Independent gardening advice for real gardens, balconies and windowsills.
Practical guides on soil, composting, watering, seeds, pests and the everyday skills that make a garden thrive.
The Night-blooming Cereus is an interesting plant, and excites much admiration when in flower, as it blooms at night-time only, the flowers closing up when exposed to the day-light. They are magnifice...
Another fern developed from the Boston is Whitmani, in which the fronds are not so long but the foliage is so finely divided that it gives a decided plumey effect. The Whitmani is perhaps the best of...
The year 1845 will ever be memorable by its giving birth to a disease which threatened the entire destruction of the potato crop, and which caused suffering and pecuniary ruin to an incredible extent...
Plants at present are more generally cultivated in-doors than formerly, and they may be seen in almost every home. The cultivation of plants in dwellings is decidedly a modern custom--at least to the...
The amateur gardener may enjoy Roses from June to November if he is willing to take a little trouble for them. Not, however, with the material treated of in the chapter on "The Rose"--though what is s...
The owner of every garden tries to grow roses in it, but where one succeeds, ten fail. Perhaps I would be safe in saying that ninety-nine out of every hundred fail, for a few inferior blossoms from a...
A well grown large Boston fern requires a good deal of room, and the long fronds--three feet or more in length--are apt to get damaged at the ends. For these reasons the Scottii fern, a development of...
The name given Pteris ferns is descriptive of only part of them, as they vary greatly. They are commonly used in made up dishes, or with other plants, but most of them will make fine single plants as...
The old widely popular sword fern was Nephrolepis exaltata, but the original form has been almost entirely replaced by new varieties developed from it, the most widely known of which is the Boston fer...