Creative plantings - August 26th, 2005 at 08:53 AM
Many of you will relate to my predicament of having more plants than space, so I thought it would be interesting to start a thread on creative ways to manage limited space without sacrificing the number and variety of plants that share our homes.
This ficus benjamina was one I rescued late last winter from someone who abandoned it outdoors. After pruning back all the frost damaged parts, all that remained was one trunk with a few sparsely foliated branches. New foliage is beginning to fill it out somewhat and the plant is recovering but back then it looked quite pathetic, so to detract the eye from my "Charlie Brown" ficus and to save space, I companion planted shallow-rooted purple oxalis in the same pot. (Because oxalis have shallow roots, it is easy to dig up the corms during their dormant period without disturbing the ficus roots, place them in a peat-filled bag for a month, then replant them again.)
Have any of you similar ideas you care to share with the rest of us? I'm always looking creative ideas on conserving space.
This ficus benjamina was one I rescued late last winter from someone who abandoned it outdoors. After pruning back all the frost damaged parts, all that remained was one trunk with a few sparsely foliated branches. New foliage is beginning to fill it out somewhat and the plant is recovering but back then it looked quite pathetic, so to detract the eye from my "Charlie Brown" ficus and to save space, I companion planted shallow-rooted purple oxalis in the same pot. (Because oxalis have shallow roots, it is easy to dig up the corms during their dormant period without disturbing the ficus roots, place them in a peat-filled bag for a month, then replant them again.)
Have any of you similar ideas you care to share with the rest of us? I'm always looking creative ideas on conserving space.