My Nerdy Plant Display Window

Yes, those are dirty dishes. And frankly, not much design fuss went into this. I just snapped these photos tonight, since I jsut noticed that these are all yellow flowers ( I know, the Halogen lights are blowing out the yellows, but with a flash, this would have looked far worse). I just thought that I would capture this honest moment, as I found it when arriving home from work tonight. You should smell these Gladiolus tristis….wow….almost too much.

OK…..This is about as bad as it gets…I will now admit, full disclosure, that I have a display window over my sink. Yeah….I installed a 90 degree bay window, and had lighting added, and a copper tray with gravel, just so I can display pots from the greenhouse that are currently in bloom.

I was inspired by three things here, first, Thalasa Crusoes early writings, where she remembers her first home in Boston, and the plant window she asked her husband to build, with a copper tray and “proper pebbles” placed in it so that she could display paperwhites. Second, the estate I worked at while in high school, that of Mr. Robert Stoddard and her famous Fletcher Steele garden, Mrs. Stoddard had a plant window in her dining room, and I had to stock it with peach colored tulips, periwinkle Hyacinths and Primula Obconica for much of the winter. I loved that window. And third…..the New England Spring Flower Show, where an annual contest was held each spring on displaying plants in a faux bay window. All of these I first experienced when I was a teen ( obviously, a nerdy one) and, now, as an adult, I can bring many of these to reality – albeit above my sink full of dishes!
Now it gets worse.

I actually theme the displays ( like this one, which really occured by accident, being themed as “Yellow-South-African-Flowering- Bulbs-that-bloom-in-March.” Of course, I could go on, and say that it is ‘A window of geophytic Cape Bulbs that are pollenated by sun birds” but I did that last year. ( see?).

The other plants are a rare yellow flowered Velthiemia bracteata ( the one that looks like a red-hot poker that got scared), and a beautuful new seedling that I brought back from Mr. Nakamura’s farm in Japan of a yellow clivia, one of his Vico Gold offspring,(which too is fragrant), and a nice little pot of the precious little South African bulb, Lachenalia alata ssp. aurea from leaf cuttings last year started in the greenhouse.(no fragrance).