There is a geranium cutting staring at me from a jam jar of water near the kitchen sink. I’m doing the dishes, and this yellowing, leaf-dropping, cutting is crying out to be planted in the garden.
GeRANiums.
Gran loves them.
Much.
So there is usually a cutting, or a clipping, or an uprooted bit of stem that turns up each week on the kitchen bench. Their arrival, their presence in our house, is a surreptitious reminder that Gran loves geraniums. Mostly red ones. And you can never have too many. Apparently. . .
It is also a reminder of the uncanny ability of pensioners to collaborate on spreading diversity amongst gardens.
Outside Grans bedroom window there is something of a Mr Petit Paradis grotto that I have created to accommodate the growing catalogue of geranium cuttings. There is a white one amongst them too. It came in tow with a red one. Perhaps intended as a duet, but in Gran’s world I would suggest that there is a more subtle reason. Like the pretty, little, white geranium’s lot in life is actually to just make the red ones seem redder and brighter and more spectacular.
Red Geraniums. What garden couldn’t be brighter without them?
Petit Paradis 
Apparently geraniums (and oregano too, if Gran likes that on her pizza) are good companion plants for grapes, so if you have a vine or two, maybe you can employ some of the geranuims there productively…
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Great, we are planning on putting some vines in and I can already picture the expanded area this will open up for the Geranium Collective. Thanks for the idea.
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I do not even bother putting them in water. When they get pruned at the end of winter, I plug the scraps where I want new plants. They hang out through the last rain of winter, and are ready to go by spring. Of course, those are the really primitive forms, that are easiest to propagate.
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I must say that I do exactly the same in areas of the garden where I want to get garden established. They take so easily and make for a nice scene until the garden is ready for its next phase.
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EXACTLY! They are like a cover crop that loosens the soil for what gets planted next, and they crowd out the weeds.
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. . . and look good at the same time!
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