Children's Page - Making a Living Rosemary Heart
Rosemary is the ‘Herb of the Year’ for the year 2000, quite an honor. It’s a wonderful plant to grow in pots, for both its fragrant, dark green leaves and its cheerful flowers that often bloom in even our darkest winter months.
It’s easy to train rosemary onto a wire frame, which makes it even more fun for your sunny windowsill or patio. We’ll show you how to make a heart shaped frame, but you can also try the simple outlines of animals, or other shapes like stars or Christmas trees.
Not all rosemary varieties can be trained onto frames. The ones that do best are the ones that trail, like ‘Majorica Pink’, ‘Collingwood Ingram’, ‘Lockwood de Forest’, or ‘Prostratus’. You can find these, and many more rosemaries in our plant catalog.
Here’s how:
- Pick a young plant that has a straight stem (#1).
- Cut off the tip of the plant. It will grow with two stems instead of one (#2). You can also try to find a small plant that already has two stems.
- Cut a coat hanger, or take a long piece of heavy wire and form the shape of a heart (#3).
- Stick the ends of the wire frame into the soil next to the rosemary plant. Gently tie the two branches onto the opposite sides of the frame (#4). You can tie them on with strips of old nylon stockings or raffia. Careful- don’t tie them too tightly, and don’t use wire bag ties that can cut the stems. As the plant grows and the stems get fatter, you will have to cut off the old ties before they get too tight and put on new ones.
- Keep tying the stems onto the frame every couple of inches. You can also wind the stems around the frame, as they grow longer.
- When the two stems meet together, cut off the tip of each one (#5). This helps them to get nice and bushy.
- Cut off the tip of the plant. It will grow with two stems instead of one (#2). You can also try to find a small plant that already has two stems.
It will take a couple of years before your rosemary has grown all the way around the frame. You can keep your plant indoors if you have a very sunny window. At least 5 hours of direct sun each day. You can also keep it outside for most of the year, and bring it indoors only when the temperature goes below freezing.
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