FLIMBY: The perfect flower for beginners? Try zonal geraniums

This is another installment in our weekly Flowers In My Back Yard series, devoted to everything that blooms.

You want green? Lots of interesting, bushy green? Plus flowers -- big, colorful flowers? Oh, and a minimum of care? You want zonal geraniums.

Zonal geraniums actually are Pelargonium hybrids, but have been commonly called geraniums so long that if you're talking about real geraniums, you have to refer to those by one of their other common names (such as cranesbills,  right) to avoid confusion. 

Zonal geraniums are not trendy. These flowering perennials certainly haven't been since I was a kid and noticed the red-orange flowers in my grandmother's garden. That color and the terra cotta pots they occupied still say "1960s gardening" to me.

A few decades later a co-worker gave me an unusual zonal geranium, one displaying a magenta flower. Petals were accented with a orange-coral teardrop. I'd never seen anything like it. I was intrigued.

That geranium turned out to be the first Plant I Couldn't Kill. Not that I wanted to, but I was still an inexperienced gardener. My plants died not so much from neglect as ignorance.

So the Plant I Couldn't Kill moved with us from Southern California to the Sacramento area, along with a few of my hardier roses. I placed it on the covered front porch, where I could see it from my kitchen.

That winter we had a hard freeze, the kind Sacramento hardly ever sees anymore. The geranium, still not completely acclimated, took a hit. Much of the fuzzy foliage died and the fleshy stems collapsed. I was crushed. Turns out zonal geraniums are from South Africa originally and prefer moderately warm temperatures. In colder climates (8b and colder), they're treated as annuals.

But this climate (9b) came through for me. The plant's roots and enough of the stem were still alive, and it grew back amazingly well.

It also was the first plant I learned to propagate. How easy is this? If, say, a ball lands in the plant and a stalk breaks off, just turn around and jam it several inches down into an available pot filled with moist potting soil. (Pull off any lower leaves first.) It will root and flower, and you'll have a clone of the original plant. I've done this more often than I care to admit.

Nowdays I also have zonal geraniums of white, white-and-pink, hot mauve-pink, and salmon-peach, the last one a plant that rooted under the orange tree several years ago and insists on staying there. (No red-orange, though -- sorry, Grandma.) Other colors available include dark red, maroon, hot pink, coral and orange, with many variations.

My zonal geraniums get some shade during the day, but the plants can thrive in full sun. (A bit of shade in our July heat is welcome.) They don't need a lot of water or fertilizer; irrigate when the soil is dry to the touch. Overwatering can produce root rot. A small dose of balanced fertilizer every two months from spring until fall is plenty, but they will still flower without it.

Here are other things to know about zonal geraniums:

-- The plants are named for the darker rings or "zones" that often appear on their leaves.

-- They are not pollinator plants. I've never seen bees on them -- apparently the flowers have very little pollen. However, I have seen little green worms, which eat the leaves. If you spot chewing damage on your plants, look closely. Pick off the caterpillars and throw them to the birds -- who can help keep the pests controlled. Extreme cases: Get some bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) powder and dust the leaves. (Environmental caution: Bt kills any caterpillars who eat it, even those that are due to turn into butterflies.) 

-- Deadheading tidies the plant and helps produce more flowers, but the plants will self-deadhead if you leave the spent stems on there long enough. (I told you they were easy care.)

-- The plants are spectacular in containers, where their bushiness is shown off the best. Hanging pots, too, though the soil will dry out faster. Planted in the ground, zonal geraniums can get rangy and will require periodic reshaping. (Pot up or give away those trimmings.)