A string of hearts put in the bathroom because trailing plants supposedly like humidity, and the bathroom is where humidity lives, will survive, technically. It also tends to sit there doing nothing much, with leaves the colour of a dusty olive and no marbling to speak of. Move it to a shelf at a south … Read more
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 makes the corner of a living room look like it belongs in a hotel lobby, and leaves that big suggest a plant that needs constant fussing. It’s actually one of the more forgiving houseplants, once you stop worrying about the splits in the leaves and just leave it alone in a … 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
It’s easy to assume haworthia wants the same blazing windowsill spot as a cactus or jade plant, since they’re all succulents — and that assumption is wrong. Moved somewhere brighter but shaded from direct sun, haworthia fills out into the tight, compact rosette seen in photos instead of the sunburned, stretched thing it becomes in … 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
Rearranging a string of pearls on its shelf can end with a dozen loose pearls rolling around instead of a neatly repositioned plant. It’s a reminder to treat the trailing strands more like delicate jewelry than a sturdy vine — this is a plant that rewards a light touch more than almost any other. Care … 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
English ivy is one of the easiest houseplants to propagate — a handful of stem cuttings in a jar of water will usually root within a couple of weeks — but it’s also one of the plants most prone to spider mites. Those two traits together make it a plant that rewards a little regular … 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