How To Create A Winter Garden On The Stairs Of A Residential Building

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Flowers in the entrance

In the long winter, I want to start a new garden, which has not yet been. Look carefully at your staircase and staircase - is it possible to refine them and turn them into a garden? It is not difficult at all, the main thing is to want pleasant changes.

They say that "theater begins with a coat rack." Where does our home begin? Perhaps from the entrance, which is not always a front door, but it can be very nice. If an intercom is installed on the front doors, there is a hope that unauthorized persons will not enter the stairs. And then the entrance becomes a home hallway. In recent years, more and more often you can find well-groomed stairs, where flowers grow on the windowsills, they are also abundantly located in the illuminated halls, on the walls, whatnots and various shelves, stands.

How to arrange such a winter garden?

First of all, plants need light and heat for life (in this case, +12 … 15 ° С is enough). Staircase windows need to be insulated in the usual way, using foam rubber strips. In winter, it is useful to put polystyrene on the windowsill under the flower pots. It insulates the roots well from the cold window sill, providing suitable conditions for the wintering of flowers.

Natural light in winter, of course, is not enough for the normal growth and development of plants, but they put up with it, while maintaining decorativeness. (After all, not every house for flowers arranges additional lighting with fluorescent lamps in the autumn-winter period.) But where there are no windows or balcony glazing at all, the installation of fluorescent lamps is necessary. Typically, hallways in large houses are illuminated around the clock with just such lamps. And the flowers in these rooms feel great!

There are stairs with windows without window sills. How to be here? In such rooms, flowers can be placed in balcony boxes, mounted on the railing of the stair railings. In this case, ampelous plants with falling stems will be especially effective. You can use hanging pots, which are fixed on the walls closer to the light and put pots of flowers there.

What kind of plants can you keep on stairs?

Almost everything, except for thermophilic tropical ones, requiring high temperatures and high humidity. All our usual indoor flowers can successfully live on stairs. For many species, a cool wintering is required due to their biological characteristics, and it is often difficult to provide it in warm rooms. So, on the staircase windowsills, zonal pelargoniums winter and bloom perfectly. Often, blooming specimens dug out of the garden in autumn cannot be placed in the rooms, and on the stairs they become the main decoration of the winter garden, continuing their bright flowering.

Pelargonium is watered, like all plants in winter, very sparingly and only when the earthen lump dries up. Shoot pruning is done in late winter - early spring. During the winter, the stems of pelargonium, as well as fuchsia, stretch quite strongly. They are shortened so that the bush takes a compact form, and the cut stems are cut into cuttings 10-15 cm long and placed in water for rooting.

Rooted cuttings are planted in a fresh soil mixture from garden soil, peat soil and perlite, vermiculite. You can use ready-made peat soil for planting with the addition of perlite, vermiculite to improve the physical properties of the substrate. At the bottom of the pot, a drainage of expanded clay is certainly put in a layer of 3-4 cm, then - a little substrate, a pinch of long-acting complex fertilizer AVA (or AVA capsules), again a substrate in which 1-3 cuttings are planted. Filling the soil with long-acting fertilizer allows you to do without the usual weekly fertilizing during the season (you only need nitrogen fertilizers once a month).

Ordinary crested chlorophytum effectively decorates the stairs. 2-3 of its rosettes are planted in a large container with a diameter of about 20 cm. The roots of chlorophytum are massive, juicy, grow very quickly. Sometimes you have to replant the plant twice a year if the earthen ball is completely filled with its roots. An excellent decoration of chlorophytum is its flowering shoots, on which, after the flowering of small white flowers, young rosettes of leaves appear.

Shoots with rosettes of leaves hang down picturesquely from the elevation on which chlorophytum is usually kept. In our house there is an idle garbage chute with sealed lids, on which it is convenient to put ampelous plants, including chlorophytum.

The curtain of long stems studded with young rosettes creates a great decor that is completely unusual on the landing. Chlorophytum is one of the healthiest house plants that many of us are unaware of. The leaves of this plant successfully absorb formaldehyde vapors, carbon monoxide, tobacco smoke from the air, and this is worth a lot!

Botanists have described more than 200 species of chlorophytum with a variety of decorative features.

On the same elevation on the site of another floor, we have successfully located a large specimen of indoor grapes. The net or cords stretched for its curly stems allow decorating a part of the wall with numerous runways with carved leaves. Thanks to the cool conditions and sufficient air humidity, the grapes are not affected by spider mites, from which they suffer greatly in hot winter rooms.

Euphorbia and cacti are very undemanding to growing conditions, and a staircase window is a very suitable place for them. For their regular flowering in winter, low temperatures are needed (8 … 10 … 12 ° C), which are rather difficult to provide at home. Conifers in pots also need a cold wintering, and always in good light, near the glass itself or under fluorescent lamps. Cypresses, thuja, cypress trees, yews, junipers will be very grateful for a spacious and cool place of "residence". At the same temperature, many types of indoor plants winter: abutilone megapotamian and painted, avocado, queen Victoria agave, asparagus, achimenes, New Guinea balsam, begonias, brunfelsia, bougainvillea, hemantus, gerbera, hymnocalycium, davocypezpeastrum, hypnocalycia zamioculcas, zantedexia (calla), zebrin, irezin,Kalanchoe bekharsk, felt and Mangina; braided saxifrage, catharanthus, lithops, mandeville; milkweed Mil, resinous, most beautiful (poinsettia); primrose, ripsalidopsis, ripsalis, Sims rhododendron, roicissus, stapelia, strelitzia, tetrastigma, Benjamin's ficus (with green leaves), haworthia, hamedorea, cellogyne, ceropegia, cyclamen, sheffler, jacobinia, jatropha.

Many types of indoor plants winter at very low temperatures, from 0 to + 5 ° C: American agave and small-flowered, calamus, indoor acacia, bomeria, ivy-leaved budra, vineyard, gasteria, hyacinth, hydrangea, jasmine, tubular Kalanchoe, calceolaria, erect cypress, southern cordilina, oleander, prickly pear, pittosporum (resin seed), rose, Japanese fatsia, feijoa, Canarian date, hamerops, chamecereus and others.

Caring for plants on stairs

The winter garden on the stairs can be quite rich in the number of species that can withstand such conditions. It only remains to add that here watering the plants, as well as in the rooms, remains the most difficult task. Most flower lovers “sin” by over-watering their pets. Overmoistening of an earthen coma at low air temperatures and a window sill leads to oxygen deficiency, root decay and, ultimately, to the death of plants. Therefore, in winter, it is better to slightly under-water and dry an earthen lump than to pour. Water for irrigation is defended for about a day, or at least for several hours. It is better to keep a vessel with water near the battery so that the temperature of the water is slightly higher than that of air and soil. In addition, it is useful to loosen the soil in pots from time to time to improve oxygen access to the plant roots.

Top dressing in winter is usually not done, since most plants go into a dormant state, their growth is slowed down. For species blooming in autumn, we recommend adding AVA capsules to the soil, which effectively nourish plants for 2-3 months and allow them to bloom even in winter. They are very responsive to such feeding of pelargonium and fuchsia.

A stair garden is a great idea for those who want to live surrounded by beauty. Even F. Bacon wrote that the creation of gardens is one of the purest human pleasures, and it is difficult not to agree with this!