Grow Slowly. Live Fully.
Practical plant care, garden design, and home ideas for a calmer, greener life.
You checked that plant last week, and it looked fine. Great, even. Now the leaves are curling in on themselves, going yellow at the edges, and when you reach out to steady a stem, your fingers come away sticky. Something is clearly wrong with your plant, but you can’t see a single thing causing it. […]
The best okra companion plants are basil, peppers, beans, marigolds, radishes, and cucumbers. They repel pests, add nutrients, or make good use of the shade okra casts. Skip squash, sweet potatoes, and broccoli near okra, since they compete for nutrients or attract root-damaging nematodes. Okra is easier to grow beside other vegetables than many garden […]
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de plant leaves turning yellow is most often a sign of overwatering, especially when the leaves feel soft and puffy. A few yellow leaves at the very bottom are normal aging. Other causes include poor drainage, underwatering, low light, nutrient gaps, pests, hard water, and cold drafts. Last November, three bottom leaves on my Portland […]
Plant Care
My first aloe came home from a Portland grocery store, the same shelf that started this whole collection seven years ago. I watered it every Sunday because that felt responsible. It was mush by February. Aloe vera is built for dry, rocky ground and long stretches with no water at all. Those thick leaves are […]
That aloe on your windowsill holds two completely different substances inside every leaf. One is the clear, soothing gel you want. The other is aloin, a yellow latex that sits just beneath the green skin. It is a skin irritant and a stimulant laxative. In 2002, the US Food and Drug Administration ruled that aloe […]
One of my peace lilies lived in the same 6-inch nursery pot for almost three years before I realized it was struggling. The soil was drying out within a day of watering, roots were curling out of the drainage holes, and the leaves drooped even when the soil was still damp. That plant taught me […]
You can propagate a money plant in three ways: separate rooted pups from the base, take a 2 to 3 inch stem cutting, or use a leaf cutting with a bit of main stem attached. Pups root fastest, usually in about two weeks. A leaf by itself will rot. The first time I separated a […]
Brown tips on peace lilies usually happen because of fluoride and salts in tap water, low indoor humidity, fertilizer buildup, or simply old leaves. Use distilled or filtered water, flush the pot, and trim off the dead parts. Once a leaf turns brown, it will not turn green again. My peace lily had brown tips […]
One time, I picked up an aloe plant at the grocery store, thinking it was aloe vera. It turned out I was wrong. I only realized my mistake after trying to harvest aloe gel from the plant I’d had for two years. The gel smelled nothing like it should. Garden centers and supermarkets often mislabel […]
Houseplants
When I say “jade plant” to a visitor eyeing my Portland windowsill, they usually think of one thing: the little green succulent your grandma had. The species does most of the heavy lifting for that image, but “jade plant” as a category is a lot bigger than one shape. Jade
In Ghana, this plant is called Tameawu. The name roughly translates to “Hate me, you die.” Few houseplants come with a threat attached. The reputation makes sense once you try to kill one. A leaf torn off and left on a dry shelf will sprout babies along its own edges. No soil, no water, no […]
I killed my first pothos in about three weeks. Not from neglect, from love: I watered it every single day because that felt like the caring thing to do. Root rot doesn’t care how much you love a plant. That pothos was the first of the 70-plus plants now crammed into my Portland apartment, and […]
Mother of Thousands is Kalanchoe daigremontiana, a succulent native to southwest Madagascar. It produces tiny plantlets along the serrated edges of its broad, blue-green leaves. It’s frequently confused with Kalanchoe delagoensis (Mother of Millions), Kalanchoe laetivirens, and the natural hybrid Kalanchoe × houghtonii. I got my first Mother of Thousands plant from a neighbor who […]
Nobody builds a garden fence for fun. You build one because something has been eating your lettuce, or your dog keeps flattening the tomato bed, or the deer in your neighborhood have decided your yard is their personal salad bar. I’ve designed gardens for over a decade, and the fence question comes up in almost […]
I still remember my first cut flower garden. It was a small patch behind my farmhouse. Within a few months, I had fresh bouquets sitting on my kitchen table every week. That is the real joy of growing a cut flower garden. You get to pick exactly what goes into your vase. No more settling […]
Home Decor
You know that feeling when you walk into a room and immediately want to stay a little longer? There’s good light. Something green. Maybe a wood table that feels really nice under your hand. Nothing is shouting for attention, it just feels good. That’s the feeling biophilic design is trying to create. And thankfully, it […]
Do you want to give your living room a new focal point without spending a fortune? A DIY fireplace mantel is one of the easiest ways to do it. You do not need years of woodworking experience. You need the right plan, the right tools, and a bit of patience. In this post, I will […]
Dig Deeper
Last October I found an old tomato cage in the back corner of my yard, flipped it upside down, threw a white sheet over it, and tied it off at the top to make a little head. That was it. That was the whole project. And I’m not exaggerating when
A neighbor texted me a photo of her aphid-covered Meyer lemon at eleven at night and asked which bottle to buy. I get that question more than any other. Both products sit on the same shelf at every garden center in Austin, both labeled organic, both priced within a few
Peonies fall into three plant types: herbaceous (soft stems that die back each winter, the most common garden peony), tree (woody-stemmed shrubs that keep their stems year-round), and Itoh hybrids (herbaceous habit with tree-peony-sized blooms). The American Peony Society recognizes six flower forms and lists more than 6,500 registered cultivars.
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