Surprise! I’m used to getting helpful recycling donations, like carefully saved flower pots, mesh onion bags, fruit baskets, plastic bags, even elastics, but a boatload of plants is a first. I was given about 20 each of potted heather and wintergreen, and six orchids. No idea what I might do with them. They’re from a big floral design company that makes up fancy settings for high-end special events, and throws everything out afterwards. I could easily be buried in random decorative plants if this stuff was to keep coming… In any case, these are here now! I looked up wintergreen, it’s a creeping evergreen shrub. Outdoors in winter, it holds its clusters of bright red berries—they stand out in the snow. Good eating for birds! Heather is quite the versatile plant, seems to have a cult of its own. A heather garden? The main stems of the orchids have been clipped, but apparently they’ll flower again. After a good watering, the orchids and most of the wintergreen are doing fine. Most of the heather came in bone-dry soil, and except for a few, it looks like they’re toast. Well, there’s space on the grow racks for a few weeks, so I’ll keep ’em around and see what happens next…!
Cool! You can’t say no to free plants …
I’m the same, can’t refuse plants! We’re putting in a new landscape in the front yard but first we dug out any salvageable plants…But I couldn’t just dig up a Prairie Phlox and put it in a pot–nooooooooo–I had to divide it up into 20 smaller plants! Along with the Asters, Blue Mists, Columbine, grasses, etc. we have quite a little nursery going here all of a sudden. On top of that my cousin sent about 75 Agave pups for me to grow when all this was happening! maybe we can do some trading….
That’s a shame the company just wastes the plants after they use them, but at least they gave them away this time!
The hollys will be great for birds and other wildlife, but watch out for the heathers – they are really invasive where I live and I fear we will be pulling up shoots of the plants we tore out last year for as long as we live here!
The orchids look to be in great shape!
Katie at GardenPunks
I’m rather jealous, I would love to get free plants. I have a lot of perennials started right now, last year I had such a good time giving the extras away to family. But I will admit that 20 of anything would be a lot to deal with. You could give away some of the ones that live.
Hi there, thanks for the site. Sorry this is slightly off topic but I made a little farming game that I thought you might like:
I hope you enjoy it :)