When I just read a post that monika put up about making another brug part of her alley trees, I wondered how she got started in brugs and how it lead her to where she is now.
Then I thought, I wonder the same for others as well.
How did you get started and how has it lead you to where you are now?
I'll go first....until March of this year, I never heard of a brug or saw one. A DL forum friend asked if I would like a cutting. I said yes....so she gave me a Charles Grimaldi and a double white. The double white bloomed and I was hooked. I started about a doz. seeds from poppysue (plus datura seeds) and have added plants and cuttings and now am up to about 35 different kinds.(OK, maybe 40!) I just finished putting up a little portable GH to over-winter them.
Each time the door bell rings and it is the mailman, my DH says "What did you get?" I say, "oh...just somemore sticks!" And then I sing..."I'm just a girl who can't say no!" I can't wait to go outdoors when I wake up in the morning to see what my plants are doing...
BTW...my 2 yr. old daylily addiction has brought me to a 230 daylily collection, so I do tend to be slightly compulsive!
What about you!!!
How did brugs become a part of your life...?
It's funny you should ask that....
I was looking up Elephant ears one day a year or so ago & my search lead me to Dave's Garden website. I found my info, & cruzed around a bit, of course not being a member I couldn't "cruze" too much. I happened on the Brug Thread & read the beginnings of them but not being a member you can't read replies, (they get cha there!) I got intrested as to what these "Brugs" were & how to grow them, So I paid my dues & got to read all about them.
I remember seeing a plant in San Francisco once (from a far) like I was seeing pics of & always wondered what it was. So I jumped right in & asked LOTS of questions. About this time last year a friend that lives in Houston sent me some cuttings off her neighbors bush, I rooted them & away I went. I bought a few kinds of seeds from Calas but didn't have much luck getting them started. Pete shared some of his seeds with me & I had better luck. I now have 6-7 different ones & searching for MORE! I got hooked like most everyone else that reads the "Brug Threads" So it's all your fault. Thank-x
Now my Green Hut only has Brugs in it & my Elephant ear has to be crushed into a corner in my house!!! Not sure what I'm doing with the other plants that grew in the GH last winter!!! Hey, Thank you all for this wonderful addiction, The generosity of your seeds & information.
Hugs, Bj
My story is very short. A friend gave me one several years ago. Five or six years, I'd guess. You know, as I've gotten older, the time flies so fast, I can't remember. Anyway, I almost killed it due to spider mites and not knowing what they were. It survived and bloomed a couple of blooms and that was it. Instant love for the plant. I have no idea how many different ones I've had over these years, but more than I would want to count. They are all pretty, but some are more special than others. I don't think I'll every be without them in my yard...at least as long as I'm able to take care of them.
Well, I found DG and very quickly subscribed. After looking at a brug, I posted a "how pretty." A very wonderful lady sent me two as a welcome to Dave's present. The rest is history. Here are V.peach (finally, finally FULL of buds) and butterfly as of today. Time to trim the lavatera, I think.
I am now culling my numbers as all of mine are going into the ground and they get rather large here. The ones that have performed best in our dry heat will stay and the rest have all found new homes in Northern Ca.
I saw some brugs about 3 or 4 years ago growing in the yard of a lady that lives directly behind the courthouse parking lot. She has a fenced yard and has about 6-8 brugs growing right up against the fence, quite close to the road. She also grows lots of other things and it is a joy to go by her house and see what's blooming today.
I found Garden Web on the net and then DG. Well, after being "Disneyed," I started hanging out here with the other fugitives from GW. When I checked the brug forum and saw what they were ( I didn't even know their name ) I wanted to try one. Someone undoubtably gave me an Isabella. It may not be very exciting to some, but it blooms better than any others so far in my cool climate (so far). So, I want to say "thank you" to that person and I wish I wasn't so senile so I could remember who you are......
I had never heard of Brugs until about four years ago. I seen one listed on Ebay and realized it was a picture of a plant that someone had given my neighbor a cutting of. I looked them up on the internet and later found Susie's site and the rest is history. LOL I was totally addicted and had to have them all. Any I seen on any site that I didn't have, I'd order. Then I found the several Brug sites and received cuttings (thanks Shirley for feeding my addiction). I took all the cuttings I could of all of mine and rooted them and thus tried to feed others addiction but everytime I see a new one, I get the gotstohaveit's all over again. LOL
The first time I saw a brug was at Kew Gardens in London - they had one growing in a glasshouse. I was fascinated. I decided I had to have one... unfortunately I was living in an apartment at the time and had no place to grow it. After I got a house, I remembered the brug and decided to finally get one... my first brug was a rooted cutting of an unnamed pink - I still have that one. Then I got Dr. Seuss, and that was it for about 3 yrs. Brugs don't get a lot of publicity - at least in my area - so I really didn't know everything that was out there until this year. I found out some more about brugs this spring on GardenWeb, and traded for 3 more. This summer I was doing a search for something brug-related and happened upon a link to Kell's famous red brug. I was so impressed I paid my subscription to DG just so I could see the full pictures and the rest of the posts. Since then I've acquired about a dozen other brugs - so next year I will have a serious brug garden in my yard. They're very rewarding plants to grow - nothing else has such huge, fragrant flowers.
My story is short......About 3 years ago I ordered a 'Black Currant Swirl' datura. As it started to grow I fell in love with it. And about the same time I started using the internet more and more and began to research datura. While researching I happened upon the word brugmansia. So as I researched that I came upon DG. LOL...end of story! I've been in love with these beauties for about 2 years now! And thanks to all the generous people here I have many!
ahelms, apparently gotstohaveits is communicable.....
You're so right. LOL
I saw my 1st one here in Colorado at a butterfly pavillion, it was a beautiful peach color, and a HUGE tree. I didnt think too much about it.. it was beautiful, but during the day, so it didnt smell. In the meantime, my best friends mom was sick with cancer, and wanted to find something "special" to send to her. I saw a place that sold "Angel Trumpets" I thought, what an appropriate plant. (Come to find out it was a Datura) BUT.. I had to know more about these Angel trumpets. Did alot of research, and found out they (Angel Trumpets) are actually Brugmansia, that lead me to DG.
After I found DG I was driving to work one morning, and saw a white one out in front of a buisness. I was doing double take after double take, and thinking, gosh that really looks like the thing I saw at the pavillion, could we possibly grow them here? After smacking into the back of a car, I thought oh good! These things are hardy here... lolol (still looking for that hardy one). After many initial questions, and MANY hours of research.. I was totally hooked. Thank God for the wonderful people here who send me cuttings to get me started! Then came seeds.. lol I was, and always be a lost cause when it comes to them.
The first time I found Daves Garden I saw a post by kell about her Brugs, the more I read, and saw pictures the more desperate I became to have some, you got it, I got my first seeds from Kell, and she was more than generouse, now I am dying to see my first bloom.
When I first arrived in California, I was invited to a barbecue. In the backyard, they had a CDW tree. It was amazing. I had never seen anything like it.
Then years later when I had moved to a new town, I saw another CDW huge bush a few blocks from my home. Every week I passed it. One day I stopped and begged and the man gave me a huge cutting. At some point I also bought a Frosty and got a cutting of a beautiful sang at a hotel in Mendocino. I had them for many years. I still have the Frosty though I keep trying to kill it. The sang was a huge tree, I cut it down last year because it had picked up a virus from my other brugs. Sangs are very susceptible to them. I was so sad!
One day about 6 years ago, I was at a nursery in Half Moon Bay. They had a plant with the most beautiful flower I had ever seen. I grabbed it and went to the checkout. No one knew anything about it. I bought it. Unfortunately, it was fall and the plant soon died. It was a triple purple datura. I can still remember the feel of my excitement when I first saw it.
I'd heard about Brugs about 4 or 5 years ago, and ordered a couple from a company down in Louisiana. Well, something happened to their crop (weather problems) so I never got the order.
I'd long forgotten about wanting to grow them, until I joined Dave's just about a year ago (November?). I started cruising through the Brugmansia forum and was able to get a much better visual of what I was missing.
ShirleyMD volunteered to send me seeds, and aI planted them. I was only able to get 5 plants from them, just two varieties, but I think that was a good thing - they have been a learning experience, for sure.
Now I just got some cuttings and more seeds and Russ is rolling his eyes at me. He's thinking "Ut Oh - there she goes." He does like them though - the first night my Isabella X opened, he was out there smelling it constantly. It doesn't smell anymore, and I think between him, my neighbor Dee, and myself, we sniffed all of the perfume out of it in one evening, lol!
We had moonflowers (daturas) ever since I was 5 yo. When I lived in San Diego many people had these trees in their yards that had the same kind of flowers so I asked what they were and where to get one..and the rest is history! :-)
I stared when I was seventeen and reading Carlos Castaneda. I simply had to see, how a Datura looked in real life. I found a garden center, that had Datura ... they turned out to be Brugmansia. I never saw much of any flowers as I kept them in the windowsill. Since that time I grew Brugmansia a little on and off. In 1989 I started to grow them on regular basis for fun and for research. In 1998 or '99 the library in Sorø got computers with internet access and I was enchanted entirely by finding my friend Vicki Hardings website, that completely swept my feets of the ground. I was on that library almost on daily basis as they always was kind to provide me with photocopies of anything I needed for my study of Datura (from 1990 through 2000). Sometimes I forgot to ask at the desk, if new copies had arrived, because I was rushing upstairs to see, if Vicki had added more pictures to her website, so it was up to Anne, the librarian, to see, if she could catch me LOL
You can say in short, that if Carlos Castaneda got me interested, then it was Vicki Harding that got me forever hooked :)
Later tiG invited me to join Daves Garden, where I met great people online, such as Eric Knight, Kyle Courtney, Monika Gottschalk that also is a true cat friend, Susie and Kelley, Ma Vie and all of you wonderful people and Dave himself, not to forget.
I saw them in hawaii and I just loved them. After some research I found out that the plants were called brugmansia and the rest is history. I received my first brug back in May of this year (through a trade) and I now have around 70 named varieties. (still looking for Rothkirch - anyone??) My mission this year was to collect as many varieties as possible so that I can try hybridizing. I found BGI and joined, I have learned tons from all of the great people at BGI (thanks!!!). I look forward to expanding my collection as well as possibly creating a hybrid worth naming some day :) I would like to thank all of the Dave's members for helping out newbies like me. We all really appreciate it.
Jeremiah
I was born in Southern California, and I could almost swear I've smelled this before,, pleasantly.th
the perfume on this is gorgeous - anywayone want to fly up real quick?
Its all DonnaB's fault. *grin*
This is interesting!
In 1999, I did a plant trade with a nice lady from Georgia. The trade didn't include Brugs, but she *absolutely insisted* that I *needed* them.
I'm mainly an 'indoor'/'tropical' plant enthusiast...a collector, if you will. I'd seen photos of Brugs and adored them, but considered them outdoor plants for warmer regions, and I never dreamed that I could bring these indoors, so I just didn't think I needed them as badly as *she* thought I needed them!
She had all kinds of advice, and swore to me that they were incredibly easy to over-winter indoors...which I've found they are! She even persuaded me to grow one in-ground....holey smokes!!
She was my "Brugmansia Mentor"...I'm sure many of us have one of those!
When I saw my first bloom....I was hooked!! I began collecting and had about 20 different Brugs, but then my youngest son broke his leg and spent a month in the hospital, a month in a body cast and a month in PT, and just months after that ordeal....my oldest son was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
That winter I lost about 3/4 of my collection (they didn't get watered...no time, no energy.) Three or 4 of my babies held on and are still going strong.
Now that everone's well again....I'm collecting again (and taking much better care of what I have!)
I've lost track of my good friend in Georgia....I had tried her email several times in the past few years to no avail.....her name was Pat C. .....does anyone here think they might know of her? If so, please email me.
My story is short and sweet. I joined DG, I started visiting the Brugmansia & Friends forum, fell in love with the gorgeous photos, answered a trade request offering Brugs in trade, Bing, Bang, Boom...I had my first three cuttings. A Betty Marshall, a CG, and a Knightii. A short time later, a very nice friend of mine who knew I had developed a keen new interest in Brugs, sent me a young Isabella plant. Although I have yet to see blooms from my four young plants, I am waiting in blissful anticipation. :D
Donna
One day while surfing on Ebay for plants I saw a listing for Brugmansia, I had never heard of a plant called Brugmansia. The thing that caught my attention most was the name, My maiden name is Brugman. After seeing the name I had to look, and after I saw how beautiful it was, I had to have one, then two, then the addictions.....
Boy, that is a lot of name to try to type. Welcome to the brug forum. You will have to tell us about your brugs in another thread. Glad you are here.
The funny thing is the Name Brugie was actually one of my nickname growing up....
mns...welcome to DG and brugs. I am from NY and lived in NHP, LI when I first got married.
Oh that is so cool. Nobody has ever heard of NHP. lol
Nan, the best part of your post is that your sons are well again!!!!!
Yes Nan, it's wonderful that everyone is well again! Welcome!!!
mns....welcome also to the brug forum! This is a great place to find valuable info and great friends!
Thanks, SherryLike and Brinda....I !wholeheartedly! agree, that *is* the best! :)
I think my story will probably be the shortest. I saw a picture on the other forum. That is all it took. I was on a mission to get a cutting.
Mine's short too, I was hooked after 'Just One Look'!! I'll bet Kell has already posted those lyrics, they do fit perfectly...
I have to second Sherry and Patricia's answers. I saw a brug picture on another forum that Poppysue had posted, and I was enthralled. I'd never seen anything like it before. I bought my first cuttings, and two very generous DG'rs sent me some wonderful cuttings. Then I started seeds.........I couldn't tell you how many cultivars I have growing, not to mention seedlings.