Plants are bloodthirsty, but finicky about beds

If you don’t have a greenhouse, and most people don’t, there are three basic ways to grow most carnivorous plants, as long as you are in plant hardiness Zone 6 or warmer.

Indoors: Some carnivorous plants simply are not suited to indoor environments, though a few tropicals will work as windowsill plants if, in winter, they can be kept humid and away from direct heating or cold drafts. However, a terrarium with its own supplemental lighting is a better environment. Temperate plants should be allowed to go into dormancy during the winter by reducing water, temperature and light levels.

Outdoors in containers: This is the easiest way to grow hardy bog plants, but make sure the pot is big enough. A container that is too small will stress plants in winter (from freezing) and in summer (from evaporation). Nursery owner Michael Szesze suggests a pot at least 10 inches across, and, of course, it has to be of material that is freeze-proof.

Szesze makes small gardens for patios with a medley of plants in low, broad plastic containers. He drills quarter-inch drainage holes on the side of the pots, just 1 inch or so below the lip. This allows the soil to remain saturated without flooding the plant crowns.

In a bog or raised bed: Building a bog garden is no small feat. You have to bring in large quantities of sand and peat moss and devise a way to keep it moist; the installation costs can add up.

Instead, you may want to consider a raised bed. Szesze has built an elevated display garden at his nursery, a five-sided timber-framed bed measuring roughly 8 feet wide and 10 feet long. It is well stocked with various pitcher plants, bog orchids, violets, gentians, sundews and flytraps. It took 12 wheelbarrow loads of soil.

If you have an existing pond, you could fashion a bog at its margins, though it would have to be free of any fertilizer runoff from surrounding areas as well as the buildup of fallen leaves or other organic matter.

I have my pitcher plants growing in pots on a planter ledge in my fish pond, about 4 inches below the water line. As long as the water doesn’t get too high — and certainly not above the soil line — the plants are happy.