As mentioned in my previous post, I planted the pansies on my balcony in “rainbow order”.
I have never planted pansies before. This time of year, pretty much every business park and government building has a pretty-but-corporate-looking display of pansies on show by their front door or mailbox. My feet were my primary means of transportation for years, so I witnessed the full life cycle of many a corporate pansy whilst hoofing it around the city.
One thing I’ve learned on my journeying is that the seemingly-delicate pansy is actually a pretty hardy beast. I’ve seen them survive all kinds of ill weather including killer snow, ice, and frost. I’ve seen them overwinter into spring so well that sometimes it’s difficult to remember how many months they’ve been smiling at me from the front of some Portland office building. The odd wild pansy can occasionally be spotted volunteering its color from a patch of gravel or a crack in the sidewalk, defiantly perky in even the most adverse growing conditions.
As if all that weren’t great enough, pansies come in an absolutely stupendous number of colors and sizes. Red, orange, yellow, blue, purple, pink, and white are all common standalone shades. There is also a wide variety of mix-n-match combinations that borrow 2 or 3 different swatches.
This wide color assortment was ultimately my inspiration for growing pansies on my balcony. Typically when I see pansies growing, I see a only a few different colors/varieties planted into a single landscaping design at a time. Instead of doing a tastefully coordinated alternation between a few different colors, I thought it would be interesting to plant all the different colors I could find arranged from red tones to blue tones and back to red. You can check out the photo of my “pansy color wheel” to see what I tried. The astute might notice that I sneaked a begonia in there. As I told my mom via text message:
That pop of pink was missing from the pansy spectrum
that was the best sentence I’ve read all year.
Now that I’ve spent a few weeks growing pansies, here’s a few things I’ve learned that are not evident just from walking around and looking at all the corporate ones:
Pansies smell really good! I guess they’re usually so close to the ground that I just never bothered to check.
This sort of experiment should probably be undertaken with a lot more space than just 3 patio baskets. I planted mine very close together, adverse to most instructions I’ve read.
Pansies are not invincible! Alas, 2 of my plants did not last very long. The cause of their demise is unknown, but I think either they were already struggling when I bought them or they were wiped out by a couple of bizarre heat waves we had in April.
In conclusion, growing pansies is great fun and I highly recommend it. Someday when I have more space, I’m really going to plant the entire rainbow.
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