I did this in college, we grew them in petri dishes. We threw them out when they were still tiny tiny because the semester ended though. I collect ferns from the wild, its much easier that way! As for things to grow over the winter, try Hosta seeds! you can sew them once they are ripe and dry. good project for the winter months.

no but it is a plant which grows in high altitude so I would plant it during the cooler months.

Gardengal, I have a forsythia. A very beautiful plant, but it has been out of bloom for over two months now. Forsythia bloom in February and early March. Scotch Broom are just now coming into bloom. I bought a Fremontodendron 'Pacific Sunset' and a Fremontodendron californicum to get yellow flowers in the summer. I also have Sophora microphylla, another member of the pea family that bloom about this time with yellow flowers. I like the various bushes and trees found in the pea family. If acacia grew here I would be growing it for their yellow flowers. The author of this web site http://www.paghat.com/broom.html is right when she says that Scotch Broom is mostly found in human disturbed sites, road cuts, gravel pits, farm fields etc. Scotch Broom is shad intolerant so just can't compete with our native plants. They shade it out. Scotch Broom only stays in places where man's activities doesn't allow the normal succession of Northwest plant communities. The story that Scotch Broom is shading out some rare native flowers is mostly wrong. The plant that is doing that is a native, Douglas Fir. These flowers are found in the oak praires found in Western Washington that were created by American Indians who set fires to get rid of the forest plants so they could use the oaks and other plants found in that habitat as a food source. Now that these praires are not burned, the fir trees are coming back and shading out the oaks, the rare flowers, and even the Scotch Broom. I live in King county and since Scotch Broom is a Class B weed, the only people in King County required to remove their plants are people living along highway I-90, at a point somewhere east of North Bend. I have noticed that most successful nurseries have signs with colored pictures of the plant in full flower along with a discription of the plant. That might help move those hybrid brooms when they are out of flower. thanks

Mine is Dimorphoteca sinuata (syn. Dimorphoteca aurantica), mixed yellow, orange, apricot and white. The more colorful perennial African daisies are in the Osteospermum family, but they never last through the summer for me and they're expensive. This is from Wikipedia Osteospermum /ˌɒstiəˈspɜːrməm, -tioʊ-/,[1][2] is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the Calenduleae, one of the smaller tribes of the sunflower/daisy family Asteraceae. They are known as the daisybushes[3] or African daisies. Osteospermum used to belong to the genus Dimorphotheca, but only the annual species remain in that genus; the perennials belong to Osteospermum. The genus Osteospermum is also closely related to the small genus Chrysanthemoides, such as C. incana and C. monilifera.