As part of our service to prospects who are considering indoor plants for their office we use digital imaging to help them envision the finished project.

Now you can do it for yourself. Costa Farms – one of the major suppliers of tropical plants in the United States has set up a virtual imaging tool on their website Costa Farms virtual imaging tool.

It only takes a few minutes to upload a picture of your room, choose a design style and pick from their library of  indoor plant cutouts in planters! Very fun and easy to play with. You can then save and share your ideas. Much easier than the reality of going out and buying the plants,  bringing them into your house or office only to discover it is not what you envisioned at all.

Thank you Costa Farms for constantly innovating! Give it a try and share your pictures with us!

These deck planters captured the eye of one of the local ducks for nesting

As I was reading through technician service reports for the last two months, I noted one of them said she was having trouble accessing one of the outside planters to clean it up because a duck was using it as a nest.

Birds find outside containers to be a good nesting spot. Two years ago I was getting ready to add summer color to one of our accounts. A sparrow was harassing me while I worked. When I reached in to grab out the carex, I uncovered freshly hatched babies. Fortunately I was paying attention to what I was doing and didn’t crush anything.

A hanging basket on our front porch at the house was home to nesting robins. It was as startling to me as it was to the robins to have them fly out every time we went out the front door.

It is a treat for me to find nature surviving in the middle of our urban setting. While it can throw our schedule off for a couple weeks, we need to share the habitat with everything else that lives with us.

Happy nesting season.

I wanted to share this story from NPR  where Guerrilla grafters are adding branches of fruit bearing trees to non fruit bearing trees in areas of San Francisco where the population could benefit from fresh produce.

The city has long forbidden fruit bearing trees to avoid a slippery mess when the fruit ripens and falls off the trees. While the city has a legitimate reason for not wanting fruit, if the grafters are right in their assumption that the population will benefit from and take advantage of the fresh pears and other fruit, then there will be no fruit left to fall on the sidewalk.

I admire creative people who are not afraid to challenge the status quo. I am grateful for the growers of the plants that we use who look for and cultivate new varieties that can keep our industry fresh. I am thankful for the suppliers of planters and living wall products who give us fresh ideas and new products that show off the plants. This means we have exciting offerings to bring to our clients. I look forward to sharing them with you!

I look forward to seeing the results and consequences of the grafters work. Fresh produce free for the picking. Delightful.

Improvements

Last week I was out visiting accounts and checking on our plant service. I was delighted  to see the plants are clean, healthy and thriving. There was one newer account that I was concerned about because it is a very chilly space. The plants we use are mainly tropical and I have a good idea of how they will do but always worry a bit if conditions are not optimal.

The plants in that space were thriving. As a matter of fact the client had thrown out all the old furniture and put in new. When I went to talk to the building manager, I commented that the place looked wonderful. I also commented that perhaps she was also seeing a change in how people treat their building. She made a comment that surprised me. She stated that the janitors were even doing a noticeably better job now that the building had plants and better furnishings. Things were cleaner and extra touches like fluffing pillows were happening.

That lines up with what I believe – that appearance matters. An attractive organized space breeds productivity. We can all use that!

New tech Kelsey with Irwin

It has been a crazy new year and no we haven’t expanded down under.

Nina left to be a stay at home parent and Jesse is off working on an organic farm and camping in the forests of Kaui.

That means I have been training our newest technician Kelsey (shown here with one of the most unusual pets we have run across).

We spend three months introducing technicians to how we care for our plants and our clients. It is an intense program that  guarantees your plants will be cared for by people you are delighted to have in your office. This keeps your plants looking beautiful and keeps our replacement plant costs down (as well as your costs). New technicians learn the botanical and common names of the plants we use as well as what pests are problems and what kind of care each plant needs.

So far so good for Kelsey. She is doing a great job making the plants look beautiful!

I am happy to report our tree appears to be saved!
The benefits of water removal from the soil and the capacity of the roots to hold the soil in place appear to be the saving factor. I hope so!

Frozen plants

If you think you are having fun with the snow, think about your outdoor plants!

Those of us who are plant nuts look at rhododendrons with ice hanging off their leaves and shiver. Will everything survive? The answer is no – there will be some losses. The good news is you will probably only lose those items that you would expect to lose in a normal winter. Some of those hardy pansies and cyclamen will not look so good when the snow melts.  If you didn’t take the time to wrap some of those tender plants that are really more tropical than we are  (Windmill palms, cordyline, Hardy bananas) you will probably have severe dieback. As long as they were not in containers (in which case you should have wrapped the planter as well) the roots may survive and you could see some growth come up from those roots when it gets warm enough in the spring.

The good news is there was snow with our cold temperatures. The snow acts as a blanket to protect plant roots and may save some plants that would not have survived otherwise. The melting snow will also help to rehydrate ground and plants that have had all the moisture sucked out of them with the wind.

Has the freezing rain broken some branches off your plants?  When the weather clears, make that nasty broken end clean by sawing it off so that the wound is at a spot where new natural growth will occur in a way that will create an attractive plant. This means looking at the areas on the stem or branch below the break. Look for a swelling (where a new bud or branch would come out) or an existing branch that is going in the direction you would like to see the new growth go. (For me that means a branch that is going out and up in a pleasing direction – not in to the center of the plant or down at some weird angle). Then make your neat new cut just above that point. Your new branch will come out at an attractive angle creating a beautiful plant!

We will be busy the next couple weeks adding fresh color to our frozen container plants. We will also be hoping we don’t have to repeat again this winter.

As an aside, I just noticed the birds are loving the fact that I haven’t cleaned out the dead seed heads from my garden yet! The birds are delighted at finding the extra sustenance from those Greek oregano and Coreopsis seed heads that never got removed. I hope you were a lazy gardener as well so the birds can survive!

We have a 90 year old Cedrus deodora in our yard. It is one of the reasons we bought our house. Over the years (especially when my office was in my home) I have watched the squirrels play, the branches sway and the raccoons climb it and make their messes at the bottom of it. Eagles and herons rest in it. Every Halloween a bat flies down from it on unsuspecting trick or treaters.

It is expensive to maintain. Every time we need it trimmed, it costs us anywhere from $1200 to $2000 and it is not a do it yourself job.  But I love it.

I did not realize how much until my neighbor told us he wanted it down. I felt like I had been punched in the gut. It took me at least 24 hours to recover because it was so unexpected. I have taken a lot in the last year but I was expecting it; my daughter went off to college, our dog died, my mother in law died but the thought of losing the tree affected me the most because it was a surprise and I discovered I am surprisingly connected to the tree.

My neighbor has valid points and I can understand his concern but it will still leave a big hole in my life. To honor the tree, we hope to connect our arborist with a wood artist in a business group that I belong to. You can see their work here.  I also will take 1/2 yard or so of the wood chips to use as a mulch in my gardens. (Whole tree wood chips – as opposed to bark – are the best mulch in your yard).

We are still in the process of getting a permit to do the work. It turns out the City of Seattle has a rule that states trees over 6″ in diameter require an arborist to certify them as hazardous and then you must get a permit to take it down.  The reasons are valid. Trees reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, they hold hillsides in place, absorb excess rainfall, reduce temperatures in urban areas, are home to wildlife, and in my opinion bring tranquility! I guess I could be called a treehugger.

The City requires us to  replant. I haven’t gotten that far to see what diameter/variety is required but it will hopefully be a joy for someone else many years down the road.

Holiday Poinsettias

You ended up with a poinsettia.  Your first mission is to keep it alive until Christmas. Poinsettias prefer a good drink of water without sitting in it. You should then let your poinsettia dry slightly before watering again.  They are a tropical plant so unless you live in a part of the world where it is always above 55 degrees, you should not leave it sitting outside your front door or let it sit in a cold car while you go shopping. Place your poinsettia in a bright area that is warm (65-75) during the day.

Christmas is over. Now what? Our personal opinion with our clients is that it is time to get rid of them. We compost them and recycle the plastic pots.  If your poinsettia still looks beautiful and you have the space and proper lighting, you could hold onto it. Eventually the flowers fade and you cut them off. If you are trying to keep it as a houseplant, I recommend cutting about a third of the branches down to within 2″ of the main stems. This will encourage new growth and a prettier plant that is full.

If you want to make it flower again, keep it healthy and growing through the spring in summer. Fertilize once a month with a weak liquid fertilzer for houseplants.  Then 14 weeks before you would like to see color, get a box big enough to put over the plant every night. There must be 12 hours of total darkness and then normal bright light during the other 12 hours.  Even one night of skipping this routine will delay the coloring of the bracts.  Alternately, you could find a room that will be totally dark for 12 hours.

One thing NOT to do (we have had people do this and then ask us why their poinsettia died) is to put it in a closet in total darkness and leave it there.

When I was young, there was a woman we visited who had beautiful walking sticks made from polished poinsettia canes. Now that I am older, I realize she must have purchased them on a trip to Mexico and not grown her own.

Here is a more detailed article on poinsettia care and feeding:

Thank you to everyone who came to our warehouse clearance sale.

Even though we are hard to find, you found your way here. We raised $85 (wait, we just had one more sale – make that $97) for Treehouse www.treehouse.org. 100% of the sales from our “used plants” went to Treehouse and we set aside 5% of the rest of our sales.

Treehouse works with foster children giving them opportunities such as summer camp, dance lessons and new clothes that foster parents can’t always provide on what the state gives them for care.

We now have room to put the hundreds of poinsettias we will be supplying next week and a fresh outlook on our space. We hope you enjoy your plants!