I've been taking the pots of agapanthus, geraniums and other tender things out of the greenhouse and setting them up on the paving by the formal pond. They're crammed in too closely to see what I'm doing with the watering in this heat, and I need to space the pots out properly. It is theoretically still rather early to do this, but given the weather forecast for the next five days is for the unseasonal heatwave to continue, and then it will be practically May, frost seems unlikely now. If the outlook changes there'll be a lot of panic fleecing one evening.
I have quite a collection of Geranium maderense. This is a frost-tender plant from Madeira, which has the interesting habit that as its old leaves die their stout stalks point downwards, and help support the stem. The large, palmate leaves are mid-green and shiny and quite exciting. The geraniums honestly take up rather a lot of room in the greenhouse during the winter, but I don't have the heart to throw any of them away. What happened was that I went to the V&A, and sitting in the courtyard cafe drinking coffee my eye fell upon the pots of gone-over something or others that lined the walls. I realised they were Geranium maderense, so I went over to see if they had set any seed, and they had set vast quantities which I didn't belive anybody would be saving for anything, so I took some and wrapped it in a piece of paper for safe-keeping. The next spring I sowed all of it, and soon afterwards some nice fat seedlings emerged and grew rapidly. I didn't have the heart to throw any of them away, and pricked them out into individual pots. By the time we got to winter they were already in 5L pots, as I'd read somewhere that the plant demanded a generous root run. They took up almost the entire greenhouse bench and were rather in the way.
Overwintering G. maderense turns out to be moderately susceptible to overwatering, and aphid attack, and I lost a couple, but most made it through to spring. I gave plants to one or two friends who are into exotic gardening, and used up my entire supply of spare 33cm terracotta pots on the others, thinking that as they'd die after flowering it would only be a temporary state of affairs. The flowers when they come are supposed to be magenta, and quite exciting. The geraniums made large handsome mounds of leaves by the front door and next to the pond, but showed no signs of flowering. It got to autumn and time to pack the greenhouse for the winter. The Geranium maderense took up half the space on the greenhouse floor, so were rather in the way, but I didn't have the heart to consign any of them to the compost bin. I grumbled about this state of affairs to the manager at work, and tried to palm one off on him, but he said he alread had one, which had gone for years without flowering.
This suggests I might have the collection for several years to come, unless it decides to flower, or succumbs to some disease, or the muntjacs break in and eat it, or I accidentally-on-purpose fail to water it. I'm going to have to get some more 33cm pots. Expensive things sometimes, free plants.
After I'd sown the seed I read that it remians viable for up to 5 years, so I needn't have sown all of it at once.
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