Gardendaze

Earlier this summer, one of our local garden centers had this headline in an Instagram post. And I just smiled.

The posted photo looked great with a whole cluster of blooming snake plants (I hesitate to call them by a botanic name at the moment because what we have known as sansevieria for years has been subsumed into the dracena genus. And when plants get muddled up botanically–or cleared up, but it seems muddy at first–the good old fashioned “common” name seems pretty good all of a sudden!!)

But as anyone who has been around a blooming snake plant knows, those small flowers pack a powerful fragrance! They are especially fragrant in the evening. That’s generally how I know one of mine is blooming–I will smell it first when I walk into the room–then I look over to the windowsill and see it. You’ll notice my photo was taken at night, when it was the most fragrant, of course.

What I am trying to say is while the garden center had a great marketing headline, anyone with enough light can make a snake plant bloom. Just about all of mine in this west window have.

The conditions they need are higher light (many people grow then in dark northern exposures because they tolerate it–but this is a western exposure and I have grown then in an eastern exposure too.) They also like to be tightly potted so don’t keep increasing the pot size.

If you notice the right side of this cheap plastic nursery pot, this plant has actually broken through it twice! Heaven help me when I go to re-pot it! At this point, it’s almost all plant and roots–I will need to cut the pot off to re-pot it. And it’s a little overdue. But I can’t go much larger or I literally won’t be able to lift it. This is one heavy plant. That’s why I chose the cheap plastic to start with–I had to get it upstairs and into the window somehow.

So I will enjoy the blooming–and try to ignore the re-potting issue.

But if you would like to get your snake plant to bloom, try giving it a bit more light. You might be pleasantly surprised.