A small string of hearts hung on a shelf in the corner of the living room — mostly because that is the spot that looks good with something trailing in it — will grow. The vines get longer, and it is easy to feel pretty smug about it until a closer look shows that the … Read more
A bird of paradise from the garden center can look perfectly clean and glossy in the store, and within a few weeks the edges of a couple of leaves go crispy and brown. The instinct is to water it more, figuring that is the obvious fix — but the browning just keeps spreading along the … Read more
Moving a haworthia to the sunniest spot on the windowsill seems logical, since a succulent wants all the light it can get — but the leaves can turn an alarming shade of orange-red. This one plant breaks the usual succulent rule, it actually prefers gentler light than most of the sun-worshippers in this guide series, … Read more
String of pearls is far more fragile than it looks. Scoop up the whole trailing mass in one hand to move it across the room, and a small pile of loose pearls can end up scattered across the shelf. Nothing is wrong with the plant, it’s just that the individual beads pop off the stem … Read more
A fine, almost invisible webbing between the stems of an English ivy often shows up weeks before the leaves themselves look off. By the time the speckled yellow spots are obvious, the plant may already have a full-blown spider mite infestation. It’s the pest problem English ivy gets more than almost any other houseplant, and … Read more
A Boston fern kept in a bright living room and watered on a reasonable schedule can still lose half its fronds to brown and drop within a month of coming home. The problem often isn’t light or water at all — it’s the tap water and the dry heated air, two things most people haven’t … Read more
Watering a ponytail palm on the same weekly schedule as everything else on the plant shelf can go on for almost a year before the base of the trunk goes soft in one spot. It’s a regular-houseplant routine applied to something that’s actually much closer to a succulent — that bulbous trunk is a water-storage … Read more
A polka dot plant bought for the vivid pink spots covering every leaf can fade to a dull, mostly green blur within a few months on a dim bookshelf. It’s easy to think the plant has somehow been damaged, but moving it to a brighter spot lets new leaves come in just as vivid as … Read more
Cleaning dust and a bit of dropped debris out of the center of a bird’s nest fern with your fingers is an easy way to accidentally snap off a tightly curled new frond that hasn’t even unfurled yet. It seems minor at the time, just one frond, but that spot may never produce another one: … Read more
A kalanchoe received as a gift, covered in bright orange blooms, can be kept going for months after the flowers drop without a single new one showing up — even with regular watering and a sunny windowsill. It’s easy to assume the plant has used up whatever made it bloom the first time. It hasn’t; … Read more