Plants in Boston: from the March garden show to a pot on the sill
Boston's Flower & Garden Show usually opens in March at the Seaport World Trade Center, and the tulips in the Public Garden do not open until late April. For most of the cold half of the year, plants in Boston live indoors, on a sill, so the choice starts with the room they are going to: a flowering orchid or a succulent under glass.
A flowering orchid or a succulent under glass for a Boston home
The section is split into four groups: flowering plants, florariums, cacti in pots and plants chosen by type. Most of the flowering plants are moth orchids, sold in a box, in a pot, in a jute pot, or paired with roses or chocolate; 7 Orchids in a Box is one way to send several stems at once.
A florarium holds a succulent inside glass rather than cut flowers, and the Florarium "Icosahedron" with Stone Rose Succulent is one shape among several on offer. Either a flowering orchid or a florarium arrives with roots in its own pot, so no vase is needed at the other end: the courier hands over something that already stands on its own.
Intensive care units at Boston Children's Hospital do not allow live flowers or plants, though a card or a photo gets through; other addresses and dates are covered on other addresses and dates in Boston.
Boston's average daily temperature in January sits around −1 °C, and for those months a moth orchid spends its whole life indoors, warmed by heating that also dries the air. The plant tolerates that range reasonably well: moth orchids grow best between 19 and 30 °C by day and 16 to 19 °C at night, and Boston's July average of about 23.5 °C sits inside that band. That figure is a daily average rather than the midday peak.
Direct summer sun through the glass can scorch the leaves, so the pot is better kept a little back from the window than pressed against it. Water goes on roughly once a week, less often in winter, and the pot should never be left standing in a saucer of water. A clear pot lets you see the bark inside and check it has actually dried out before the next watering.
Succulents and cacti through 125 cm of Boston snow
Boston gets roughly 125 cm of snow across a winter, with blizzards among them, and through those months a succulent sealed behind glass needs almost nothing from the room outside. Succulents come from hot places with rare rainfall and store water in their leaves or stems, sometimes up to nine-tenths of the plant's weight, which is why a florarium can go a while between waterings.
An open bowl of glass suits a succulent or a cactus better than a closed one, and both are watered with a light spray rather than a pour. Stone rose is a trade name for a rosette-shaped succulent rather than one particular species, and the Cube Florarium with Hobbit Succulent is built on the same open-glass idea. For a plant in its own pot, without glass around it, cacti in pots is the other direction worth a look.
