Advice on indoor plant

 
Dear Garden Banter,


I need some help please!

I am doing some work with children with severe learning disabilties
(SLD) and one of the projects is to get the children to look after
indoor plants during the winter. First thing is we have a budget that
needs to buy 12 plants so I was thinking about £4 to £8 max per plant.
What plant should I get?


Requirements:
- Indoor plant
- Easy to maintain but also that you can see change at least week to
week. So potentially something that flowers


Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Best,

Thatboy




--
ThatBoy

 
ThatBoy;941249 Wrote:

Gardenbanter won't give you any help. If you read the blurb at the top,
you'll find it merely passes on your question to the newsgroup
uk.rec.gardening (urg) and collects any replies you receive. urg
posters, however, are helpful and knowledgeable.




--
kay

 On 07/11/2011 06:30, ThatBoy wrote:

Plant or plants? If I were you I would aim for £2 a plant then you can
afford some replacements when the inevitable happens. If you try a few
different sorts then you stand a chance of finding some they can't kill!

It is a tall order to keep plants growing and flowering in winter
without them going leggy but some that might fit the bill and be tough
enough to survive some abuse include:

Prefering dry conditions Pelargoniums, Kalanchoe, Euphorbia Pulcherrima,
Christmas Cactus. Tolerant of over watering Bizzy Lizzie, Spider plant
(Chlorophytum comosum). Some of these can be very easily propogated so
if you do it right you should never need to buy any more.

I'd hedge your bets with a mixture of plants until you find what works
best in the situation. You may be able to scrounge some of these...


Regards,
Martin Brown

 
I would second Christmas Cactus, although mine are coming into flower buds
now, so you may have missed out on the essential start of the progress of
the plant.

Money plants are incredibly tolerant, and if you want to get more, you just
snap a bit off and pot it up!

And cyclamen are flouncy and fairly easy to look after.

Slightly different, how about hyacinths in vases/jars?  Then they can see
the roots growing as well as the flowers!

 

Or take leaves off African violets, cover a glass full of water in
cling film and push the leaves through slits in the cling film, so that
they're just touching the water.  Then they'll see the roots on those
grow, too, though it takes a while! Then they can pot them on and wait
for more leaves to develop etc.
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon