Chatham Window Garden

My junior year at Chatham University, I had the opportunity to enjoy a dorm room with a large bay window that had opening shuttered windows and a window bench. My roommates, both of whom were environmental majors, allowed me to express my love of gardening by creating a window garden.

Using the historical purple Chatham lunch trays as bases to prevent damaging the bench/windowsill, I was able to seed and plant several beautiful flowers. The flowers on the left in the decorative pot I purchased at a nursery and then arranged myself. The pots on the right I planted and grew all on my own. The two in the back are a morning glory and a moon flower. The pot in the front in a variegated spider plant.

The flowers I bought from the nursery included red snap dragons (which my roommate Allaire delighted in showing me actually "snapped" when you gave them a gentle squeeze) a pink and yellow Columbines, and some of the softest and sweetest silver moss I have ever seen before. 

These I grew from seeds or "baby" plants. The furthest away, against the window shutter, is a moon flower I grew from a seed. I thought for sure that the plant was sickly or just morose because it had several "bald" spots to it but it turns out it was just a slow bloomer. The plant beside it is my blue morning glory. This is the second time I'd grown Heavenly Blue morning glories. They were tenacious little vines that overtook every thing they touched. What you can't tell from the picture is that the leaves and vines of the morning glory were hanging outside the window for about three to four inches. People entering the dorm were delighted to see the bright blue flowers hanging out of the window. 

The pot in the front is the spider plant that I transplanted from a mother plant that grew outside a professor's office in my English building. I use to walk by her office every Tuesday and Thursday on my way to seminar and admire her large and luxurious spider plant. I've always had a soft spot for spider plants. My first true plant was a spider plant an elementary teacher gave me. (My mother accidentally killed it after I'd gone away for a week on a camping trip during the summer.) When the professor's plant had started to get little babies, I snipped three off with my fingernail and spirited them back to my dorm where I carefully dangled them over a cup of water until they grew roots. From there, it was easy to transplant them into soil. Sadly, during the move out that summer, they were crushed in the back of my mom's Volvo by my mattress. 

The Heavenly Blue in full bloom

(Yes, that is a giant inflatable crab beach ball behind my flower. It's college after all)

The Moonflower's first blooms in mid-July evening

Later that night

(It may not be visible, but there's an earwig inside the heart of the moonflower. It gave me a start when I went to take a sniff and found him hiding inside!)