Geranium nanum, information wanted

[Darren]

Helen,

Can't really add anything but i recall seeing a label on the raised bed outside the alpine house at RBG Edinburgh a few years ago. I noticed it because the seed had been collected in Morocco by our friend Charles Aitchison. The label was in good nick but the plant was either long gone or had been covered by a nearby sprawling G. sanguineum! Alas my own in the garden followed it this year after four years unprotected on the rock garden. Other plants around it also suffered this winter and I think the soil must be getting compacted so must echo above comments about drainage.

[maggiepie]

Darren,

I had to move my little plant due to the fact that ants decided to build a nest right under it grrrrrrrr!!
It looks like it might survive but it is a lot smaller than it was when it flowered.
The other plants so far have not flowered and I don't think they are very happy. Have discovered some little green bugs that hop, after finding a few plants looking sad and wilted, not sure what they are but suspect they are some sort of leafhopper.
So think that it will be bugs that do me in rather than drainage 

[Ragged Robin]

I had to move my little plant due to the fact that ants decided to build a nest right under it grrrrrrrr!!

What a shame Helen, do hope your Geranium nanum is OK now - ants seem to have a mind of their own and have moved nest at least three times this year in my rockery, marching along with young! 

[Darren]

I hope your plant recovers Helen.

Susan just removed another defunct Geranium today (nothing so special as G. nanum). They are not having a good year here, except G. sanguineum which is impossible to kill.

[maggiepie]

Robin, I have never seen as many ants in my entire life as I have seen the 3½ years we have lived here.
Not sure which ones are the worst, the small reddish coloured ones that moved under the nanum or the huge black carpenter ants that make a beeline for pots and eat the roots of the plants.
I thought I would outsmart them and put windowscreen gauze over the holes at the bottom of the pots, guess what!!
They just climbed up the sides and tunnelled in from the top grrrrrrrr!!

I am considering digging up one of the nanums and making it an indoor plant.

Darren, I inherited a sanguineum when we moved into the house, I keep digging it out but it is around 4X4 feet at the moment.
I don't mind the white one getting bigger but the magenta one seems to be much more robust.
I lost a few lovely little clumps cinereum 'Ballerina' just a few weeks ago, were looking fine one day and a few days later wilting and browning off.
Some of my erodiums seem to be going the same way.