Sunday’s glorious sunshine found me in the boggy garden looking for signs of Spring. My bog garden of carnivorous plants is very sad looking, dormant and resting out the winter. I installed the bog last summer with help from my son, a successful carnivorous plant gardener. Having killed my fair share of Venus flytraps, I was a little apprehensive about starting a bog garden. My fears were misplaced, now several months later, most of the plants are thriving with little effort on my part.
The only losses have been due to squirrels. The little devils love to bury nuts in the soft boggy peat, too often unearthing the smaller plants in the process. (Too often, I didn’t discover this until it was too late for the plant.) This exotic foray into carnivorous plants has me thinking about their beautiful sustainability. They feed themselves, no need to fertilize (not that I fertilize anyway). Being native to bogs, they want to be wet, which is easy if you plan for it, and this time of year in Seattle, no problemo!
To make my bog garden we sunk a rigid pond liner with a built in overflow lip (to keep the plants from getting waterlogged in our wet Seattle winters) nestled behind a rock wall. To prevent overflowing my peat/perlite/sand mixture away, we bored a garden-hose size hole about 2 inches below the top of the liner, then inserted a section of garden hose. We covered the pond end of the hose with part of nylon stocking to filter out the soil.The unattached hose end was positioned lower than the hole in the pond to automatically drain off excess water. (see the hose end inside the rock crevice bottom of photo)
The beauty of growing carnivorous plants in a bog garden is that there’s no standing water in pot saucers for breeding mosquitoes. The bog is filled with a mixture of peat moss, sand and perlite which is kept saturated.
Two summers ago I kept one pot of “cobra lilies” on my patio and I ate many dinners on that patio without being bothered by yellow jackets. I assumed it was pure luck. This past summer, I moved the “cobra lilies” to the bog garden in back and the yellow jackets were most annoying on my patio. The books I’ve read insist that carnivorous plants aren’t effective for pest control. But there are at least 3 people I know who experience relief from yellow jackets by having cobra lilies. I sliced open one of their hoods/trumpets and found many partially decayed yellow jackets inside. Works for me! 
I call them cobra lillies, but really they are pitcherplants, California pitcherplants, Native to California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, their scientific name is Sarraceniaceae Darlingtonia californica. Peter D’Amato, author of The Savage Gardener and one of the partners in California Carnivores http://www.californiacarnivores.com says this about them on the website, “Beautiful and easy to grow, American Pitcher Plants may be the most ravenous and underappreciated plants in horticulture.” http://www.californiacarnivores.com 
photo via site http://www.californiacarnivores.com
Having lived in Sonoma County California for twenty years I admit I took for granted California Carnivores, little did I realize it was the largest carnivorous plant shop in the US. To me it was just the carnivorous plant nursery, fun, weird and wonderful complete with experts.
So I must admit I have high expectations of carnivorous plant stores. Here in Seattle my favorite place to buy carnivorous plants is at Indoor Sun in Fremont. http://www.indoorsun.com/ While it’s nowhere near the size of California Carnivores, but the folks there are knowledgeable and helpful and have a good selection of plants. Plus I bought my sun lamp from them which keeps me happy during the SADD gray season.
Carnivorous plants, are truly sustainable, feeding only on local food stuffs with minimal energy expenditure. We can all learn a thing or two from these plants. Need I mention that wetlands are disappearing at an alarming rate in most of the US and this loss of habitat has a negative impacts on native carnivorous plants, just another good reason for considering a bog garden.
The Indoor Sun Shoppe,
160 N. Canal St
Seattle, WA (34th & Phinney in Fremont)
http://www.indoorsun.com/
206 634-3727
California Carnivores
2833 Old Gravenstein Hwy So.
Sebastopol, California 95472
http://www.californiacarnivores.com
707 823-0433
International Carnivorous Plant Society
http://www.carnivorousplants.org/