Baby plants have a particular charm for me. I spent a happy half hour this afternoon browsing the display of tiny ‘terrarium’ plants in 1” pots at the Great Big Greenhouse in Richmond. and came home with more than a half dozen tiny starts of Begonias and ferns. What fun! I have a couple of future projects taking shape in imagination, and I gathered some of the plants and staging I will need for them today.
The charm of baby plants is their mystery and their promise. What will it look like as it grows? How beautiful will it be as it blooms? How will it fit into my garden?
I have purchased countless baby plants over the years that ‘seemed like a great idea at the time.’ And then there were gifts of little divisions that came from friends in grocery bags and old nursery pots. Gifts of love and kindness, all. Especially when our upper garden was largely an empty, mulch carpeted blank slate, gardening friends expressed their compassion and well-wishes with gifts from their own gardens. Plus, they know I’m a sucker for a new plant, right?
The promise inherent in most of these sweet little starts is that they will be happy in our garden, will feel comfortably at home, and will grow.
Here lies the irony experienced gardeners know in their bones: some cute little baby plants grow up to become out of control real estate tycoons. Sound like a familiar story?
Read more at Our Forest Garden
Forest Garden 
Is your title off?
? What do you mean, Tony? You should see the vigor I’m bringing to eradicating the vines and the goldenrod this spring. Hope you’re well, WG
Oh, so it is six in one picture? I did not see that one coming. Most people do the opposite, by posting too many pictures in six groups, which is like totally cheating . . . . if there were such a thing as cheating here. I saw ‘Six on Saturday’ and though that you used the title of something else.
Hi WG,
So good to read a blog from you again!
No, I can’t say that at my advanced age I’m much of a sucker for “baby plants” any more…my husband & I are already arguing @ whether to get another cat if our 18-year-old Pumpkin pre-deceases us. (He says “yes” and I say “no,” although we both hope our dear Pumpkin lives to dance on our graves.)
Forgive the digression…but I just had the lamium in one of my outdoor pots fail…mysterious & sad, but no biggie…as contrasted with my impossible garden, where the task is so overwhelming I can’t “baby” the babies…no more 4AM feedings for me. (That said, I recently acquired some dug-up hardy begonias and stuck them in a difficult spot as an experiment…but after watering them, I waved good-bye & told them “good luck;” they seem to be doing well so far, but I’m not sweating it.)
But hey, WG, I’m not 1/10th the gardener you are…any baby plant who meets you will be a lucky baby indeed.
Your fan,
Monica