My Subterranean Garden

The snow and ice are starting to melt but signs of spring are still a bit hard to find. But down in the basement, my subterranean garden is happily waiting out winter's worst. There huddle many of my tender treasures, my agaves and bomeliads, my abutilons, begonias, plumbagos, fuschias, and cestrums --like 'Orange Peel' pictured (yep, it's flowering down there). Basically, it's whatever I can stuff down there that has a chance of surviving. I've got three areas--two cool ones--temps 40s to 50s--one with light and one without, and a warm spot--low 60s--with lights. I recently switched from using an energy pig of a high-intensity discharge light to using 1/2-inch florescents, which use even less energy than regular florescents. And guess what? The low-cost lights are working better than the pricey ones did. All the lights are on a timer for 18 hour days.



I go all out in container gardening once the season rolls around and these are my secret weapons, wintered-over plants that give me lots of material for cuttings and lots of plus-sized plants for dramatic display. It's also amazing how many tropical shrubs -as well as bulbs, tubers, and rhizomes--can wait it out in the dark and dry in a state of totally dormancy. And as they sit patiently, the plants always manage to remind me that--no matter how interminable winter may seem--spring is also a state of mind. One I can even nurture under ground.

Bringing in the Brugs

I've got a thing for Brugmansias. I had 11 going this season. Love their every detail, but most especially the fragrance. So it was a sad day indeed last week when I had to face the facts of a frost. That meant I had to bring them in for winter storage. Here's how I did it, step by painful step.

First thing I did was cut them back hard. If I can get a plant inside without pruning it, I will, but these were just too monstrous. So, I had to get in there with the pruners and whack the thing back to its main trunks. While lopping, I kept in mind that in the end, I wanted the remaining branches to create a pleasingly sculptural shape.

One of the most distressing aspects of the whole process was looking at the ever-growing pile of flowers I'd cut off. All those beauteous blooms. All that fragrance. No more evenings out sitting on the top step, watching those peachy trumpets glowing in the twilight. It's a garden tragedy to have to cut these things down in their prime!

Once I had the thing cut back to about head high, I started digging. I often grow brugs in large pots and just store them pot and all, but this one was in the ground so I had to dig it out, preserving the biggest possible rootball I'd still be able to move.

To do that meant turning a wheelbarrow on its side, rolling the rootball in and then tipping the barrow back upright. Then I wheeled it to the basement Bilco door, and turned it out onto a plank, which I used as a sliding board to get the plant down to the basement. Lastly, I tucked the stubby rootball and remaining trunk into a cool dark corner of our root cellar, where it's dark, kind of humid, and winter temps average 45-60 or so. Now I can just forget about the plant--I don't water it or anything--until spring, when back out into the light it goes.

Three Ways to Overwinter Tender Plants

The folks at Fine Gardening magazine just posted a video they shot that details my three ways to overwinter tender plants--without a greenhouse. my technique calls for having taking advantage of three different indoor microclimates common to most homes; the video provides a little show and tell about each one. Basically you need a spot that is dark and cool (50s or lower), a spot that's bright and cool (ditto), and a bright warm (60s or better) spot. For a list of what plants to put in which spots, and more overwintering details, look for this list in a story I wrote for them a year or two ago.