On 13/5/08 21:46, in article ,
"someone" wrote:
snip


Where are you growing Puyas and Agaves outdoors?! Or are they in pots?
The
Abbey gardens in Tresco have both and I'm not aware of any notices
anywhere.
It might be worth your peace of mind to take out a one day insurance but a
few notices saying "Do not touch the plants, some of them bite" should do
it
in terms of a bit of commonsense. You could, perhaps, print of little
leaflets that give a brief history of these plants and *why* they 'bite'!
--

Good point about the Abbey Gardens. I've grown several Puyas from seed, and
the largest one (only about 2' high) spent the winter in a pot outside the
back door, the rest overwintered in the greenhouse. My agave is now very
elderly (grown from a tiny bulbil in 1976) and quite large, about 4' high x
4' wide. It lives in a pot, weighs about 80 lbs. and spends the winter
indoors in front of the French doors, providing a very effective burglar
deterrent. We have to borrow a trolley from the local pub to shift it
inside/outside twice a year. Some of its offspring, however, spend the
winter in pots near the pond with only a few blackened leaves, otherwise OK.

We spent a weekend in St. David's in Wales recently and visited an extremely
interesting nursery/garden centre near the middle of the town, full of
exotic plants. Unfortunately I didn't find out its name, even though I
bought a couple of plants there. But this man had a giant Puja growing in
the centre of his nursery, it was about 15 feet tall, and had a flower stalk
extending up to about 25 feet and about to flower. I will just have to go
back to St. David's and have another look.

someone


I wonder if David Hill knows this nursery's name? As I suggested before,
the story of the Puya and its supposed methods of feeding itself could make
an interesting little story for you to hand out to people.


--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'