The humble houseplant is reinventing itself thanks to a new attitude by gardeners who are looking beyond the windowsill for more creative possibilities, including starring roles in holiday table-scapes.
What else can you purchase starting under $5 that lends itself to year-round use in a variety of ways? No offence to African violets, but there are so many other houseplants worth embracing for their indoor versatility as well as the chance to lead a double life in summer's outdoor container garden.
With the holidays just around the corner and indoor decorating now underway, will most of us be content to greet our guests with a poinsettia in its red or gold foil sleeve? Probably, if only because the poinsettia has earned its favourite place in the traditional scheme of things, but why not try a bromeliad or anthurium?
Mixing plants with a diverse grouping of assorted colourful plants in a container or basket has its appeal, too. What can we expect to find at our local garden centre or neighbourhood florist's shop?
Tatiana Penner, designer and owner of Oak & Lily, 1724 Corydon Ave. , tries to offer homeowners more alternatives to the usual lineup of holiday plants. "We bring in plants that work with a holiday theme but also the rest of the year," says Penner. These include living galleries in wooden frames, glass-domed terrariums and a wide variety of potted trees, including miniatures such as dwarf Alberta spruce that is ideal for the homeowner who doesn't have space for a full-size tree.
Dainty, aromatic lemon cypress and rosemary topiaries come in 12-centimetre pots, ranging in height from 30 to 46 cm. The pyramid-shaped rosemary mimics a Christmas tree. Penner suggests choosing a pot to personalize your indoor plant. Choose from formal silver glassware, birchbark or something more contemporary such as concrete, then dress your festive dish garden for the holidays with decorative elements such as a sprig of holly, red ilex or blue juniper berries, small pinecones, moss, or a bit of ribbon or twine, depending on your preference.
Since many houseplants come in 10-cm pots, what could be easier then leaving them in their plastic containers and grouping them around a dwarf tree such as a blue-green European cypress or a Charlie Brown evergreen in the centre of a basket? Tuck in bright-green club moss, then add stems and berries. Dana Mistafa of the Shelmerdine Garden Centre says reindeer moss, available in red, green, gold, white, chartreuse or purple can be used as a substitute for club moss, then stored away and reused.
The silverbush plant (calocephalus) is covered in densely branched, silvery foliage. Mistafa recommends pairing it with delicately scented jasmine, large- or small-leaf baby tears and club moss. When creating baskets, she uses a bit of Styrofoam to keep pots in place.
This past summer, in the search for an alternative to creeping jenny (Lysimachia nummularia), a typical candidate for a trailing shade plant, I discovered Pilea nummularifolia, one of several plants known as creeping Charlie. Purchasing one pilea plant in a 10-cm pot and dividing it into four sections, I tucked each into the corner of a black ceramic container potted up with some leftover Kong coleus.
The crinkly leafed light green pilea quickly filled in, producing vast numbers of trailers. The effect proved attractive all summer long, and I will be making even greater use of this textured foliage plant in next summer's containers. Taking a few cuttings for the indoor garden before outside temperatures dip too much below 10 C extends its life beyond a single season.
For an upscale houseplant, consider Medinilla magnifica. With positively voluptuous, pendulous pink blooms, medinilla could put most other houseplants to shame. While it may not be in bloom during the holidays, medinilla continues to make a statement with its elaborately sized dark, dark green leaves.
St. Mary's Nursery is carrying fresh skimmia stems loaded with bright-red berries for adding to vases and wreaths. Skimmia japonica is available as a houseplant, too. The female plants have glossy green leaves and produce showy red berries in fall through winter if a male pollinizing plant is present. Joanne Jones, greenhouse supervisor, says the male produces lightly fragrant creamy-white flowers in spring. While skimmia is a more expensive proposition than most houseplants, it is an outstanding plant that moves easily from the indoors during the winter to a shady but bright location in the summer garden.
What could be more elegant than orchids in December? Ariel Lin of EverSpring Orchids, says the Phalaenopsis orchid in classic white is the most popular choice, although other colours available include purple, green, orange, white, pink and mauve. Lin creates customized orchid arrangements, including miniature orchids, layering the different heights.
If you are not convinced as to the diverse use of houseplants for holiday displays, including seasonal favourites such as paperwhites, amaryllis and Christmas cactus, take a walk through the Assiniboine Park Conservatory's unprecedented holiday show on now until Jan. 4.
Be prepared for the most creative use of houseplants imaginable in this horticultural display called Around the World in 80 Days. Wire frames, including Christmas trees that are 2.7 metres tall, a giant elephant, a globe that weighs 725 kg and a train that is 6.4 metres long and comes complete with a working smokestack, have all been planted with live plant material numbering in the thousands.
The globe alone has been planted with over 800 plugs making up the seven continents. Plant material includes baby tears, creeping Charlie, peacock spikemoss, club moss, creeping fig, little jewel callisia and red stem pilea. While visitors of all ages will delight in the visuals of this imaginative display, gardeners will take home many new ideas, inspired by the combination of plants.
Gerald Dieleman, horticultural director, says the wire-framed trees have been planted from top to bottom with wandering plant (Tradescantia zebina), common ivy and creeping Charlie. Accent plants include purple orchids from EverSpring, white-flowered peace lilies and azaleas. The train illustrates the inventive combination of 12 globe cedars and six pyramidal cedars together with more than 2,000 plugs of tiny-leaved creeping fig and over 5,500 plugs of alternanthera. The welded metal frame of the large elephant, found among the tropical plants in the Palm House, has been covered with stucco wire and then virgin cork bark and sheet moss, then planted with trailing bamboo grass, Spanish moss and air plants.
Dieleman says staff began working on the displays in July.
Gardeners can relate to not only the use of these types of plant material, but also the challenges of caring for a wide range of indoor plants. While the conservatory may seem to have an advantage compared to the average home, nevertheless, says Wade Meisner, horticulture design supervisor, it, too, deals with fluctuations in levels of light, humidity and temperature. All of these conditions affect the healthy growth of plants.
Some of the plants prefer higher humidity and require regular misting. Meisner says the moss on the wire-framed elephant, for example, will be misted in the morning and in the evening so it doesn't dry out.
Watering is more complicated, though, for the display's wire-framed trees, which consist of a symphony of plants, each with different moisture requirements. Drip irrigation with a total of 54 individual feeder lines have nozzles for delivering exactly the right amount of water, right down to adjusting how many drops per minute each plant receives.
The wandering plant (Tradescantia), for example, will not tolerate being overwatered. Swedish ivy, says Meisner, is more forgiving.
EverSpring Orchids' Ariel Lin says orchids tolerate a drier environment, so they work well at this time of year when the humidity in homes is low. With blooms that last from one to two months, orchids need to be watered only once every two weeks. Some people don't water them at all, says Lin, preferring to sit two or three ice cubes on the medium that melt down slowly.
Sensitive plants such as orchids need to be situated away from entry doors where they can be adversely affected by blasts of cold air.
Explore the world of houseplants this holiday season for the perfect complement to your decor.
For more information on the holiday show at the Assiniboine Park Conservatory, please visit assiniboinepark.ca/conservatoryshow or phone 204-927-6057.
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