Montreal Flowers

Repotting houseplants can renew their soil and to provide more room to grow. However, it is not all plants need to be repotted regularly. Some will grow and bloom better if they are a little cramped in their pots. This is the case for example of kalanchoe, African violets, cyclamen, clivia, elephant’s foot, waxy hoya, the sansevière (mother-tongue), live rock and several cacti, to name a few. In addition, other plants do not need to be repotted because their life is ephemeral. This is...

If you can’t get to Hawaii this winter, then why not bring Hawaii to you? Create a tropical paradise by growing orchids indoors. Granted, care must be taken when growing orchids at home. However, they are no more difficult to grow than most other houseplants when their particular growth requirements are met. In fact, some orchids are as easy to grow as cacti. Although there are more than 25,000 species growing in climates ranging from the arctic tundra to the tropical rain forest, the orchids...

An indoor kitchen herb garden will add interest to your meals and color to your window sills…and help satisfy that urge to garden during the cold, wintry months ahead. Most culinary herbs require at least five hours of sun per day. You can use a sunny window, provided the reflected heat is not too intense. If you don’t have a window with direct sunlight, put your pots of herbs in a spot with plenty of light, then move them into the sun for a few hours whenever possible. Fluorescent lights or...

People have different opinions about the poinsettia. Some consider it a holiday plant to be enjoyed during the month of December, then discarded with the Christmas tree. Others like to nurture and coddle their plants, coaxing them into bloom season after season. Me, I subscribe to the former way of thinking. Although it may seem a shame to discard potted holiday plants, such as poinsettias, if you prorate the cost of the plant over the long period you are able to enjoy it, the cost isn’t...

By fall, most perennials are through blooming and by then you might be ready to throw in the towel, but there are still a few duties you need to do to ensure that your perennials survive the winter. Follow these tips on this checklist, and you should have an even better perennial garden next spring. 1. Make “action” notes. Before you forget what plants should be divided, what should be moved and where, and what you need to do to certain plants next year, write it down now. 2. Should...

Asters are hardy perennials that bloom in fall in various colors and heights. They provide color for us and a late-season source of pollen for bees and other pollinators. The image many have of New England in the fall includes purple asters and yellow goldenrod. Although we may take these for granted, the English and Europeans have not. In fact, they collected asters extensively earlier in this century and took them home to breed many new selections. Many of these selections are back in this...

Forcing indoor bulbs, protecting tree trunks, and getting roses ready for winter are some of the gardening tips for this month. Some woody perennials — technically called subshrubs — such as butterfly bush, lavender, thyme, and heather, can be damaged or killed if you prune in fall. Leave the stems as is, protect them with mulch over the winter, and prune in spring. Rose foliage can harbor insects and diseases, both on the shrub and on the ground. Pull off any rose leaves that are still...

Gladioli, asters, chrysanthemums, and everlastings are some of our common fall garden flowers. Have you ever wondered where these originally came from? I can tell you, with a little help from a book by Diana Wells entitled 100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names. These are only some of the 100 flowers she describes in her book. Most of our gladioli came from Africa, where the corms were roasted like chestnuts and are said to taste like them. (Corms are the swollen underground bulbous parts...

Scent not only changes over time, but with time of day. Early morning is when scents are strongest, the oils most powerful, and so when roses are harvested for rose oil. Rose scent may be more powerful with the first blooms of summer. Rose scent even can change from outdoors to indoors. Just the cutting can change the chemical releases that we smell, so a rose not very fragrant outdoors may be quite scented once in a vase inside. The other fact to keep in mind is that scent in flowers,...

You may be surprised to learn that many of the same elegant flowers that inspired “Tulipmania” in the 1600s, and appeared in paintings of the Dutch Masters at that time, are still available to plant in gardens today. You can purchase many of these “time-traveling” tulips from garden centers and mail-order catalogs. While some are identical to their ancestors, some are “look-a-likes” that replicate the historical varieties. The following list was compiled by the Netherlands Flower Bulb...

Most when they see a rose bend down to sniff.  If you’re like me, you probably never really thought much about rose fragrance except if it’s missing, faint, or how nice it is.  Just what gives a rose its wonderful fragrance, and how this is used, is complex and fascinating. Roses have been around and are documented longer than most of our garden plants.  The earliest record of them seems to be rose leaves found in the Colorado Rockies, dating back 35 to 32 million years to the Paleolithic era.  First mention of them, and their appearance in artistic motifs, was in Asia about 3000BC, with mention

We have the Aztecs to thank for the dahlia, a summer bulb that brightens up the late-season garden. Dahlias range in color from white and yellow to orange, pale pink, lavender, and red with blooms from half an inch to a foot and a half in size. Flowers may be pompoms or pinwheels with single or double petals that are flat, curved, or rolled into tubes. A long-lasting cut flower, it makes a great addition to any garden. The dahlia, a relative of the daisy, was first cultivated by Aztec...

If you garden in a cold, northern climate, and like roses, have you considered the Canadian Explorer series? Or if you have some, have you wondered just who these explorers were? This series of about 22 cultivars was bred from the 1960’s through the 1990’s, at the agriculture research stations first at Ottawa, Ontario and later at l’Assomption, Quebec. They were bred to withstand the cold Canadian winters, with parents either rugosas or Kordesii hybrids (the latter being bred in the late...

The rose, one of the most elegant of all flowers, is often called the “queen of the flowers.” It is a title richly deserved, both for its long reign as a cultivated plant and for its beauty, versatility in the landscape, and ability to survive…with just a little pampering. Roses also owe their continued popularity in part to royalty. The French Empress Josephine made roses fashionable for everyone in the 19 th century by planting a beautiful palace rose garden of all the varieties available...

By June the big push is over. You probably have most of your garden planted, except perhaps for tender transplants and sequential plantings of crops like lettuce, and now it’s time to start maintaining what you’ve put in. This means staying on top of the weeding and watering. A good rule of thumb for watering both vegetable and flower gardens is to provide one inch of water a week, if the rain doesn’t do it. It’s better to soak the soil around plants heavily every few days rather than...