Just because stepping stones have a utilitarian purpose doesn’t mean they can’t be fun! Making stepping stones for gardens can be a great family project. With a little assistance, even young children can help decorate DIY stepping stones. Here are few stepping stone ideas to get you started. How to Make Stepping Stones Creating personalized garden stepping stones doesn’t take a lot of craft experience or know-how. To make stepping stones, follow these basic instructions:...

Propagating Houseplants with Runners by Layering When you propagate from runners and arching stems, it’s called layering. Ivy (Hedera spp.) and other climbers can be reproduced this way. Make sure you water the plant well the day before you choose to perform this method of propagating houseplants. Place a pot filled with cutting compost next to the parent plant. Fold a stem near a node (without cutting it off) to form a ‘V’ in the stem....

What are Smart Mowers? If you have better things to do on your day off than mow the lawn, you might consider getting an automatic lawn mower. These smart machines are part of a growing movement to utilize robotic technology. They take the work out of mowing, giving you more leisure time. However, are they as effective as a human’s mowing job? Just like everything new, there are some kinks to work out of the machinery....

1. Check the Ingredients If your dogwood is suffering from blossom drop or just appears stunted, take a look at the back of your fertilizer bag. More often than not, the first ingredient listed is rice or corn. Dogwoods are naturally carnivorous plants, and need to be fed with fertilizers rich in meat. 2. Train Consistently A very common mistake new gardeners make is letting their dogwoods grow untrained, which leads to an unruly tree and headaches for the gardener and neighbors....

How to Grow a Maple Tree In addition to planting nursery-grown maple trees, there are a couple of ways to go about maple tree growing: Growing maple trees from cuttings Growing maple trees from cuttings is an easy way to get free saplings for your garden. Take 4-inch (10 cm.) cuttings from the tips of young trees in midsummer or mid-autumn, and remove the leaves from the lower half of the stem....

Sea buckthorn fruit harvesting is dangerous to the skin. This is because the hardy, stoic plants are covered in vicious thorns. But after some careful extraction, the fruit may be used several ways. The name translates to ” Dune Thorn” and the plant is also known as Sand Thorn and Siberian pineapple. The plants, with their rangy root systems, are often used for soil stability. In marginal areas, they help keep soil held on slopes....

Why Press Leaves and Flowers? Pressing leaves, flowers, and entire plants is a time-tested craft and art form. People have done this for centuries or longer to preserve specimens for study or medicine, to give as gifts, and to use in craft projects. Most people today who partake in flower and foliage pressing do so for projects simply to preserve the beauty of spring, summer, and fall. During a long winter, these pretty pressed plants bring a little sunshine into your home....

With just the seeds from the avocados you have eaten, you can grow an avocado as a houseplant indoors. Starting an avocado at home is simple enough. Read this article for instructions on sprouting avocado seeds. Once your indoor avocado trees are good sized, you may wonder exactly how to prune an avocado tree in order to keep it small and houseplant size. This is not a problem. Because of the amount of pruning needed, keeping the avocado as a houseplant just means you won’t actually get any fruit off the tree....

Un-gardening is a new fad that is being embraced by environmentally conscious gardeners. Such an approach to gardening enhances biodiversity and encourages wildlife and native flora. It is also a way to reduce the use of fossil fuels, synthetic fertilizers, and excess water. Allowing the land to revert to its natural state may appear to some to endorse an untidy garden, but in reality, use of native plants can be planned, layered, and purposeful....

The berries are yellowish-orange and extremely tart. However, they become sweeter as they ripen and turn deep purple or black. If you’re lucky enough to have access to a rumberry tree, you can use the blueberry-sized berries in a number of ways. Wondering what to do with rumberries? Read on for a few ideas to pique your creativity. Traditional Rumberry Uses Guavaberry liquor is a popular drink in the West Indies, where the berries are strained and mixed with sugar and rum....

How Cold is Too Cold for Plants? The lowest temperature a plant can withstand without damage varies from one type to another. Gardeners and horticulturists describe a plant’s ability to tolerate lower temperatures as cold hardiness. Most hardy plants go dormant during the winter and come back in spring. Exceptions include evergreens, which keep growing. In North America, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) zones describe cold hardiness by listing the regions in which a plant can grow outside year-round....

About True Indigo Water Needs There are false indigo plants, but true indigo is Indigofera tinctoria. It grows best and as a perennial in zones 9 and up; in colder areas you can grow it as an annual. Indigo is a small or medium shrub, growing to about 5 feet (1.5 m.) tall. You can trim it to shape into a pretty flowering shrub that produces pinkish purple blooms. The dye comes from the leaves....

About Trumpet Vine Pests Trumpet vines are tough, hardy plants that thrive in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 4 through 10. They don’t require much hands-on maintenance, but they do need enough water, especially when they grow in direct sun. If you let your plant’s soil get dry and dusty, trumpet vine pests are attracted. The bugs on trumpet vines can include spider mites, scale insects, and whiteflies. Keep these trumpet vine insects off your plants by irrigating enough so that the soil remains constantly moist....

Is a Firebush Frost Hardy? Firebush (Hamelia patens) is native to southern Florida, Central America, and the tropics of South America. In other words, it really likes the heat. Firebush cold tolerance is pretty much nil aboveground – when temperatures approach 40 degrees F. (4 C.), the leaves will start to turn color. Any closer to freezing, and the foliage will die. The plant can really only survive winter where temperatures remain well above freezing....

What is Jelly Fungus? Jelly fungus belongs to the class Heterobasidiomycetes; it’s a distant cousin of the mushroom. These fungi appear in a wide range of colors, from white to orange, yellow, pink, or even black, and have a gelatinous texture when exposed to sufficient moisture. One of the most remarkable features of these fungi is their ability to absorb as much as 60 times their weight in water, turning them from tiny, dried up nubs to short-lived, natural art in no time....

Exactly What is Jojoba? Jojoba is a shrub or small tree with multiple stems that grows in dry, arid sections of the country. It grows between 8 and 19 feet tall, and male and female flowers appear on different plants. The fruit is a green capsule which encloses up to three seeds. Jojoba plant facts make it clear why this is a good plant for times of drought. The leaves stand vertically, so that only the tips are exposed to the hot sun....

What is a Kentia Palm? Kentia palms are native to Lord Howe Island in the South Pacific. These palms are also known as sentry or paradise palms. They are suitable for growing in USDA zones 9-11, but for those outside these ranges, Kentia palm plants make terrific container grown specimens. Kentia palms have the typical large palm-shaped leaves. They can grow up to 40 feet (12 m.) in height but they are slow growers, and indoor Kentia palms typically max out in containers at fewer than 12 feet (3....

Different Types of Garden Designers Landscape architects, landscape contractors, and landscape designers are the most common types of garden designers. Landscape architect A landscape architect is someone who has a college degree in landscape architecture and is registered or licensed by your state. Landscape architects have training in engineering, architecture, land grading, drainage, design, etc. They may or may not have extensive knowledge about plants. They create architectural landscape drawings for both commercial and residential landscapes....

What is Agastache Plant? Agastache is in the Hyssop family of herbs and makes a flavorful tea. It is a striking plant that has many varieties, some of which are hardy and others that are frost tender and grown as annuals in most cooler climates. Growing Agastache requires sun and well drained soil. The leaves resemble catmint and are a dull green with heavy veining. The plants can grow 2 to 6 feet (0....

The word clone comes from the Greek “klon,” which means twig. In plants, cloning is the production of a cell that is genetically identical to the parent. If you have a favorite plant that can be hard to source, it might be useful to clone plants at home. You need to know several important steps on how to clone a plant in soil. Some clones may also be started in water....