It's taken me a long time to appreciate pelargoniums. I have a childhood memory of them overwintering in a corridor at my primary school and hating the overpowering smell of their brown, shrivelled stems in that narrow space. Those were zonal pelargoniums, and since then I've slowly started to appreciate the scented leaf varieties. You can read more about the different types here.
Georgie included a lovely lemony scented variety in my final Flowers for Mum last year and I took a few cuttings so I could grow something new in her memory. They looked so weak and feeble over winter I almost gave up and consigned them to the compost heap, but as you can see one survived and it's filled out its given pot admirably over the summer.
I've dealt with the leftover plant material in two ways. Most of the leaves are on a tray with the idea of drying them to make a pot pourri. I can imagine dipping my fingers into a bowl of these dried and crumbled leaves to conjure up the scent of summer in one gorgeous sniff.
There was also enough material to make 6 cuttings. Here you can see three of them with their lower leaves stripped off ready for potting up.
And voila! here they are potted up, lightly watered and placed in a nice clean tray ready for them to overwinter on our bedroom windowsill upstairs. I've found that's the best location for this kind of thing as I can easily remember to keep a beady eye on them over the coming months. It means I have an insurance policy if the parent plant doesn't make it through the winter, and if it does I might have something from these to give as presents in the spring 😊
Fingers crossed.
