Subtropical Bog Garden

[Slurm]

I am going to UGA this fall to major in horticulture. I have visited the campus several times and I'm on good terms with the people that manage the botanical collection greenhouses. If I'm lucky, I may get personal grow space in one of the greenhouses on campus.
If I get space in the UGA carnivorous plant collection greenhouse (there is a lot of extra space in the CP house right now), I will most likely make a "tropical" bog garden in a large planter. I live in Atlanta and grow some CPs outside, but the summer and winter temperature extremes (highs of 100+ in the summer, winter lows of 10f) limit what I can reliably grow outdoors. Sarracenias, without exception, do really well for me, but I have limited sucess with most other CPs. I am only able to grow a few drosera and pinguicula outdoors in Atlanta, but in my experience with them, they seem to need more "micromanageing" than sarracenia. Outside, they often get dug up by squirrels, crowded out by sarracenias, or buried in peat after rainstorms.
However, if I grow them in a bog planter in a greenhouse, I will not only be able to grow more varieties of them, but I will also have more control over their environment. If I end up building the greenhouse minibog, I will probably only put drosera and pinguicula in it. It will be a standard peat and sand mix minibog.

I will try to get these plants for it:
D. capensis (multiple varieties)
D. aliciae
D. dielsiana
D. admirabillis
D. x Ivan's paddle
D. slackii (might not do well in the summer, I don't think the greenhouse is cooled much)
P. caurulea
P. lutea
P. primuliflora
I will probably try some mexican pings that don't need a dry resitng period like P. moctezumae and P. gigantea
If the greenhouse is heated to at least 50f during the winter, I may try one of the more tolerant petiolaris complex sundews like D. paradoxa or D. dilatato-petiolaris.

I won't be able to start on this until late summer (providing the UGA botanical greenhouse people let me). It should turn out nice. Has anyone made a subtropical greenhouse minibog before?

 

[Veronis]

I can't provide any useful input unfortunately, but I'm glad for you that you have this opportunity.

I hope your growing space in the CP house pans out as you hope.

If it does, be sure to post pics

 

[Capensis]

I can tell you this right now, if you let the capensis flower and set seeds, it will take over. If you let the aliciae freely grow, it will slowly take over. Keep a watchful eye on them if you get to make the suptropical bog .

 

[Slurm]

I don't think the D. capensis plants will take over. In the summer, the greenhouse gets ridiculously hot. South African sundews (including D. capensis) do not like warm nights. The summer conditions in the greenhouse are not bad enough to kill south african drosera, but may slow their growth down for half of the year.

The subtropical bog will probably look a bit ratty in midsummer when temps reach the high 90s, so to make it look nicer, I may plant a small lowland nepenthes in it (the pot on Nepenthes soil will be buried in the peat and sand mixture).

 

[celox]

I don't think the D. capensis plants will take over. In the summer, the greenhouse gets ridiculously hot. South African sundews (including D. capensis) do not like warm nights. The summer conditions in the greenhouse are not bad enough to kill south african drosera, but may slow their growth down for half of the year.

Don't underestimate a capensis, it's one of the hardiest cp's out there.

 

[seedjar]

Yeah, I think I have to agree on the capensis point. They have their limitations, but they're also persistent little buggers and when they're stressed they like to throw out offsets. An overheated capensis will be clearly outdone by one in more preferable conditions, but they're still large, sprawly-type plants that can dominate smaller individuals with rosetted growth habits. There are a number of subtropical species that look a good deal like capensis; there's also the option of cleverly disguising a separate pot of capensis as a part of the rest of the planting (just watch for seed.) Sounds like a lot of fun, though - I'm thinking about trying to get my college to give me some rooftop space for a temperate bog. I want to get some Neps into the atrium in our lab building, but I can't for the life of me figure out who runs it; no one is ever in there.
~Joe