Palm trees, members of the plant family Arecaceae, are tropical and subtropical species grown as houseplants across most of the United States and as outdoor specimens in USDA hardiness zones 8 to 10. Their fronds normally hold color for years, so a yellowing leaf is easy to notice and easy to misread. Yellow is a […]
The money tree (Pachira aquatica) is a tropical houseplant with a braided trunk, palm-like leaves, and a long reputation in feng shui as a bringer of good fortune. It is also a vigorous grower that can add up to 2 feet per year indoors, eventually topping out between 6 and 8 feet tall and wide.
September is a second spring for vegetable gardeners. In southern parts of the United States, the hottest weeks have passed and the prime growing season is just beginning. In northern regions, fast-growing crops such as lettuce, spinach, and other salad greens can still be sown to keep the garden producing until the first frost and
Electroculture gardening is an experimental technique that claims to harvest electricity from the atmosphere and the earth and deliver it to plants. Supporters say the copper antennae used in the method make vegetables grow larger, ripen faster, and need less fertilizer. The practice has built a large online following, yet most of its central claims
Hydrangeas put on one of the longest flower shows of any garden shrub, holding blooms in blue, white, pink, and green for weeks at a time. The shrubs grow well beside many plants, but some neighbors do far more than fill empty space. The right companions shade the shallow root zone, hold soil moisture through
Aglaonema pictum tricolor belongs to the Aglaonema genus, the group most people know as Chinese evergreens, and to the Araceae family. Its glossy, oval leaves carry a camouflage-like variegation pattern built from three distinct shades of green, while similar varieties show only two shades. That is why collectors seek out the tricolor form. Healthy specimens
The Bradford pear, a cultivar of the Callery pear (Pyrus calleryana), came to the United States from Asia in the early 1900s and was promoted from the 1950s onward as the perfect street tree. It grew fast and bloomed white each spring. Decades later that enthusiasm reads as a costly mistake: limbs split out in
Most houseplants tolerate neglect better than they tolerate bad pruning, so the goal is to cut less and cut smarter. Pruning removes dead or damaged growth, reshapes a lopsided plant, and coaxes fuller branching from a leggy stem. A basic session takes 5 to 10 minutes, uses tools that cost $0 to $10 if scissors
Brussels sprouts (Brassica oleracea var. gemmifera) trace their ancestry to ancient Rome, but they take their name from Brussels, Belgium, where the tight green buds have been a regional staple for centuries. Each plant is a slow-growing biennial that gardeners usually treat as an annual, and the payoff comes late: the mini cabbage heads form
A terrarium is a garden under glass: a sealed or partially open container that holds its own small ecosystem. The appeal is the self-containment, and the failure mode is the same thing. Water that cannot drain, air that cannot move, and plants that outgrow their space turn a tidy glass landscape into a fogged, rotting
