Gardening 101: Pelargonium - Gardenista

Gardening 101: Pelargonium - Gardenista
Please don’t call them “geraniums.” We have to get past that. In Sweden, where gardeners have a soft spot for these warm-weather natives, pelargoniums commonly spend the long winter indoors—in greenhouses or on windowsills, generally being coddled.
Pelargonium: “The Stork’s Head”
For more images, see Pelargoniums in our Photo Gallery. With as many as 300 species, pelargoniums play a lot of useful roles in the garden: shrub, scented herb, container plant, and cheerful window box companion.
Photograph courtesy of Babes in Boyland.
Photograph by Erin Boyle.
You say geranium, I say pelargonium . . .
Keep It Alive
Photograph by Marie Viljoen.
The 19th-century American poet Frances Sargent Osgood had a soft spot for so-called scented geraniums.
The plant’s nickname, the Stork’s Head, comes from the notion that the seed resembles a stork’s bill.
To find out where you can see one of the finest collections of pelargoniums in the US, read The Scented Geranium: Spring’s Must-Have Plant (see, we do it too). Finally, get more ideas on how to successfully plant, grow, and care for pelargonium with our Pelargonium: A Field Guide.
Photograph by Justine Hand.
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