How do you display your babies? I usually put mine out on my shady porch for summer, but the shelves I'm using look pretty ratty. I want some long shelves that will stand up to weather. I'm thinking of making some out of copper tubing.
Any suggestions or pictures of how you display yours? Thanks, Liz/Austin
Displaying begonias
Luciludog- Great thread and I'm anxious to see the replies. I do not have room for shelves so I try to group them around my other plants. It's a look that I love to hate. The plant collector in me loves all the potted plants but the other part of me knows that it looks horrible from a design stand point. I think I go over board each year.
I'm in the same boat as datdog. It isn't lack of shelves but rather rules put down by my better half. I have 4 begonias in the house proper and they are on three accent tables with two tables in the kitchen/breakfast room and the other table in a corner in the living room.
The rest of the horde (200+) are downstairs on chrome shelves and homemade wooden shelves under shoplights where artful arrangement and design doesn't matter (other than space and plant requirements). No one appreciates begonias (or other houseplants for that matter) except like-minded people.
In summer they all get moved outdoors under high limbed trees where they get plenty of light, humidity, and fresh air. Some are moved to the front porch but I think that is going to be off limits this year. Last summer I tried grouping them in categories such as rexes, rhizos, and canes. This year I'd like to put down weed cloth and cover it with gravel or pine bark to keep mud from splashing on the pots and plants to minimize clean up in the fall before the great move back indoors.
hcmcdole, how will you place them under the tree? On the chrome shelves or hanging or what?
Hey, I think we have a new business idea-creative shelves for plant display, that can go indoors or out! Who's in?
Lucilu,
I just place the pots on the ground. It's bad enough when we get a storm and I have to upright some of the plants (usually canes in plastic pots) but I cannot imagine the damage done to them if they were sitting on shelves. Also the chrome shelves are 6 foot high by 4 foot wide and 18 inches deep. I have 8 of these. Then I have 5 wooden shelves that are 6 foot high by 8 foot long and 2 foot deep. These are very big and heavy plus all the lights hanging off of them as well would be a pain to remove in summer and hang back in winter. The wood shelves would probably rot once moved outdoors which I hope they can stand for many, many years to come sitting in the basement.
Eventually it would be nice to have a wood platform (deck) for just displaying begonias around the yard. I really wanted to gravel a good portion of the back yard (Mediterranean style) so I could place a pot anywhere without fear of falling over due to slope and preventing mud splash back. The landscaper we hired had different ideas so we are stuck with a stone patio and doesn't come anywhere close to the size I was envisioning.
My other project that I want to try this year is planting a lot of the begonias in beds to see if I can increase the size and number of plants in a short span of time. I did this once at our old house and the canes I had at the time grew like proverbial weeds. The downside is digging them in fall.
What I really like is how sometimes after I moved them outdoors haphazardly (since I had help this past year and my little worker could've cared less about placement, they were even more haphazard than if I had done it all by myself) that some really turned out to be good combinations such as having good contrast like a silver leaf rex against a dark leaf rhizo. Then for the rest of the summer until the big splash in fall (when rexes become center stage), I move them about to please my eye. I don't worry about imperfections such as the lay of the land since this is a work in progress, but rather what might look good for picture taking and just the right amount of sun, etc. for health of the plant.
Here is a group shot of almost all of the rexes late September. I also find grouping them helps in watering them with a sprinkler instead of hand watering with a wand.
This message was edited Apr 12, 2007 12:12 PM
Wow! That's stunning! And a great idea. Most of my begonia are small, so in some cases, I will combine the planting in a larger pot. But I really enjoy each of my begonias and enjoy looking at them individually.
I guess I haven't had much damage, since I do put them into glazed pots, which seem to hold up.