Disconsolate Number One
"Maybe people like us (meaning of our age) should be kept in all winter like cows.
Disconsolate Number Two
"Winter 1947 was far worse. How did we manage, with no central heating and only a few bits of wet turf?"
Disconsolate Number One
"Well, we were 39 years younger.
End of conversation indeed, there's enough to encourage you outside, if you are the average gardener.
Lots of snowdrops, of course, and don't let us despise them. A few crocuses.
A brilliant yellow witch hazel. Blazing bark of the bare, scarlet dogwood. Mahonia breaking out. Some fragrance, close up. But inside, the prize of them all "the indoor lime, flowering for about two months already and likely to go on for two or three months or more.
We'll come back to that later but meantime note a valiant attempt by Horticulture Week, a trade magazine, to dig out proof that indoor planting in business houses, shopping centres etc increases efficiency productivity and thus profits.
They found a couple of surveys, not on a big scale, which tended to the positive side, but had not a lot of figures to back up the thesis. In Gateshead in England a Metro Centre shopping complex installed indoor planting at a cost of £500,000 (half million) with an additional £170,000 annual maintenance cost. The Metro Senter (same crowd?) in Oslo had some positive reaction. Their planting increased visitor frequency. Shoppers said the atmosphere inside was better because of the plants. People in other planted areas speak of a better atmosphere.
"Sick building syndrome," says the article may be the result of some air conditioning units, and plants do help. And on the snobbish side, it is claimed that buildings with plants were considered, by people coming in, to be more expensive and thus, you might say "enhancing the corporate image." Anyway, no body in his or her senses would argue against the fact that the place just looks better with greenery. And these days there's nobody around to stub out their cigarette in the pot.
Back to the indoor lime or Sparmannia. The one above has huge bunches of flowers, lovely while petals, and protruding stamens of yellow, topped with warm, dark red.
Doesn't like direct sun, but, of course needs good light. Large leaves, the shape of limes slightly hairy, of exquisite green and delicacy. Cuttings just need a lot of care. Definitely for the home. Best size about six feet.
One was used to run up a short spiral staircase to a landing window. Zimmerlinde or room lime, in German, from which country this example came along lime ago.