process of dwarfing a dwarf; and my mental picture of the proper plant, artistically trained, is enchanting. I must try this, before long.

Outdoors, miniature roses are delightful in all kinds of containers--tubs, strawberry jars, window boxes, and other planters. They’re often used as a low hedge to edge a path, driveway, or the beds of a formal rose garden, or around the base of a birdbath or sundial. In mixed flower borders they’re planted singly or in small groups toward the front. In rock gardens they keep most safely cool and moist when planted low, near the base of the garden; and they show off most effectively with something like a dwarf evergreen as background.

Gardens featuring miniature roses are most often formal in design--round, square, rectangular, the beds divided with geometric precision by narrow strips of grass or gravel paths. A small, formal pool or piece of statuary may be the center of interest. In a sunken garden outlined with an eight-inch brick or stone wall, the planting pattern is particularly pleasing. In raised beds each individual shrublet can be enjoyed at eye level. In a single or double row at the base of a low retaining wall, the plants show off to advantage.

Beds of miniature roses can be carefully arranged strips, or groups of separate colors, or mixtures. They can be edged with shrubs such as dwarf box, perennials such as dwarf lavender, dainty annuals such as lobelia or alyssum. In the center a tree or standard is often used as accent. Or a bed may be backed by a wall, fence, trellis, or arch on which miniature climbers are trained. If the soil is slanted slightly up, toward the center, it is easier to see the plump perfection of each little bush.

Dwarf evergreens, particularly junipers, are popular backgrounds for miniature rose gardens. Upright types with symmetrical pyramid, column, or cone shapes are often used as accent--for example, a matching specimen of one of the dwarf varieties of Juniperus communis in the exact center of each formal bed.

Miniature or not, rose gardens are most often conceived in formal design. But to me, the cheerful dwarfs are more friendly when planted informally--popping up at the base of a tree stump or boulder, spotted here and there in the rock garden, a few at the top of a flight of small steps.

TYPES OF MINIATURE ROSES

The tight buds may be as big as the eraser on a pencil, or as tiny as a grain of unpolished rice, and the flowers may be single, semidouble, or double. The doubles may be formed like a hybrid tea or be full-petaled and fluffy, in clusters like a rambler rose. Some varieties stay very dwarf and bushy, from four to six inches tall; others are more robust, with larger flowers, and may grow to ten inches.

Climbing miniature roses are usually sports of bush varieties, with supple canes four or five feet long that can be trained on low fences, walls, trellises, or arches. Otherwise, every part is in perfect miniature scale.

All of these types are recognized by fanciers as authentic miniature roses because they grow on their own roots. And so is the rare tree or standard grown with a single trunk-like stem that is kept free of side growth, then pinched at the top to form a crown and symmetrical head. But standards that are budded or grafted onto the stems of other root stocks (which most of our American miniature tree roses are) are excluded by the experts, which is a matter of concern only to the serious collector.

INDOOR PLANTING AND CARE

Since miniature roses seldom spend the summer indoors, they are usually purchased in fall or winter from the local florist or greenhouse, or by mail from house-plant or miniature-rose specialists. Pot-grown plants are most likely to succeed indoors because their roots are not disturbed unduly. Except in Hawaii and Arizona, mail-order plants arrive with the soil ball complete about the roots, the stems cut back to about two inches. They start growth almost immediately, and flower within six to eight weeks.

If you have miniature roses in the garden, you can root cuttings in early fall and force them into winter bloom indoors. Or you can dig the plants, pot them, and give them their necessary dormant rest before you bring them indoors for forcing. Sink the pots to the rim in soil, in the cold frame or in some spot protected from severe winter weather. When the temperature dips low, mulch with salt hay, straw, evergreen branches, or the like. In late December or January, after six weeks or more of dormancy, lift the pots and bring the plants indoors. Prune back the leafless stems and water sparingly until new leaf buds appear.

After they have flowered indoors all winter and spring, I always plant my miniature roses out in the garden and let them resume their natural outdoor growth cycle. I may root cuttings, or I may bring others indoors the following fall; but I have never tried to force a plant a second time without letting it live at least one year in the garden first. I have heard that some growers (probably city dwellers or others who have no outdoor garden facilities) simply let the plants rest outside in summer--on a shaded ledge or in a window box with moist peat--prune them severely in fall, and grow them again. I haven’t heard how many years a plant will take this unnatural treatment or how much it suffers from missing its cool fall nap.

Soil

A fairly heavy potting soil packed quite firmly in the pot seems to help keep the plants small without sacrificing foliage or flower. One expert recommends a mixture of two parts garden soil, two parts humus, one part moderately coarse sand, with a light sprinkling of superphosphate or bone meal. When I use my ready-prepared potting soil, I always add sand, and sometimes some humusy soil dug from immediately under the leaf mold in the woods.

Potting

I’ve used both clay and plastic pots with equal success, always of the shape with the greatest depth, as miniature roses are naturally deep-rooted. Each pot has the usual layer of rocks or pebbles in the bottom for drainage. Small, newly purchased plants usually start off in three-inch pots, are shifted to four-inch pots before they become severely root-bound. Some larger varieties may take larger sizes.

Sun

This is one of the three important cultural requirements. Miniature roses must have sun if they are to bloom. A minimum of three hours is sometimes set, but I should think this amount would be applicable only to midsummer or to mild climates. In winter the plants need all the sunshine they can possibly get.

Temperature and Humidity

Second in importance is a cool 65 degrees or even much lower (maximum, 70 degrees), and third is the humidity which keeps the plants at their best. Leaves curl and dry, buds and flowers drop when the air is hot and dry. Miniature roses should not be set anywhere near a heater or radiator of any kind. Unless the air in the growing area is really cool and moist, set the pots on moist gravel or make some other provision for increasing humidity, as outlined on pages 76–77. It even helps to cover the plants with a tent of plastic every night, and let them emerge only for the day.

Watering

Keep the soil always moist, never soggy and muddy, never dry and caked. As a humidifier and refresher, mist the foliage as often as you can.

Fertilizing

A balanced soluble house-plant fertilizer (never one with high nitrogen content) can be fed in half-strength solution every three weeks beginning about three weeks after a freshly potted plant begins active growth. Or you can use any special rose food according to directions and at half the strength recommended on the package. The idea is to encourage the plant to grow and flower, but not stuff it with so much nutrition that it gallops gaily up to nondwarf size with leaves only.

Pruning and Grooming

I seldom prune miniature roses indoors except to cut off cleanly any stems that may have been accidentally broken or that may grow unattractively long or misshapen. I do try to douse the plants in slightly sudsy water, to clean the foliage, every few weeks; and I pick off faded flowers promptly. Actually, instead of being in continual bloom, these plants usually flower for a few weeks and then take a short rest before they send up buds again.

Insects and Disease

Again, preventive spraying is all I’ve ever done. I use my handy house-plant aerosol bomb almost every week. If disaster should strike, I’d probably use the special rose spray or dust I use on the regular garden roses.

OUTDOOR PLANTING AND CARE

In all except mild or warmer climates, bare-root plants bought by mail from nurseries or garden-rose specialists should be planted in early spring, when vigorous root action and growth are beginning. Potted plants or any that come complete with a soil ball around the roots can be planted almost any time the garden soil is not frozen. But in sections where winters are severe, I think spring planting is always safest. In fact, in Connecticut I like to give new plants a longer growing season their first year by starting them a few weeks early, in pots, indoors or in the greenhouse.

Location

Plant miniature roses where they will get at least half a day of summer sun (a full day is best) but where it is possible to keep the soil suitably moist. Avoid low, muggy pockets where air does not circulate freely or where water can collect and make the soil muddy. Good drainage is vital. In cold areas, select a spot sheltered from icy winds by a wall or low shrubs.

Soil

To help keep them dwarf, miniature roses need a fairly heavy soil, but not, of course, too clay-like. Dig down at least ten inches, to prepare for the deep-growing roots, and improve the soil you remove with whatever is needed before you replace it around the plant. Clay-type soils will need the addition of sand, for drainage, and leaf mold needs rotted or dry cow manure or other humus to lighten the texture. Sandy soils need humus to help hold moisture. In even average fertile soil, miniatures appreciate an extra ration of humus at planting time.

The ideal soil for miniature roses will pack firmly around the roots, yet won’t cake and crack in the sun. It drains perfectly, so excess water does not stand around the roots, particularly in winter. Yet it holds enough moisture so that the roots don’t dry out so fast you can’t keep up with the watering job. Soil should also test neutral or slightly acid (pH 6.0), never extremely acid. In acid-soil areas, apply a light sprinkling of horticultural lime each winter.

Planting

Plant miniature roses about a half-inch deeper than they were before, and far enough apart so that they will have room to spread as wide as they will be tall. Crowded plants have no individual beauty, but they are prime targets for mildew. If the weather turns sharply cold or dry and windy after planting, protect the plants by mounding up soil around the stems. Remove it gradually as spring days grow balmier.

Watering

Miniature roses suffer seriously from drought, and will drop their buds and flowers after only a few days of hot, dry weather. Keep the soil constantly moist, and spray or mist the foliage once or twice a day. A mulch of pebbles, a mixture of half soil and half peat (peat alone packs down too heavily), or something similarly porous, will help keep the soil cool and moist.

Fertilizing

Light feedings of organic fertilizers such as bone meal or cow manure once a year, in early summer, are usually recommended. Or supply small amounts of a balanced garden fertilizer, or special rose food, in late spring and again in early July. A weak solution of liquid manure is also good and can be fed about twice as often.

Pruning and Training

In early spring, when new growth is first beginning to show on bush types, shorten all stems severely. I usually cut mine back to a uniform four inches. And of course, cut out cleanly any dead or mutilated branches. Make every cut just above a new shoot or leaf bud. Otherwise, pruning is limited to keeping the bushes shapely, removing faded flowers, and occasionally thinning the growth of old plants to admit air to the center.

Miniature climbers bloom on last year’s wood. They can be cut back to six inches when first planted, but are otherwise not pruned except to control ungainly canes or remove dead ones. Train the climbing canes into an attractive, open pattern as they grow, by tying them to the arch, fence, or other support they are to climb on.

Miniature tree roses can be cut back to a small but symmetrical head in spring and all dead wood should be removed. To keep them shapely, prune as needed during the growing season.

Insects and Disease

I protect my miniature roses, as I do the others, with an all-purpose rose spray or dust applied first when leaves begin to unfold, and repeated every week or ten days until the plants go dormant. Occasionally, during a long spell of hot, humid weather, I see signs that mildew threatens. If the all-purpose spray contains a fungicide (which most of them do), I use it immediately. If not, I may resort to dusting sulfur (which does mar the beauty of the flowers) or whatever sterilant is on hand.

Winter Protection

What you do to protect miniature roses in winter, or whether you do anything at all, depends not only on your climate but also on the health of the plants. If they’ve been growing well, they’ll take lots of abuse; if they’re weak and ailing, their chances of survival are reduced.

Sometimes, a flower pot inverted over the leafless stems is all that’s needed. Or you may mulch with salt hay or evergreen boughs. In Connecticut we mound up soil so it covers the first three or four inches of the stems, and remove it gradually in spring. It is most important to make sure that water does not stand around the roots in winter, next most important that alternate freezing and thawing don’t heave the roots out of the ground and break them.

If they are likely to be whipped by wind or covered with ice, the canes of climbing varieties are removed from their support and laid flat on the ground, where they can be covered with either soil or mulch. Since tree roses are inclined to be touchy, we wrap ours in burlap, with an extra layer or two around the graft and crown.

PROPAGATING MINIATURE ROSES

I’ve grown many miniature roses from seed, and had a lot of fun doing it. They usually germinate in about three weeks (best temperature about 60 degrees), quickly send out tiniest true rose leaves, and are ready for transplanting into small pots in another two or three weeks. I usually pinch the tip growth at least once, when the plant is about five inches tall. The flowers can appear within three months after sowing.

Of course, seedling plants are not named varieties. Most of them, in fact, have small single flowers in pale shades of pink or white. Your chances of double, more brightly colored flowers increase if you can get seeds of a good strain.

For new plants of named varieties, take cuttings in August or September--three-or four-inch pieces of healthy wood produced in the current season. If the stem can be pulled off gently with a sliver of the main stem still attached (a heel), rooting may be faster and is surer. Dipping the cut ends in hormone rooting powder is also helpful.

Make the moist propagating material firm around the base of the cutting, and make sure the air is kept humid in the propagating box or plastic tent, or invert a glass jar over the cutting. New growth is the signal that roots have formed and the cutting is ready for potting. These plants, too, will grow more compact and bushy if the tips are pinched out when the stems are about five inches tall.

NAMED VARIETIES OF MINIATURE ROSES

Although new varieties of this popular plant are constantly being introduced, and most likely will have a wide appeal eventually, it may be some time before they appear in plant and seed catalogues. In compiling this modest list I have thought chiefly of what is available at the moment, miniature roses I have either grown, seen in friends’ gardens, or admired vicariously on the printed pages of magazines, books, and booklets. If you are interested, I am sure these bushes are readily available. If I am old-hat and you feel avant-garde, there are many persons propagating new varieties. Talk to some of them, or try it yourself, a most gratifying hobby:

‘Baby Bunting’--A delightful, small rose with red flowers of a deep, startling shade. This variety is an inch or so taller than some, but many of my friends think it ideal in that they like to make miniature flower arrangements and appreciate slightly longer stems. Among its other charms, the rose is most delightfully fragrant.

‘Baby Crimson’--I’ve never had this one grow taller than six inches. Since I have maternal instinct for the wee ones, I love it. Under the right conditions it will bear tiny crimson flowers and exquisite buds up until frost time.

‘Bo-Peep’--This one has a charm in its name, and is one of the more popular miniature roses. It has double pink blooms, forms a bush with a neat conformation, and is another favorite with those who make miniature arrangements. You needn’t worry about cutting its blooms. It is always growing more.

‘Cinderella’--This one fits beautifully into the legend about the girl with the glass slipper. It has dainty white blooms touched with pink and is in the true tradition of rose shapeliness. Seemingly, it loves to bloom.

‘Granada’--In some listings I find the name spelled ‘Granata.’ Regardless of the spelling, I love the bushes I have grown, for the lovely, semidouble, red flowers which the bush bears so profusely. A tiny vase filled with them makes one wish to build a doll house in which to display it.

Days in the life of a miniature rose:

a. Leafed out]

b. A growing bush]

c. First bud]

d. Full bloom]

‘Little Princess’--So many of my small roses are either pink or red, I always try to find white ones for contrast. This is a variety I have often depended on. Sometimes the blooms are alone, but then again they may be in clusters. A cluster, snipped from the bush and wrapped in foil, looks very lovely when pinned on a little girl’s pink dress as she leaves for a party.

‘Mon Petite’ (sometimes spelled ‘Mon Petit’)--This one is truly petite, not once in a dozen times over five inches tall. But those five inches never seem to stop flowering with cherry-red blooms. And then, to make themselves even more fascinating, they often have a delicate haze of purple.

‘Patty Lou’ (patented)--This one is so delicate I imagine its creator must have had some particularly sweet little girl in mind when he named it. In bloom it is a pink bicolor, and it always seems to be blooming. A truly lovely little rose.

‘Perle d’Alcanada’ (sometimes spelled ‘Perle d’Alconada’)--May I warn you, this is a real charmer. Being somewhat on the stately side, it may grow to nine inches. It makes a neat and most attractive bush and then comes forth with pink blooms that slowly change to a white pearl-like effect.

‘Pixie Gold’--This is another dainty one, a yellow miniature with a lovely soft color to add to its beauty. It is really a miniature, and would consider itself a giant if it topped five inches. It has an attractive bush, but that is only part of it, the blooms follow a perfect pattern from the time they are buds until they are full-blown. It follows all rose traditions.

‘Red Imp’--Many persons consider this beauty the most perfect of all miniature roses. Certainly, with its deep-red blooms, it is one of the best known. Such a feeling of affection must be deserved. I think the first miniature I ever owned was a ‘Red Imp.’ If for no other reason, that would make me love it.

‘Rosa Oakington Ruby’--Some years back the English Royal Horticultural Society thought so much of this rose they gave it the Award of Merit, and well they might. The blooms are a rich ruby-carmine, are double, and are around all summer. In planting this variety, remember it tends to be an inch or so taller than the wee ones.

‘Rosata’--I love this one for its fragrant, pinkish flowers, which also have a touch of salmon. The blooms are delightful when made into corsages or miniature bouquets.

‘Rouletti’--This is a great favorite in rock gardens, and in edgings around beds of big roses. It is a true “shorty” and seldom exceeds five inches in height. But the buds, rose-pink, are so exquisite one wishes to put them into a setting for a ring to be worn on the finger.

‘Scarlet Gem’--This is what is known as a newcomer among miniature roses. But it has so much charm, I know it will be called an old favorite in the years to come. The flowers are an orange-scarlet, and fairly cover a handsome bush of nice conformation. Remember when setting it out in your garden, it may grow an inch or so taller than some of the others.

‘Sunbeam’--From the very name you may guess that this is a yellow rose, literally, a beam from the sun. It is a cheerful little dwarf, and has a tea-rose type of bloom. You’ll love it.

‘Sweet Fairy’--This is something out of a book of fairy tales, delicate and fanciful. It has pinkish blooms and a fragrance that will charm you.

‘Thumbelina’--Looking at this rose will bring back the memories of that delightful story “Thumbelina” which we all loved as children. As a rose, and not a story, it is semidouble and has lovely red flowers that open from delicately pointed buds. It flowers freely, and the blooms are most enchanting in small vases.

‘Wayside’s Garnet’--As I first bought this rose from the catalogue of Wayside Gardens, I’ll let them describe it for you: “... a neat, compact small plant with many perfect, fully-double, garnet-red little flowers. It is a prolific bloomer and a good grower ... much like Oakington Ruby, which is one of its parents. It probably has the brightest, darkest and deepest red to be found among miniature roses.”

‘Yellow Miniature’--This is a charming little rose, yellow, with a cheering tint. Many consider it to be the most attractive of all yellow miniatures. I will not argue with them. I’ve always been enchanted with it.

CHAPTER 8

MINIATURE SINK GARDENS

Take the concept of dish gardens and model landscapes, but execute it with miniature garden plants. Take the outdoor plants of bonsai, but don’t dwarf them unduly or train them into unusual shapes. There you have the mixture that makes up these specialized miniature gardens, called “sink” or “trough” gardens for the old-fashioned stone sinks and horse troughs they were planted in when the fad first swept England, some thirty years ago.

Now, the old sinks and troughs are practically nonexistent, and the name is anachronistic. But I have been totally unable to dream up anything better. “Sink garden” is a specific title for a composition of plants or a landscape scene in small scale, planted in a sturdy, sink-like container, grown outdoors and used in limited ways to decorate the garden and grounds. No other phrase seems to define it.

My interest was originally aroused by the books of Anne Ashberry, England’s sink-garden specialist, and by the warm affection she has for her specialty. But it was not until I began to work with miniature plants in our Connecticut gardens--and to find out what a great variety is available--that I was inspired to plant a sink garden of my own. Originally, I was intrigued; soon, I was fascinated; now, I’m an addict. With the flimsiest excuse I’d have so many of them it would look as if our grounds had broken out with measles.

These sink gardens are not for big, burly gardeners who like cabbage roses and gaudy shrubs. They’re for connoisseurs who appreciate the minuscule perfection of a tiny plant, more effectively displayed at eye level. They’re for those who grow alpines and other difficult plants and find them less finicky under these controlled conditions. They’re for gardeners who can’t, or don’t want to, squat in the hot sun for hours, weeding or transplanting; who want the pleasure of creating gardens, but take the accompanying chores in small doses. And sink gardens are for people, like me, who simply find irresistible charm in the miniature.

If our grounds were spacious, I’d find a place where I could have a collection of sink gardens, set up on pedestals and arranged in neat rows, so I could move easily from one to the next with the watering can. But they’re probably much more ornamental and distinctive if used the way the few we have now are.

Instead of a sundial at a break in the shrubbery border, we have a sink garden set on a two-foot column of mellowed brick. Two narrow gardens outline the corner of the small patio by the front entrance. A small sink garden enlivens a shelf beside the door to the lath house. There’s one at the end of an old stone bench.

Or you can display one of these gardens against the wall at the end of a garden walk; as a centerpiece on the lawn or terrace; on top of a low wall or at the edge of a balcony; in place of an inanimate statue or urn. If possible, let the background be light and not bright-colored; neutral shades show off the plantings to best advantage.

CONTAINERS

Picturesque old sinks are obviously not available to us, and any horse troughs I’ve seen have been much too monstrous. Miss Ashberry casts her own containers of concrete (its porosity is excellent for plants), and we can do the same.

Sometimes I think the sinks and troughs look a little heavy in relation to the plantings. Certainly they are heavy, and almost impossible to move, when filled with soil. But I’ve found a goodly number of acceptable substitutes. First, of course, I shopped my favorite junk yard and found the round concrete planter and the wash-tub lid that served as containers for my first sink gardens. I also saw possibilities in a big old butter tub that could be cut down, and in a leaky birdbath.

Some of today’s building tiles are perfectly beautiful and, if shallow enough, could be fitted with a metal or wooden bottom. They come in all sizes, shapes, and colors. Thick, old wood is another possibility. I’m thinking of some weathered planks we found at the seashore last summer; they’d make a handsome and sturdy container for a wind-blown, woodsy garden.

Miniature garden of dwarf evergreens, Cyclamen neapolitanum, and tiny trumpet narcissi not yet blooming]

In designing or selecting a container, you have few rules to go by. It should be strong and weather-resistant, of course, because it is to be placed outdoors. It must have drainage holes in the bottom, so fallen rain won’t stand in it. It should be deep enough (six to eight inches) to give small trees and plants root-room. And artistically, it should be in harmony and proportion with the garden to be planted in it, not as a feature in itself, but as a subordinate element in the picture.

Unless a sink garden is to be placed on top of a wall or some other existing support, it will probably need a base to hold it two or three feet off the ground. This can be made of cement blocks, rustic brick, tile, or concrete, according to the design of the container itself.

PLANTS FOR SINK GARDENS

Unlike bonsai, these plants are not to be dwarfed, they are dwarf by nature. Miniature perennials, such as Calceolaria biflora, never top two inches, nor do some of the tiny narcissus species. Some trees have never been known to grow taller than six inches. And if you can’t find trees that are small at maturity, you can find many that grow so slowly they’ll stay in proper scale (even without pruning) for five years or more. There are miniature garden plants of all habits and shapes--stiffly erect, tufted, bush-like, sprawling, creeping, hanging, climbing--and even pinhead-size water plants for tiny pools.

Actually, there are miniature plants in every horticultural category--annuals, biennials, perennials, bulbs, shrubs, trees, aquatic plants, and wildlings--and most of them are suitable for sink gardens. You have only to select those that are in scale and sympathy with your design, and that are culturally compatible, one with the other. You can grow many of them from seeds or cuttings. Miniature perennials are available in widest variety from growers of alpine and rockery plants. Trees and shrubs can be bought by mail from suppliers of small plants for bonsai work. Native and aquatic plants are plentiful from mail-order wild-flower houses.

ACCESSORIES

The worst thing you can do with one of these little outdoor gardens is to clutter it up with little artificial props such as benches, bridges, and old oaken buckets. At all costs, avoid the cute and the trite. Practice moderation and the utmost restraint.

One prop--a hand-carved well-head, an alabaster birdbath, a lichen-covered rock--is usually plenty for any one garden. If it is handsome in its own right, the whole garden may be designed to set it off. If it’s a supporting element, play it down and let the plants stand out in the picture.

The same is true of streams, pools, walks, walls, and other miniature landscape constructions. They’re pretty and they’re fun to make; but just one too many can spoil a garden.

Naturally, any accessories and props to be used in a sink garden should be sturdy and weather-resistant. And as in any other miniature composition, proportion and scale are terribly important.

THEMES AND DESIGNS

Many of the principles and suggestions for dish gardens and model landscapes in Chapter 3 are equally applicable to sink gardens. The design needs, first, a basic idea or theme. Will the garden be formal, or informal and woodsy, or simply an artistic arrangement of living plants with or without a piece of tree stump or rock? Should it be built around an important accessory, or will one plant or a group of plants be the center of interest? Does the style of the container suggest the style of the garden to go in it?

Since a sink garden is usually planned to have some permanency, it is particularly important to plan the design in every possible detail and, if at all possible, to put the plan on paper--and in proper scale. You can tell, before it’s too late, whether a tree will be too large, a fence too high or prominent, a grouping of plants too far off balance.

When you plan the planting, keep proportion and perspective clearly in mind. If the design is to have formal balance, arrange pairs of trees, clipped hedges, straight walks, and other elements with geometric precision. If the effect is to be informal, make sure the center of interest is off-center, with a large airy area or low planting to balance it at the other side.

In crowded plantings the beauty of the form of individual plants is lost. Be sure to space them so that they have room to grow without becoming entangled with their neighbors. To blend the garden with its container, plan to have a creeper or trailer dangling over the edge.

Artistic plant compositions are arranged, like dish gardens, with outstanding accent plants, low growers often around the base, usually arranged naturally at the base of a rock or around a piece of log or stump. Colors and textures of flowers and foliage are contrasted and blended as they are in arrangements of cut flowers. Setting the plants in the empty container and rearranging them until the best effect is achieved may save shifting them about during planting.

All kinds of landscape designs can be re-created, in miniature, in sink gardens. And the scenes can change naturally with the seasons of the year. One of my informal gardens has a basic arrangement of rocks, small evergreens, and ground cover. In spring, miniature narcissus species bloom; in summer, tiny annuals such as Ionopsidium acaule and perennials such as Erodium chamaedryoides roseum; in fall, small cyclamen species.

Woodsy wild gardens can also have basic, permanent plantings--seedling evergreens, moss, foliage plants such as small ferns, rattlesnake plantain, and pipsissewa--through which spring-blooming squirrel corn, hepatica, and spring beauty can push up their flowers.

One of the most effective formal-garden designs makes good use of miniature roses as a flowering hedge in front of a high wall at the back, or as twin specimens on each side of an arch. Other formal gardens adapt the designs of the Victorian age, or the Colonial gardens of Williamsburg.

Someday I want to try an Oriental garden featuring a bonsai-style dwarf tree and planted sparsely, in the Japanese manner, with tiniest shrubs and perennials and a ground cover of fine moss or sand, and perhaps a curved bridge over a still stream.

With a suitable container you could do an outdoor desert garden. Many miniature desert plants are hardy or semihardy and would live through the winter with some protection. There are many other possible themes, and many types of plants and containers with which to carry them out.

PLANTING AND CARE

Unless you can control watering (which means keeping the garden out of the rain), make sure that the container has plenty of small holes in the bottom for drainage. And for extra insurance that drainage will be perfect, start out with a layer of pebbles or sand. A covering of burlap or sheet moss will keep soil from sifting down into it.

Soil should be light and porous, capable of holding some moisture but not too much. The standard recipe of one-third garden loam, one-third humus, and one-third sharp sand is a good basic mixture to start with. Add extra sand if the plants are succulent-like, extra humus for woodsy plants, a sprinkling of lime for plants that dislike acid soil. A slow-acting organic fertilizer such as bone meal can be mixed in, but in very small amounts. Run the mixture through a coarse sieve, to remove stones and debris.

As you place the plants, firm the soil gently around the roots. Don’t fill the container so full that the soil is level with the rim; leave an inch or so to hold water while it seeps down to the roots below. Place the ground-cover plants, and those to dangle over the edge, last. Some gardens are finished with a thin mulch of stone chips or sand, some with a carpet of moss.

Location

A sink garden planted in a real trough or sink is a mighty heavy thing, once it’s filled with soil and planted; and so may be many others. If you can place the empty container in its permanent spot and plant it there, you may save someone an aching back.

These gardens are meant to grow out in the open air, but not where searing sun and hot dry winds can dry the soil too fast and burn the plants. If the plants are all of the type that need sunlight, give them only the dappled shade of a high-branched tree or the windbreak and slight noonday shade of a low wall. Woodland plants and others that like shade can be grown in more protected spots. Naturally, the two types are not combined successfully in the same garden.

Don’t place sink gardens where they will receive the drip from eaves or an overhanging tree. Don’t set them tight up against a wall. Newly planted gardens need some special protection--a cheesecloth tent or newspaper on a temporary frame overhead--until plants are well settled in their new home.

Watering

A safe general rule is never to let the soil dry out all the way through, never to water so much that it is soggy and sour. For most plants, you can scratch into the soil surface with your fingers. If it feels moist, don’t water; if it feels dry, do. However, succulent plants should be grown drier, boggy plants more constantly moist. Frequency of watering depends upon type of plant, size and type of container, the soil, the weather--depends, in fact, upon how often each individual sink garden needs water.

Fertilizing

If a fertile soil mixture is used in the first place, and particularly if it is enriched with a slow-acting fertilizer such as bone meal, most gardens will not need extra feeding for many months after planting, often not for the first year. The point is to give the plants just enough food to keep them healthy, not enough to make them grow out of proportion to the garden.

If you see signs of malnutrition--few, small leaves with poor color; failure to bud and flower; sickly, stunted growth--feed quickly but lightly. A weak solution of organic food such as fish emulsion or liquid manure is usually recommended. Established gardens can take this light feeding once in spring when active growth begins, and once or twice during the early summer, without outgrowing their bounds.

Rock garden set in an old wash-boiler lid]

Pruning and Grooming

Pick off all faded flowers promptly, so the plants will not exhaust themselves by setting seed. Remove any dried or fallen foliage so it will not rot and invite disease. Pinch the growing tips of plants that threaten to grow too tall and lanky. Shear hedge plants regularly and nip back creepers that spread out too far and strangle other plants. Refresh and renew any mulch or moss carpet as needed. In a garden so small, the least imperfection seems magnified.

Insects and Disease

Once a week, all summer long, my sink gardens get a quick treatment from an all-purpose aerosol bomb, used according to label directions. So far, with one exception (the mysterious plague of “inchworms” we had in the spring of 1961), this has kept insects and disease at a safe distance.

Winter Care

In mild or warm climates, sink gardens should not need any special protection in winter. But in Connecticut, the deep-freeze is so long and severe, I move my gardens to the cold frame. To make sure that the soil does not freeze and crack the container, I sometimes sink it to the rim in the soil. I’ve also packed salt hay tightly around them successfully. Or a garden could be wintered over on an unheated porch.

But most of the hardy plants used in sink gardens should not spend the winter indoors or in a warm greenhouse. They must have a cool rest period for several months to complete their natural growth cycle.

CHAPTER 9

MINIATURE PLANTS, BONSAI-STYLE

Only in the true Oriental bonsai do art and horticulture combine in such an extreme state of perfection--and in miniature to boot. Paintings may be as magnificent, but they’re inanimate. Ancient trees of the forest may have equal artistic virtue, but they’re not shaped by the hand of man. Living bonsai trees, sometimes centuries old, become masterpieces because, says Claude Chidamian, “they’re planted in philosophy, shaped by art, grown with love.”

If that sounds as if I am awed by bonsai--I am. I would never have the talent and patience to prune and shape, trim and train, in minute detail year after year, so that every branch, twig, and tiny needle or leaf would be perfectly placed and proportioned. Even if I were an artist, I doubt that I could create the illusion of grandeur in minuscule scale. Nor would I ever dare assume the responsibility for caring for these priceless, age-old plants.

But that doesn’t mean that bonsai is beyond me, or any other gardener who admires it. Without committing the sacrilege of inept imitation, we can have our own version of these miniature trees and make them artistic and satisfying in our own way.

The original bonsai trees look old and weather-beaten because they are old and weather-beaten. The Japanese adopted this art from the Chinese many centuries ago. Our trees in bonsai-style are not likely to have that venerable age, but they can have character. They can have the lines of trees that have held a precarious footing on the side of a rocky slope, have been bent by the wind or twisted by mighty storms.

Because every part of it is in perfect proportion to every other part, a fine bonsai tree creates an illusion of tremendous size--as if you were looking through the wrong end of a telescope to a giant more than a hundred years old. Our dwarfed trees can be perfectly proportioned and create the same illusion. Although there is no substitute for true antiquity, our dwarfed trees can be artistic in their own way without pretending to be ancient.

By making some concessions (without desecrating the art) we can take suitable trees and turn them into “Orientalized” garden ornaments, and do it in one year, not ten. If the pruning and training is done with care and artistry, the result will be a bonsai which is a distinguished ornament and particularly appropriate for contemporary architecture, and also for landscape architecture.

I have seen a bonsai of Sargent’s juniper set beside a garden pool, its twisting branches swaying out and over the water, and reflected in it. Twin (but not identical) bonsai trees are startlingly effective; for example, one on each side at the top of a set of formal steps. Bonsai can be used as a center of interest on a patio or terrace to accent an entrance, on top of low walls, or against the wall at the end of a path.

Last summer, in our wild garden, my husband dammed up a tiny stream at a point where it began to run down a short but rather steep and shaded slope. This created a small pool from which the water trickles over the dam and drops onto a series of rock ledges below. We planted the banks on both sides with ferns, wild ginger, bloodroot, trillium, and other wildlings. But something was needed at the top, some small tree or shrub that would integrate the dam into the picture and would be in harmony with the woodsy surroundings.

We considered all the dwarf, shade-tolerant evergreens our local nurseries had to offer, but nothing seemed just right. We scoured our woods, but the only low-growing trees (which are mighty few in our area) were too straight and erect. The mountain laurels and other shrubs with interesting lines would eventually grow too large. So we decided to try what, for us, is an experiment.

We found a white pine less than two feet tall with a suggestion of the irregular shape we had been looking for. We lifted it carefully, took it home, root-pruned it, and planted it in the best bonsai tradition, in a sturdy box just large enough to hold the roots but leaving a little room to spare around the edge. Then we took the tree to the top of the dam and planted it by sinking the box in the soil. After some weeks, when the pine showed no sign of ill effects from being moved, and was making new growth, we shaped and pruned it, and then wired it, bonsai-style, along the lines of the tree we had been hunting for.

With sensible care and winter protection, pruning and root-pruning when it threatens to grow too large, and training in the way we think it should grow, the little pine will, we hope, mature into a gnarled gnome in proportion and harmony with its woodland setting. Of course, we plan to provide a new box at root-pruning time before the old one can rot and set the dwarfed roots free to roam the soil around it.

INDOOR BONSAI, HARDY OR SEMIHARDY

The real Japanese bonsai is an outdoor inhabitant, usually one of a collection that is brought indoors for display purposes and for only a few days at a time. But by using tender plants that want more warmth, growers are beginning to create bonsai that can be used decoratively indoors the year round. In a shadow box, on a coffee table or special stand, even as a table centerpiece they should always be alone and with no accessories to detract from their unique style.

Last winter I thoroughly enjoyed starting a collection of indoor miniatures, frank copies of Japanese name bonsai, and even the wee fingertip shinto type. These are a special challenge because to preserve proper proportion, leaves and needles must be extra small, and pruning and training are particularly crucial. Water is applied with an eyedropper; fertilizer is administered in microscopic amounts. To provide protective humidity and warmth, and to help keep the small amount of soil in tiny containers from drying out, we rigged up plastic-covered quarters on a window sill, with a layer of moist vermiculite. Our tray was also improvised from a double layer of heavyweight aluminum foil. Now, all but the youngest, and the very smallest, miniatures are strong enough to grow on glass shelves outside the plastic tent.

Indoor plants, bonsai-style, are more than just tender seedlings, or cuttings, kept small in small containers. They are patterned after true bonsai, with interesting character, artistic lines, and perfect proportion. The mechanics of pruning and training are very much the same. But because they are not hardy outdoor growers that resent the hot dry air of a house, and because they don’t need annual dormancy, they are fascinating indoor ornaments to be lived with and enjoyed the year round.

Different types of bonsai trees and containers]

Bonsai in citrus]

Once we became intrigued with the concept of “indoor bonsai” we found so many house and greenhouse plants with picturesque prospects that I fear we will never get to try them all. I have seedlings and cuttings of all sorts, even including those from a breakfast orange and a pomegranate out of the fruit bowl. And, of course, small plants sold by mail-order suppliers are just the right size to begin the process of dwarfing and shaping.

(In the list at the end of Chapter 6, plants suitable for indoor bonsai use are indicated.)

OUTDOOR PLANTS FOR DWARFING, BONSAI-STYLE

With proper care, any woody plant--any tree, shrub, or vine with persisting trunk or stems--can be grown indefinitely in a pot. With some skill in pruning branches and roots, it can be permanently dwarfed. And with imagination and artistry, it can be trained to re-create in miniature one of the majestic pictures of nature. However, some plants are more amenable to rigorous dwarfing than others; some adapt more willingly to growing in containers; and some are by nature more suitable in habit and appearance.

The easiest plants to dwarf are those that are naturally small, or slow growing, and those with small leaves or needles, flowers or fruit. Proportion is the most important factor. Every element--leaf, twig, branch, trunk, root, container--must be in harmony and balance with all others.

It’s not impossible to use larger-leaved plants. It’s just a little more difficult. Long needles can be cut shorter, for example, but they must be kept the proper length. Large leaves can be thinned to relieve any feeling of heaviness, and each leaf can be used to represent a branch. With some types of deciduous trees--say, maples--the leaves that come out first in the spring can be pinched off. The leaves that come out to replace them will be smaller.

Almost equally important is the “character” of a dwarfed plant--its irregular or fluid lines, illusion of age, unusual aspect of bark or twig that make it dramatic and vibrant. Any form of art can be dull if it has nothing except perfect proportion to offer. With good proportion, plus intriguing line and design, it becomes interesting.

In the original bonsai the artist transplanted a tree he found growing in the wild and carefully conserved the misshapen lines made by buffeting weather, or he very carefully copied, or re-created, a tree he had seen holding a precarious footing high on a rocky ridge and perhaps dipping down into a windy gorge. These shapes and forms are now the basis for specific classes of bonsai which we can borrow or adapt. So the “character” of a plant may suggest that it be trained as if it were growing out at a right angle from a rocky slope with its roots covering a stone; as a grove, to weep or cascade; or as a gigantic, single-trunked forest monarch with pitted, weather-worn bark.

Or perhaps, lightning might have split the trunk, leaving part of it jagged and dead. The two trunks may have become entangled with each other. Branches may have been blown in one direction so long that they bend that way permanently.

Types of Plants

Any woody plant whose parts are in proper proportion for dwarfing--and particularly, any that shows promise of interesting lines or “character”--is a good prospect for bonsai. The coniferous evergreens are most popular, because they hold their foliage all year, and because small-needled types are comparatively plentiful. Small-leaved deciduous trees can be at their most attractive best with spring’s budding new growth, summer’s airy foliage, fall’s brilliant color, or with the silhouette of a naked trunk in winter.

With flowering trees and shrubs the choice of varieties narrows even more. Large flowers with brilliant color and overpowering fragrance may destroy balance and proportion, and detract from the beauty of the plant itself. More delicate plants are more likely to enhance the picture. For obvious reasons, plants that bear fruits and berries in the proper scale are the hardest to find, and culturally the most difficult.

(For plants that are suitable for outdoor bonsai, see list at the end of Chapter 14.)

Sources

Bonsai becomes a reality faster, of course, when you start with a fairly mature plant. The most fruitful source is the selection of three-year-old trees and shrubs at your local nursery. Those growing in gallon-sized cans, or other containers, naturally accept pruning and transplanting with the least setback. They should be healthy plants, not overgrown or neglected, that have been regularly root-pruned and transplanted through their infancy. It is perfectly safe to buy them pot-bound if that condition has not persisted for several seasons, with the outer roots all dead as a result.

In selecting a specimen, first examine varieties that are by nature slow-growing and have leaves, or needles, in perfect scale. Be selective, pass up the symmetrical specimens that are best for ordinary landscaping purposes, and look for that one plant in a thousand, the one with interesting “character”--peculiarity of shape, irregular branches, low horizontal growth, stocky or twisted trunk. The most ideal plant has its largest branch near the base, and has no regular or opposite branches to be pruned away. Next to above-ground development in importance, is the below-ground root system. To be ideal, the root system should be a compact, shallow mass rather than one long taproot with a few offshoots. To make it even more ideal, the stoutest roots should be growing near the surface.

Younger, smaller bonsai plants are readily available from mail-order suppliers who specialize in them. Here, make your selection according to variety, and then train your plants as you grow them. But beware of cheap “bargain offers.” I speak with this advice because of the experience of some of my friends. They were too intrigued by Sunday-newspaper ads. Buy only from reliable growers who have invested time and care in developing healthy plants and, better yet, have labeled them true to name. For those who are more interested in the finished work of art than in the growing and creating of it, some florists and nurseries advertise mature, or nearly mature, bonsai. Again may I say, “Beware.” The supplier’s reliability is even more important.

Sometimes you can find precious bonsai-type shrubs or trees growing in the wild. Small seedlings of hemlock, ash, birch, maple, and some elms, if they are dug very carefully--and at just about any time of the year--can be used as miniature bonsai, or they can be planted in the garden for a few years until they are larger. Usually, the taproot has to be cut back rather severely to encourage the development of a spreading mass of smaller roots. Start your regular pruning as soon as the plant recovers from transplanting shock.

The larger native plants should be taken when they are dormant, in late fall or the earliest spring. In searching, look for those that have been naturally dwarfed and misshapen by misfortune. In digging, make sure the soil is so moist that much of it will cling to the roots. Keep the roots moist and well covered against drying sun and winds until the transplant is safely in the soil again. For any such wildlings, take along enough of the surrounding soil to fill the container into which they are going. This will make them feel at home in their new place in the garden bed.

Many growers now propagate their own bonsai plants; thus they can control shape, root-spread, line, and design from the very beginning. Almost all of the propagating methods outlined in Chapter 10 are useful here, some especially so. Cuttings of all kinds will produce stout-trunked plants much faster than seeds. Plants such as willow, holly, ginkgo, and ivy can be started from stems as thick as an inch or so in diameter. With cuttings you can have quantities of new plants from one parent, all with the same variegations or other characteristics.

Either ground or air layering can give you plants that are larger than those obtained from cuttings. By selecting a certain branch you can be surer of getting the characteristics and shape you want. If your bonsai is to be well balanced, select a well-proportioned branch with close twiggy growth. By layering you can also correct an unattractive bonsai, growing a new one from a plant that has become too tall and gangly, or one that has badly formed roots.

Grafting for bonsai plants is not widely practiced because too often it leaves a visible scar or some other sign of artificiality, and also because there is the danger of undesirable sprouts shooting up from the roots. Plants from a graft are generally weaker than cuttings or layers which have their own roots. If your plant happens to be a valuable one, you can often improve its shape by grafting on new branches where they will do the most good; or good branches can be grafted onto picturesque, gnarled roots. I have never made a serious effort to graft in such cases, but I have seen some good results from the work of other growers.

Growing bonsai plants from seed requires infinite patience--as a warning, the process takes years. But seedlings, once you have them going, and with the healthiest of root systems, will live indefinitely. Seeds of bonsai-type plants are available from several growers. Should they need special preparation, such as nicking or stratifying, the seed packets should say so.

When seedlings have several true leaves and are ready for transplanting, cut back the strong taproot (should there be one) by at least one-third. This will encourage root-branching. When potting seedlings, spread the side roots so they will develop evenly near the soil surface. Pruning and training can begin while the plants are still quite young. Plant the stem on a slant. Pinch new tip growth for development of side branches. Tie straight trunk stems to a bamboo cane, or perhaps just a sliver; or otherwise guide the young shrub, or tree, toward the lines you have in mind for its mature effect.

BONSAI CONTAINERS

In no other art form is it more obvious that a subordinate element such as a container can make or mar the perfection of a picture. For instance, with a painting the frame can have small faults without lessening the impression of a masterpiece. But bonsai is so stark that a slight imperfection can become a glaring error. So, although the container is merely a supporting feature, it becomes only a little less important than the center of interest, the plant. It must harmonize with the plant, reflect and supplement its beauty, and not detract from its leading role.

Imported Japanese bonsai containers of the traditional type, now readily available, are usually shallow bowls or dishes of glazed (or unglazed) ceramic. They are never glazed on the inside and are usually sold in sets of three matched units of graduated size. Contemporary American artists and manufacturers are also turning out pans and trays made of dull metals, tile, and wood. The wood may be either of a natural finish or artistically weathered. For outdoor bonsai, wood must necessarily be treated for durability and weather resistance.

For indoor plantings, containers can very often be improvised. I’ve used bronze ash trays, wooden salad bowls, shapely plastic dishes (shallow), and odds and ends of pottery--anything of the right motif in which it is possible to bore, drill, or chip drainage holes on the bottom. Many of our modern ceramics are in complete harmony with bonsai. But you must have those drainage holes, otherwise your watering problems are compounded.

The ideal bonsai containers are seldom ornate; really they shouldn’t be. They should have the grace and elegance of “expensive simplicity,” which doesn’t mean they are expensive. They just look as though they were. Colors are subdued, not bright or showy. As a rule to follow, darker and somber shades are used for evergreens, lighter shades for flowering plants, the specific choice depending on the color of the bloom. In shape and form, bonsai containers are simple and graceful and are selected to set off the shape or lines of the plants. Erect trunks often take shallow, rectangular containers. Hanging or weeping lines call for round containers with more depth. Square or oval containers are used for extremely delicate, graceful subjects.

Container size, of course, depends on the plants themselves. As a general rule, the smallest and most shallow container that is culturally practical, and in good proportion, is the best. In true bonsai containers, diameters range from two to twenty-five inches; depths, from one to ten inches. The accepted rule for good proportions allows the plant to occupy 80 per cent of the picture, the container 20 per cent. Should you have very small plants the ratio is slightly changed--60 per cent for plant, 40 per cent for the container. However, these figures should not be considered as hard and fast, but as a guide when purchasing containers. Your eye may tell you what is better suited for your particular plant or shrub.

PLANTING AND CARE

Rather specific cultural practices have evolved for dwarfing hardy garden plants, trees, and shrubs, and growing them in small containers. Tender house and greenhouse plants, dwarfed and grown as indoor bonsai, are also potted, pruned, trained, and watered as outlined in this chapter. Otherwise, they are grown like the window-garden plants in