Use False Spring To Ready Your Plants For Summer Abandon
by Gail Hirst
December 28th, 2010 07:06 AM
My gal pal’s message leaves me gasping for breath, I am laughing so hard. She goes on with her bizarre little rhyme instructing us to leave our messages. When I ask her how many she can understand through the giggles, she says most, but not all, manage to get their message across.
February is the month when we really can believe the end of the cold winter rains are in sight.
Snowdrops peek, crocuses peer, daffodils and tulips poke and point their way clear from cold, sodden earth and into brighter skies.
Don’t believe it! Though I have lived more than half my life on the West Coast, I am still a sucker for what I have learned is truly a “false spring”. Sure, spring flowers are poking their sprightly colours up into light. The skies, however, have months before they run dry. We enter now the season of my personal discontent.
It is my interior tropical plants that save my sanity during the enforced abstinence that the long, long spring entails. My plants are benefiting from the slightly longer days indoors. The heat is still on, so they tend to be cozy. Tiny, very tender new growth is visible on all but the slowest growers.
Fresh soil for all indoor plants! Let’s get them topped up, renewing and revitalizing old, nutrient- deficient, compacted soil. Let’s get them potted up – or down – as necessary for flourishing flowers and foliage. Let’s get them clean and let’s get started on the pruning required for optimum growth through the summer months. Let’s get them ready for relative abandonment – for the moment the skies clear and the weather is warm enough to go outside to play!
There is a restlessness in the offices where we tend to our clients’ interior plantscape needs and requirements. This is the time many clients pay particular attention to their office plants. They need to be reassured that the good old summer times will come again. This is the time when a new leaf unfurling in the arid, hostile office environment can bring great joy and renewed enthusiasm for their own work. This is the time when our plants, already working hard to clean the very air we breath, also fill our souls with the joy of renewal and the faith that this long, cold season shall also pass.
Let’s be sure all our plants are ready to be ignored, because that’s what we tend to do. Forget all about our indoor environments whilst we enjoy the sumptuous banquet before us in the great gardens of the outdoors.
It’s okay to be dormant for awhile, as long as your plan is to spring into bloom right where you are planted!
Gail Hirst is an Interior Landscape Specialist. 604-984-6341 or plantpal@telus.net
Copyright North Shore Magazine Issue Feb - Mar 07
February is the month when we really can believe the end of the cold winter rains are in sight.
Snowdrops peek, crocuses peer, daffodils and tulips poke and point their way clear from cold, sodden earth and into brighter skies.
Don’t believe it! Though I have lived more than half my life on the West Coast, I am still a sucker for what I have learned is truly a “false spring”. Sure, spring flowers are poking their sprightly colours up into light. The skies, however, have months before they run dry. We enter now the season of my personal discontent.
It is my interior tropical plants that save my sanity during the enforced abstinence that the long, long spring entails. My plants are benefiting from the slightly longer days indoors. The heat is still on, so they tend to be cozy. Tiny, very tender new growth is visible on all but the slowest growers.
Fresh soil for all indoor plants! Let’s get them topped up, renewing and revitalizing old, nutrient- deficient, compacted soil. Let’s get them potted up – or down – as necessary for flourishing flowers and foliage. Let’s get them clean and let’s get started on the pruning required for optimum growth through the summer months. Let’s get them ready for relative abandonment – for the moment the skies clear and the weather is warm enough to go outside to play!
There is a restlessness in the offices where we tend to our clients’ interior plantscape needs and requirements. This is the time many clients pay particular attention to their office plants. They need to be reassured that the good old summer times will come again. This is the time when a new leaf unfurling in the arid, hostile office environment can bring great joy and renewed enthusiasm for their own work. This is the time when our plants, already working hard to clean the very air we breath, also fill our souls with the joy of renewal and the faith that this long, cold season shall also pass.
Let’s be sure all our plants are ready to be ignored, because that’s what we tend to do. Forget all about our indoor environments whilst we enjoy the sumptuous banquet before us in the great gardens of the outdoors.
It’s okay to be dormant for awhile, as long as your plan is to spring into bloom right where you are planted!
Gail Hirst is an Interior Landscape Specialist. 604-984-6341 or plantpal@telus.net
Copyright North Shore Magazine Issue Feb - Mar 07
