So, this is the Long House, at Logee's Greenhouses. And this is our entry way,
as you come into, from our office, into the greenhouses. And in this greenhouse,
we have a lot of our stock and specimen plants.
It's also a warm greenhouse, so this is really
a tropical area, where we keep plants that can tolerate the-- or enjoy, the warm temperatures.
And in this house, we also have many of the plants that we sell to our customers. So, come on, and I'll show you.
So, this is an interesting plant, this is a 'Callistemon,' which is a native of Australia. And this is grown here in a basket.
Common name is 'Bottle Brush.'
Comes into flower this time of year. Has these red flowers. Very, very drought-tolerant, so it makes a great container plant.
And above our heads, here, we have one of our older Begonias. This is
our Begonia 'Elaine.' And she's quite old. It's an Angel-wing
hanging-basket variety.
Very, very easy to grow. Very resilient. It survived, probably, I don't know-- the hybrid must go back, into probably the 30s, so...
It's really quite an old plant, but an excellent plant in containers. Originally, this greenhouse
was put up for cut flowers, and you have soil or dirt
beds, here, which were filled with cut flowers. And on the right hand side,
the benches were put up, where they contained potted plants.
This house was put up during the 20s,
so, at that time Logee's was really not a mail-order company. We were local
florists,
and they grew cut-flowers and grew potted plants for the holidays.
This is an interesting winter-bloomer, which is a 'Streptosolen jamesonii.'
It makes a cascading
basket plant, or in the case of this one, here,
it's a standard. And it is a plant that goes on for,
probably about five months of bloom. A little sensitive... it's something, that, you know,
you have to have very good light for, and you have to keep your eye on the
watering, otherwise it can get damaged by being
dried out. This is one of our older plants, here, that's been for many
years-- this is Jasmine sambac. And you can see, this is yesterday's flower
turning pink. But this is the-- on of the
more famous Jasmines of
the World Trade, where it's used in India,
Thailand-- the Buddhists-- and also in China,
has some sacred value to it. It's grown in India, as a cut flower, actually.
And this old plant's been here probably about 35 years.
We had an original plant, here, and it died off-- got some root
disease problems, so I grafted a plant on to some under-stock,
and put it back in here; its been happy ever since. Here's another interesting
plant. This is 'Artabotrys hexapetalus'
and you can see the flower up in the top, there. And, the plant actually
has-- the plant actually has these hooks along the
stem-- that it grabs onto the tree as it
climbs, you can see them right here. These hooks, on the end there.
And this flower actually has a very highly fragrant, fruity
scent to it. It's very hard to propagate,
and very slow-growing,
but a wonderful plant for conservatories. We also have, here--
this is our-- in April so, it's still in winter-bloom- this is the Freycinetia vine,
which is in the Dracaena family.
Puts out these orange flowers, now these are fully opened,
they never open more than that. And they last for
several weeks, each individual flower. But,
it's always a winter-bloomer for us, blooms on the shortening days.
And in this house we have many interesting plants. This is another Jasmine right here, you can see the flower.
That's the Angel-Wing Jasmine, Jasminum 'nitidum.'
'Nitidum' is a very easy to grow, and very
resilient Jasmine. Has a sweet smell to it,
you see all the flower buds coming onto it-- So this is a wall, here, that we
constantly prune- the more you prune, the more flowers you get. And then we also have our Bougainvilleas.
There's several in this greenhouse that we've planted. This is a red one called 'Crimson Lake.'
Also have another red over here, called 'Barbara Karst.'
It's interesting-- if you look at them, they're not that red, they're actually pink--
but if you put them out full-sun, it actually gets so red, you could hardly even--
you'd almost need sunglasses to look at them. It's the diffusion coming through the glass that
actually
causes the flowers to get a little lighter in
color. This is an old vine
of ours that flowers this time year, and into the summer. This is
'Clerodendrum thomsoniae,' or Glory Bower.
And you can see the calyxes are white, with the red flowers coming out.
It's an old-fashion house plant; does very well in containers.
And, like, from now,
as we go on, into the summer time, there'll be a continuous cycle of blooms on it.
Got, White Petrea Vine;
this is an interesting plant-- has these
pinwheel flowers on it, that if you drop them down
they-- see if we can shower some here, they spin down.
Normally, they're purple in color. This is an Albi-form of that.
Here we have 'Tabernaemontana holstii.' This is a
very, very fragrant tropical. You can see the size of the flower on this.
It's very large-- we have some up here coming on.
It's very hard to propagate-- really has to be grafted, because it doesn't like the understock, but,
highly fragrant-- even from daytime, as well as into the night.
And also in this house, we have our Jade vine, 'Strongylodon macrobotrys.'
We have two of these in the greenhouses, this is one area where we
keep this. You can see the density of this big vine up in
here. It's almost a challenge, to keep it contained. But,
there it is with its turquoise flowers. Again, it flowers at this time of
year. And above my head, here, we have another Bougainvillea, this
is 'Texas Dawn.' This has been here for probably 60 years or
more. It was planted in the
greenhouses around 1950, I think, this vine was put in.
Many these vines have been here for decades.
And, originally, of course, I say, this was all open for
cut flowers, but it was my father's idea to put the specimens along the
support posts, so that people could come in and see what they actually look like when they're
growing kind of freely. And, that's the Long House.