The joys of spring in the greenhouse

May the patron saint of gardening save me from too-many-pots syndrome. I know, pots are hot, but let's be realistic, pots need watering, fertilizing, deadheading, and pampering. But here it is early, early spring and I've already starting digging myself into a hole.

I just came home with a tray full of annuals, herbs, and perennials from a horticultural open house at Niagara College in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Bringing plants home at this time of year is about as much fun as being in a holding pattern over an airport. The plants are on idle, waiting for the right temperature to go outside. So you need to give them light - lots of it - and correct temperatures - not too hot and not too cold. With a gardener's rotten luck they may come complete with whitefly, and then your houseplants can swap some scale insects with them, and you'll have your own horticultural version of Fear Factor playing out in the trenches of your terra cotta pots.

But it was so warm in the Niagara College greenhouses, and so colourful I even gave in to a Martha Washington geranium. Talk about a prima donna; this plant, beautiful as it is, has more needs than Jennifer Lopez. The Martha Washington geranium likes a daytime temperature of no more than 60F and a nighttime temperature of no less than 55F. My research came up with the advice, "Enjoy as long as they bloom and then discard." Oh, like so many careers you might say. For now, though, Martha is sizzling, sitting on my mantle looking so cheerful I forgive her ruthless demands.

I also brought home the shade gardener's best friend, coleus. Wizard Mix is the colour of stewed apricots and Black Dragon is the colour of bruised velvet, with ruffled edges like a petticoat. They are worth coddling for the next six to eight weeks. Indoors, without adequate light, they may grow tall and spindly, so it's best to pinch coleus back to encourage side shoots and a bushy appearance. Anxious gardeners should not be tempted to put coleus in the garden until all frost warnings have been called off. The slightest touch of frost will turn coleus into a memory. These natives to Indonesia and Africa look psychedelic in a pot, but I like sticking them in the ground too, where they stir up a ho-hum landscape. They've added their brash profile to a bed of hostas and ferns at my place. Coleus will tolerate sun, but often their colour develops more vividly in shade.

Ninety per cent of the plants in the greenhouse were grown by horticulture students at the college. They must have been proud to see their pansies, top-ten perennials, geraniums and herbs flooding out the door in the arms of happy gardeners. As Jim Thomson, Manager of the campus, told me, it's rewarding for the students to nurture a product people want.

Between the coleus and kalanchoes I met Milton Jayaweera a first year student at the college. He arrived in Canada from Sri Lanka just two years ago with impressive credentials, working as a co-coordinator on tea and tobacco plantations. He's keen on greenhouse crops management but, "I like garden design too." He wants to promote techniques he learned in Sri Lanka, including solar sterilization of soil (instead of using pesticides), reforestation, and replacing plastic pots with bio-degradable materials like newsprint.

So, the infectious enthusiasm of the students, combined with the handsome, healthy plant material wore down my defenses. I also picked up golden oregano - a fine culinary herb and great edging plant with delicate golden-green leaves. The verbena I bought, Temari Patio Blue, just has to go in a pot. The students tell me it will plummet over the sides of a container spreading a river of blue. "Uncle, uncle!" I say. Just look for me this summer, hunched over like a black-crowned night heron, watering, fertilizing and grooming my pots.