DIY: Grow Lily of the Valley on a Windowsill - Gardenista
Photography by Erin Boyle. Lily of the Valley is known as a delicate woodland flower, but there’s no reason it can’t be grown indoors. If there were a prize for the best-smelling apartment in Brooklyn, I’m pretty sure mine would win. I bought a pot of already-started pips a little more than a week ago and settled them into their new urban home. If you live by a nursery that has Lily of the Valley already started in pots, your work is practically finished. I lined an old wooden box with a bit of parchment for protection and slipped my plastic pot on top of that. After the pot was nestled into a corner, I used moss that I picked up at a local florist shop to cover the edges of the pot. You can also use preserved moss; Green Dried Preserved Moss is $2.99 from Jamali Garden. I broke my moss into smaller bits so that it fit neatly around my pot, but didn’t cover any of the emerging pips. The wooden box fit squarely enough on our windowsill, which gets filtered light for most of the day. Ten days later, there were flowers. If want to get your hands a little more dirty, you also can plant Lily of the Valley pips directly yourself, though in my experience it’s a gamble; they may not flower as reliably. A bag of pips I picked up at a local nursery came with soil which I moistened before planting. I gave a small trim to too-long roots and then potted them in an assortment of small glass jars. I left just a small bit of the pips exposed and placed them on my windowsill alongside my other plants. The pips that I started myself grew quickly, but they’re not showing any signs of flowering. Get more ideas on how to plant, grow, and care for various bulbs and tubers with our Bulbs & Tubers: A Field Guide.