Geranium gardening
Posted: under Reviews.
All over the country, geraniums flaunt their red and scarlet, rose, pink, and white blooms with a gay abandon that few other plants can rival. In boxes on city fire escapes and roofs, in window boxes on town and country houses, in tubs and pots on terraces and patios, and in hanging baskets of the porches of summer cottages, they are loved and cherished plants as a welcome symbol of warmth and hospitality.
For sheer impact of color, they cannot be surpassed.
Geraniums are also great favorites in Europe, where red- and pink-flowering zonals, the common types, are commonly treated as bedding plants. In western and northern European countries, they are widely planted in window boxes and in pots and tubs at doorways of city and country gardens. Along the Mediterranean, where geraniums are hardy, zonal types develop into mounds that are six feet tall and equally wide. Ivy-leaved kinds cover banks and slopes and cascade like waterfalls from balconies, rooftops, and garden walls.
This widespread planting is easy to understand. Not only is the geranium a beautiful flower, but it grows almost everywhere with ease, blossoming under neglect and surviving where other plants fail. Though it prefer: and needs sun to bloom, it tolerates shade, where it is usually handled as a foliage plant. What it resents is toe much moisture and a rich diet. Kept too wet, the leave; turn yellow; given a heavy soil, one high in nitrogen plants go to foliage and flower sparingly. Even at that geraniums are amazing plants that will perform admir ably under a wide variety of growing conditions.
Actually, the name geranium is incorrect, for these free flowering shrubby plants are members of the genus Pelar gonium. The Greek word, meaning stork-bill, refers to the slender, curving form of the seed pod. Nevertheless geranium is the commonly used name for the members of this interesting variety.
GREAT VARIETY OF TYPES
Far from uniform, the genus includes types that are herbaceous, shrubby, deciduous, annual, biennial, perennial, stem less, long-stemmed, tuberous and fibrous-rooted all of them well suited to container gardening. Even if you choose no other plants, you could have a varied pot garden of single and double zonal, fancy-leaved or variegated, scented-leaved, ivy and Lady or Martha Washing-ton geraniums (also called show or fancy geraniums), not to mention a few oddities of cactus and climbing types.
Zonal, Fancy- and Scented-leaved
The zonal geranium is characterized by dark circular markings on the rounded green leaves. Double types dominate the trade and are offered by florists in the spring for planting in gardens and window boxes. You will like such pinks as Mrs. Lawrence, Fiat Enchantress, and Pink Abundance. Olympic Red is very good, as is Better Times, an outstanding dark crimson. Among desirable singles, consider the carmine Barbara Hope, the cherry-red to white Apple Blossom, the creamy coral Ecstasy, the scarlet to wine-red Nuit Poitevine, and the light orchid-pink Helen Van Pelt Wilson. All are so beautiful, they should be planted where they can easily be seen.
Variegated geraniums, with leaves that are often brightly colored, are attractive even out of bloom. Indeed, some feel, as I do, that flowers detract from the foliage. Among the best are Mrs. Cox, vermillion and purple, with an edging of yellow; Miss Burdett Coutts, purple-zoned and pink-splashed; and Skies of Italy, crimson-zoned with a yellow edging. Set among green-leaved geraniums and other foliage plants, pots of the variegateds add color and pattern.
Buy geraniums here. Buy geranium books.
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Jan 18 2009