How to move plants to a new home

Quick poll: Does the word “moving” trigger your anxiety?

How about “moving more than 100 plants”?

Former Chicago Botanic Garden horticulturist Tom Weaver recently moved to Minnesota to start a new chapter. Along with his husband and dog, he brought his plant family, a love he has nurtured since childhood. “My mom makes fun of me because I knew the Latin names of plants before I could read,” he said.

Part of Weaver's houseplant collection, grown under grow lamps in his basement.
Part of Weaver’s houseplant collection, grown under grow lamps in his basement.

Now he’s a proud plant parent to more than 100 plants. The collection is impressive, to be sure. But just how does one transport a thriving plant collection?

As I prepared for my own move (only a few blocks away), I sat down with Weaver to learn how to make the transition happy and healthy for my green, leafy friends.

Weaver's dog, Pepin, isn't so sure about the monstera coming along for the move.
Weaver’s dog, Pepin, isn’t so sure about the monstera coming along for the move.
Weaver's trunk-load of houseplants.
Weaver’s trunk-load of houseplants.

  1. Research state restrictions for plants

    “First you have to consider—if you’re moving across state lines—whether you can even bring your plants,” said Weaver. “California, Florida, Arizona … pretty much any warm-climate state has strict rules about what you can and cannot bring because there are so many agricultural pests.” For a current listing, refer to the National Plant Board.

  2. Sort and purge

    Just as you might sell, donate, or trash unwanted clothes, take a good look at your plants. Toss any you don’t want to bring to your new home. “Why bring something if you’re just going to throw it away once you get there?” Weaver said. “Now is the time to get rid of anything disease or insect-infested.”

  3. Make cuttings of large plants you can’t move

    If you’re like Weaver, you may want to take only a cutting of large specimens like his 6-foot monstera or 8-foot dracaena. Decide whether you want to bring the whole plant, or save room in your moving truck by taking a cutting (and gifting the large plant to a friend). “The nice thing about aroid plants like monstera is the vines have roots growing all over the place,” said Weaver. “You can easily chop a leaf off and root it without really having to think about it.”

  4. Pack plants with care

    Make sure plants are packed snugly in boxes so they don’t move and break. Weaver recommends wrapping plants in newspaper so dirt won’t spill, and so that plants like cacti don’t poke holes in their plant buddies.

  5. Water plants before moving

    Plants can tolerate two to three days in a box without any major problems, said Weaver. Just be sure to water them before you leave, especially if you’re driving through intense heat. “If it’s going to be 100 degrees and you make pit stops along the way, your plants will get hot,” said Weaver. “You’ll want to water them enough to get them through the trip.”

  6. Be patient with the adjustment

    Getting used to a new home goes for your plants, too. “Once you get to your new place, they’ll go through some transport shock,” said Weaver. “They may lose a couple of leaves. With anything, adjusting takes time. It’s best to put your plants in a spot that is a similar environment to their old home.” Be patient with the learning curve.

 


©2018 Chicago Botanic Garden and my.chicagobotanic.org

Tips for Your Fall Container Gardens

Are your summer container gardens in need of a fall makeover? Good news! There are many fall-flavored plants that will provide you with texture, form, and long-lasting colors in both flowers and foliage.

I love the combination of purple or blue asters (Symphyotrichum) with ornamental kale as the colors play off each other nicely for a long-lasting fall container. Using other lesser-known plants, such as some of the fall-blooming Salvias or sage can add height and lend to very interesting combinations in your container gardens. Try using cold-hardy vegetables and adding herbs to create interest and texture to any combination. I like using Swiss chard, broccoli, Asian greens, parsley, and onions (Allium) for interesting and colorful effects.

Fall Containers

Here are a few tips for planning your fall containers:

  1. To achieve a fuller effect, use more plants than you would in the spring or summer. As the days begin to get shorter and the nights get cooler, plant growth is slowing down or ceasing. By planting a fuller container, you will see immediate results that can last for the remainder of the fall season.
  2. Try to plant by early September to give your plants a chance to kick in with some growth before the cooler temperatures and shorter days slow things down. Remember, many plants available for fall container gardens can take temperatures in the 20s Fahrenheit without being damaged, while many plants actually begin to show better foliage colors with cooler temperatures. These include ornamental kale and cabbage, Heuchera, and many ornamental grasses as well.
  3. Select plants that have a variety of tones that contrast and set off each other. Think about using colorful cultivars of Heuchera for their many foliage colors, and colorful grasses or grass-like plants, such as Pennisetum, Carex, Juncus, or the black foliage of Ophiopogon. See the list below of other fall plants to consider for your containers.
  4. Remember, a pot of mums looks fresh for three to four weeks at most, and then the show is over. Showy foliage from grasses or kale and cabbage will carry the display much longer.
  5. The fall foliage on evergreen succulents (Sempervivum ‘Hens and chicks’), and many of the stonecrop (Sedum) cultivars changes and develops more dramatic color once the temperatures stay cool.
  6. If you must have flower power, consider long- and late-blooming Salvia, Cuphea, or fall pansies or violas.
  7. When nighttime temperatures drop below freezing, have light blankets, large pots, or even an empty trash barrel handy to cover your container and protect the plantings from frost.
  8. As November passes, the time will come to disassemble your planter. Carefully place your hardy plants in a nursery bed or empty space in your vegetable garden plot to hold them over until next spring, when you can plant them in a permanent home to enjoy for another season.

 

Here are a few fall plants and items that can be added to your fall container gardens:

Brassica varieties - ornamental cabbage

Annuals:

  • Calibrachoa varieties
  • Capsicum, ornamental peppers
  • Dianthus cultivars, ‘Sweet William’ and other Pinks
  • Brassica varieties, ornamental kale and cabbage
  • Tagetes, marigolds
  • Pansies and violas
  • Helianthus, sunflowers
  • Plectranthus
  • Salvia, sages

Chrysanthemums

Perennials, trees, shrubs:

  • Anemone hybrids
  • Aster cultivars
  • Chrysanthemum, hardy fall mums
  • Helianthus and Helianthoides, perennial sunflowers
  • Rudbeckia, black-eyed-Susan
  • Boltonia
  • Sedum and Sempervivum, and other succulents
  • Fall foliage color with trees and shrubs; maples, cornus, viburnum, spirea, and others

Ornamental grasses

Ornamental grasses:

  • Miscanthus cultivars
  • Panicum cultivars
  • Pennisetum cultivars, including ornamental millet
  • Muhlenbergia, Muhly grass
  • Stipa tenuissima, Mexican feather grass
  • Schizachyrium scoparium, little bluestem

Pumpkins

Other fall items:

  • Pumpkins
  • Gourds and squash
  • Corn stalks
  • Straw
  • Branches
  • Fall decorative items; scarecrows, Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations

©2018 Chicago Botanic Garden and my.chicagobotanic.org

I love my plant job

I recently was admiring one of the stately agaves at the Chicago Botanic Garden, and I had a genuine “I love my job” moment. This was not the first time and definitely will not be the last. I took a moment to reflect on that and why my job as a horticulturist is so much more than caring for plants.

Salina Wunderle 2I started off as a seasonal employee in the production greenhouses, where we grow and tend for the plants you see throughout the Garden. Now I’m one of five senior horticulturists. My crew—horticulturist Dino de Persio and technician Evan Hydzik—and I oversee the three glorious display Greenhouses, all interiorscapes, two beautiful bonsai courtyards, event plant displays, and beyond. I also work closely with our creative design team to produce our annual Wonderland Express and Orchid Show.

Some people ask me, “What is horticulture?” If you Google “horticulture,” this is what comes up: Horticulture (noun): the art or practice of garden cultivations and management.

In my position, I am blessed to work with plants from all around the world. If you use a little imagination, these plants can transport you to new and exotic places. Many of the plants in our collection can link you to other cultures through their traditional, medicinal, ecological, economical, and ethnobotanical uses. For example, not many people know the showy bougainvillea is a traditional medicinal and culinary plant of Mexico and Central America. We also have bizarre bat-pollinated plants, such as the breathtaking jade vine (Strongylodon macrobotrys) and many Cereus cacti. Some of my favorites are the cardamom spice (Elettaria cardamomum), breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis), cocoa (Theobroma cacao), and coffee (Coffea arabica)—all of which are all edible, of course.

Look at this plant I get to cultivate! This is the century plant (Agave americana).
Look at this plant I get to cultivate! This is the century plant (Agave americana). Our last century plant bloomed in 2010. When will this one grow through the greenhouse roof? You’ll just have to stay tuned to find out. Seriously, I love this job.

I get to share the stories of these plants with guests of all ages and walks of life. Connecting people with plants is certainly one of the great joys of my job. Recently, I became part of the advisory council of an initiative called Seed Your Future (seedyourfuture.org). This movement was founded in 2013 by Longwood Gardens and the American Society for Horticultural Science, and has grown to include more than 150 partners, including the Chicago Botanic Garden. The group’s mission is “to promote horticulture and inspire people to pursue careers working with plants.”

BLOOM! logo

One way to do that is to introduce the world of horticulture to young people and show them the critical role plants have in all of our lives.

Earlier this year, Seed Your Future launched BLOOM, our first campaign to promote horticulture and inspire interest in careers in horticulture.

Green industry jobs game board by BLOOM! and Scholastic.
Download this fun game board and other engaging classroom materials at BLOOM!

Our BLOOM microsite has fun games, videos, and more for young people to enjoy getting to know the world of plants. The amazing thing about Seed Your Future is that the website has an expanding bank of resources for parents, teachers, camp counselors, and mentors to use in their programs. All of this is free. I can say I would have loved a resource such as this along my plant journey, and I am honored to be a part of it now.

Working with Seed Your Future has helped bring my story full circle. It has shown that my job as a horticulturist allows me to do so many fulfilling things: play with plants of the world, share knowledge and stories with others, inspire kids and adults, work with brilliant people, and ultimately get challenged and grow.

Thank you for letting me share my “I love my job!” moments.

Find your plant power at wearebloom.org; visit our Garden, and take part in our mission to cultivate the power of plants to sustain and enrich life.

 

Discovery of the Red Fernleaf Peony

As plant collectors, we spend a lot of time and energy researching the flora of the areas we are going to visit. We search out areas of the world where the climate is similar to that of the midwestern United States, and we make lists. Lots of lists.

Massive spreadsheets document travel plans, emergency contacts; high-value germplasm that we hope to find at each of our planned collection locations; and costs: airfare, gasoline in the country, driver wages, botanist guides, food, and lodging. All of this data is condensed into a one-page document that our hosts submit to the national environmental agencies within each country for approval and permits for the trip. Among our goals on plant-collecting trips is to collect seeds to conserve and to look for plants of horticultural interest to display in our collections.

Paeonia tenuifolia
Paeonia tenuifolia

Invariably, some of the treasures we return with are unanticipated. Such was our discovery of a very large population of Paeonia tenuifolia that was unknown to Georgian scientists in the remote and sparsely populated Vashlovani Reserve—a peninsula-shaped area surrounded by Azerbaijan on three sides, containing large rolling hills breaking into badlands—areas so heavily eroded I thought I was in the Badlands of the Dakotas.

We were in search of seeds of unusual bulbs in the Vashlovani Nature Reserve with Peter Zale from Longwood Gardens (the trip organizer), Panyoti Kelaidis from the Denver Botanic Gardens, and Manana Khutsishvili from the Institute of Botany, Ilia State University.

It was one of those breathtakingly beautiful days, with the rolling grasslands backdropped by the snow-covered peaks of the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range. Dirt roads had not been graded in quite a while, and the sun-baked ruts left over from the winter rains gave rise to the trip joke: shaken, not stirred. This was definitely four-wheel-drive country.

One of our target species in this area was Merendera trigyna, a beautiful spring-flowering Colchicum relative with pale pink to white flowers about twice the size of Crocus and blooming about the same time. Our data source was a herbarium voucher on file with the Institute of Botany Herbarium in Tbilisi. Peter had entered the coordinates into the GPS receiver after lunch, and the road seemed to head in the correct direction. A couple of hours later we were on the border with Azerbaijan and the coordinates suggested we needed to cross the border—not a match with the written description of the location on the herbarium voucher.

We continued to skirt the border, and an hour later we found a hilltop that allowed Manana to make a cellphone call back to the herbarium in Tbilisi. Thirty minutes further down the track, on another exceptionally high hill, we learned the coordinate system recorded on the voucher was from a Russian GPS system, not the American system our GPS was programmed for.

By that time it was too late to retrace our steps. In new territory for all of us, we continued on the track paralleling the Azerbaijan border, knowing that eventually it would lead us to a small Georgian town. By this time, it was about 6 p.m., and as we surmounted another rise we were greeted with thousands of fernleaf peony (Paeonia tenuifolia) in full flower. Each flower was the size of a salad plate, and a deep, intense red. Unlike the 8-inch-high representatives of this species in our American collections, the whole population was 2.5 to 3 feet in height, with an equal width. This population was unknown to the Georgian scientific community until we managed to get lost and found it in the process of working our way back home.

Paeonia tenuifolia in the remote and sparsely populated Vashlovani Reserve; the Caucases in the background.
Paeonia tenuifolia in the remote and sparsely populated Vashlovani Reserve; the Caucasus Mountains in the background.

A trip is planned for 2019 for the Republic of Georgia. It is timed to collect seeds from this population, as well as the nine other species of peonies native to this floristically rich country. Who knows what unsuspected treasures we will discover next year?


©2018 Chicago Botanic Garden and my.chicagobotanic.org

Transform Your Garden for Evening Outdoor Entertaining

Summer is in the air. As the nights heat up, it’s a perfect time to get outdoors and entertain in your garden. Chicago Botanic Garden floriculturist Tim Pollak shares how you can bring the party to your garden with a few simple tricks for evening entertaining.

Plant light-colored flowers
Enhance the darkness of evenings by planting white or cream-colored foliage and flowers. White flowers and plants create brightness in your garden by reflecting moonlight, candlelight, and firelight. Some flowers even “glow” in the moonlight, including white and yellow lilies. Pollak recommends flowering shrubs such as hydrangea, roses, and hibiscus.

hibiscus moscheutos 'Blue River II'
Hibiscus moscheutos
rosa 'Dicjana'
Rosa ‘Dicjana’
hydrangea arborescens
Hydrangea arborescens

Add fragrant, evening-blooming flowers
In areas where you can sit and entertain, use plants that emit mood-setting fragrance. Scent in a garden carries farther and longer in the evenings than in daytime, said Pollak. Plus, evening blooming plants often give off strong fragrance that attracts night-flying pollinators (additional guests for your party). Some examples of especially fragrant plants include heliotropium, nicotiana, and ipomoea alba.

outdoor garden lightingInstall night accent lighting
Lure guests down the garden path with purposefully placed outdoor lighting. You can shine focal points on specimen plants, and create wonderful shadows and backlighting effects that will enhance the setting of your evening party.

Keep warm with fire pits
People are drawn to fire pits, which create a campfire-like atmosphere, said Pollak. Fire pits also serve as focal points in your garden, providing warmth, light, and a cooking source. Stay warm on cooler nights, and enjoy the light and ambience that make fire pits a natural gathering spot for entertaining. Many fire pit options are available, including natural or electric, modern or traditional, in-ground or portable. Be sure to consider the placement of seating as well, with flexible options in case of wind and smoke.

evening outdoor entertaining - sculpture

Enhance the mood with garden structures and sounds
Nighttime atmosphere can make for a magical evening. A few sensory features such as white or gray painted structures or statues, wind chimes or fountains will add the perfect finishing touched to your evening ambience.

Keep out pesky party crashers
Mosquitos are never a welcome guest at a nighttime gathering. Keep them at bay by eliminating all standing water. You can also use citronella (including the actual citronella plant, or candles, lamps, and tiki torches) to help keep them away.


©2018 Chicago Botanic Garden and my.chicagobotanic.org