plants by post

I was watering the pots in the back garden when I heard the crunch of wheels on the gravel at the front.  I assumed it was the postman, but when I'd finished watering discovered a cardboard box labelled Plants: Fragile on the front doorstep.  It was the right way up, and not squashed or buckled, which was a good start.

Now I do not have the convenience of shopping at my place of work, not to mention the staff discount, I am branching out to explore new suppliers' lists.  Not that I need many plants nowadays, quite large parts of the garden are stuffed to bursting.  But I wanted some verbascums to add a vertical accent to one bed, and found that the Lincolnshire nursery who offered the variety I was after did some other interesting things as well.  And it seemed stupid to pay the standard postage and packing charge on just three verbascums.

I am a fan of mail order plants, as I am of mail order most things.  True, you do not see the plant before it arrives, and there is a risk that rather than lose the business the nursery will shove some stunted, pot-bound, diseased or otherwise unsatisfactory plant into the box and hope for the best. But a sensible nursery won't do that, and if you aren't happy with what they send out, you need never deal with them again.  Choosing plants from the comfort of your own sofa, with your reference books and the full resources of the internet to hand, has a lot to be said for it.  You can seek multiple opinions on whether the plant that has caught your eye is likely to thrive in your conditions, and it is easier to maintain a level head and reject a picture and a description, however enticing, than it is to leave the actual, growing plant where it is on the garden centre bench.  And nowadays organised suppliers run real time stock updates on their websites, so you can place the order and be fairly sure that the plants you have chosen will be arriving, rather than extracting a vague promise from a shop that they will put you down for a plant and let you know when they have it.

Besides the verbascum I was originally looking for, I discovered that the man in Lincolnshire could do me some interesting plants for the conservatory, and so I am now the owner of two new begonias and a Dicliptera sericea.   One of the begonias is a fancy, named form of Begonia evansiana, which I had before and managed to lose, goodness knows how because it produced multiple plantlets in its leaf axils and so once you have one you can have twenty.  I think that was the problem, and I think I over watered the corms in their dormant state in the winter.  B. evansiana grows around a foot tall, and has luscious leaves with red undersides, and pink typical begonia flowers, quite dainty.  It is almost hardy in a sheltered spot, and after ordering my 'Claret Jug' I discovered a couple coming up outside, where I tried them at the foot of a Tetrapanax a year or two back, aiming for the exotic look.  That's OK.

Begonia luxurians will be even more exciting, if it survives the winter in the conservatory.  It produces big, architectural leaves, and is capable of growing several feet tall.  Exactly how big depends on who you read, and how long it keeps going before being cut to the ground.  Some sources say it needs a minimum winter temperature of ten degrees, to which I say, dream on, but others say that frost free will do it.  For under a fiver it's worth giving it a go, since it would look very handsome against the back wall of the conservatory.

I'm also trying Dicliptera sericea, a tender, grey leaved sun lover, which should produce orange tubular flowers, and I read somewhere would be happy in a pot.  Indeed, Will Giles (he of the wonderful Exotic Garden in Norwich) says that mature clumps are easily splittable.  If mine survives to make a mature clump, and will split, I could even try a piece outside in the gravel.  The drainage is so very free, I might get away with it in a mild winter.  Experiments like that are more fun with an extra plant you have made yourself than with your only plant, which you have paid good money for.  You don't often see Dicliptera offered for sale, but that is just as likely to be because it is unknown and unfashionable as to indicate that it is difficult.

Plants by post do tend to look rather dishevelled when you unwrap them, so you need a little confidence that once they have been allowed to breathe and see the light, they will be fine.  The Dibleys order of Streptocarpus, plus one odd Begonia and a Tradescantia, which arrived a week or so ago are looking much happier now.  Dibleys send most of their plants out as young rooted plugs, and when first prised from their plastic boxes they are slightly sad little things, but potted into tiny clay pots (I had a panic finding enough that were small enough) and stood in semi shade for a week, allowed to dry out slightly between each watering, they look quite perky now.  I transferred them down to the conservatory this morning, together with the Lincolnshire begonias and the Dicliptera, and briefly exercised my imagination as to how floral and jungly they would look when they were all full pots smothered with flowers, like on the Dibleys website, instead of three leaves and at most one flower per extremely small pot.