Indoor plants

I know. What is so exciting about indoor plants?

For this particular gardener I can say that I have my first proper indoor plant collection this century.

They just don’t happen to live in the house.

They live in the newly pimped potting shed.

It’s like being a real gardener at last. Forget the almost two acres of landscaped gardens outside. Here in the shade of my potting shed in summer I actually have pretties.

Not just crops.

And in particular, Coleus.

Now I know what you are thinking. A bit of an ick factor. But bear with me.

Andrew put me onto them about ten years ago.

He had the contract to add a huge amount of greenery and display to a newly refurbished hotel at Banne, in the southern Ardèche. The rooms on the front were easy as they faced onto the sunny square.

Anyone can shove petunias and pelargoniums and even hydrangeas at that problem.

But the luxury balcony rooms at the back faced north and all the planting was shaded. So he went mad on coleus and the results were spectacular.

You can have a look here at the new proprietors’ offerings. Not Andrew’s planting alas.

https://www.aubergedebanne.fr/deluxeavecbalcon

And while we wait for Andrew to search in his archives, here are some on his very surprising south facing terrace.

Sadly, neither of us kept good records of his hotel planting scheme. But it was fun trying to scroll back so many years to try and spot some colour in among all the thousands of pictures on my phone of … colour.

But it stayed in my head when I went into a garden centre and saw six coleus reduced to two euros and thought I’d have a go.

I underplanted with red sempervivums and it’s quite fun to see how fast everything grows.

Talk about almost instant gardening.

The coleus keep company with my two anigozanthus Kangaroo paws. They have the same flower stalks since May. Not dying, not really pumping out colour, but looking fetching.

And the benches are interspersed with my favourite Argentine verbena which never go out of their pots (too precious) the less precious lemon verbena, salvias, what else is there..?

Pelargoniums that never made it to the big pots.

My passionflower which is shy to flower. Endless trays of verbena bonariensis I rescue from the garden.

Oh, and of course my citrus.

Not Doing Well.

I’m only showing you the best of our four. There is a bit too much scale insect / ant attack and mouldy leaf action to merit the blog.

Okay just one gruesome shot.

I like to think it’s a safe place where I can share. And even though there are lettuce and basil plants up here to harvest from, it’s fun to come up and tinker and water the indoor plants as well.

And if you come by you can scratch the scale insects off the stalks of the citrus trees too. And hunt for hatched ones to squish.

Hours of indoor garden fun.