GPOD on the road: Potawatomi Conservatory

This is your GPOD editor, Joseph, from my frozen garden in northern Indiana. Winter has well and truly arrived for me here, we’ve had a few snows, good hard freezes. Not much is going on in the garden outside, but luckily for me, I live a short walk from a wonderful public conservatory. I love public spaces like these, a little magical escape from the winter cold into a delightful haven of plants. Here’s a little taste of some things that caught my eye on my last visit:

Where you’ll usually find me in the conservatory… that little set of table and chairs is a great place to work when working from home is starting to get a little old.

I love seeing the bird of paradise (Strelitzia reginae, Zone 10 – 11) in bloom. These huge flowers are structured to be pollinated by sunbirds in their native South Africa. Unlike hummingbirds, sunbirds can’t hover, so the base of the flower is very strong to provide them with a perch while they get in at the nectar and pollinate the blooms.

This huge plant is another bird-of-paradise, this one with white flowers (Strelitzia nicolai). THey’re just as cool looking, but the plants are so big it is much harder to actually get a good look at the blooms.

Some of the oldest plants in the conservatory started as houseplants that came to live their best lives here. This is the familiar jade plant (Cassula ovata), but I’ve never seen it get half this huge on a windowsill!

I love these plant stands, which display a wide array of cool succulent plants. It is always fun to take a close look at each of these living sculptures.

This specimen caught my eye today – a variegated agave (Agave victoriae–reginae ‘Golden Princess’).

The desert dome is a favorite part of the conservatory.  The huge home covers a