12 Fuzzy Foliage Houseplants | Plants with Soft Leaves

I have become increasingly interested in pollinator gardening over the years. And while the beauty the flowers bring to my life should be enough, in reality, I am more entertained by the birds, bees, and butterflies they attract.

If you believe that plants make this world more beautiful, you’ll fall in love with these 36 variegated indoor plants with patterns, blotches, smears, and stripes.

Like all of Ken’s 18 books (!!!), “Making More Plants: The Science, Art and Joy of Propagation” is rich in instruction, but also visually arresting, since he’s an award-winning photographer, too.  It covers the botany of propagation—the why’s behind how you can make more plants of a particular species sexually or asexually or both—because as Ken says:“It is not essential to learn about botany to garden well; it’s inevitable.”Then in words and intimate pictures he covers virtually every tactic for doing so, from seed-sowing to leaf and root cuttings, to layering, grafting, division and more.  The photos are so beautiful, and Ken’s obvious enthusiasm so evident on every page, that I want to try everything. (Just what I nee

We talked about the advantages of growing from seed, about extra-cooperative little plants like certain sedges and Erigeron (fleabane) that can beautify even tough spots like at the roots of trees, about using pots to announce garden areas and the signature plants of each of the distinct gardens at Wave Hill, too—like larkspur, to name one.the plants of wave hill, with louis bauerQ. Glad to have you on the show, Louis.A. Thanks for asking me.Q. Thank you for saying yes because I need a little help with my plantsmanship over here. [Laughter.] So for people who haven’t visited Wave Hill, which is a must stop for any keen gardener, do you want to just give us the teeny version of why we need tocome visit—a little bit about Wave Hill?A. Well it really i

Our guide is Virginia Tech associate professor of horticulture Dr. Holly Scoggins, a herbaceous plant specialist and educator, who also teaches greenhouse management and ornamental plant production and marketing. She conducts research to help commercial growers of container plants get it right, optimizing inputs like water and fertilizer, for instance, or different kinds of growing media.In other words: Holly Scoggins knows a well-grown plant when she sees one.Because she apparently can’t get enough plants, Holly also operates a U-pick blueberry farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains, blogs at The Garden Professors blog at extension.org, and contributes to the Professors’ popular Facebook page.On my public-radio show and podcast I learned a whole new style of plant-shopping etiquette, and got over my sti

We talked about matching plants to habitat, of course, but also why evaluating their habits–do they spread by rhizomes, or are they clumpers?–is key, too, among other considerations. Not all goldenrods (or milkweeds, or fill in the blank) are created equal).Read along as you listen to the June 3, 2019 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Spotifyor Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).getting to know native plants, with uli lorimerMargaret Roach: Congratulations on your recent change of job, Uli, and-Uli Lorimer: Thank you. Yes, it’s very, very exciting times.Margaret: Before we go on kind of a virtual walk among the wildflowers together, tell us about the new job and the new name for the former New England Wild Flower Society.Uli: Sure. The organization made the first moves to change the name a

Andy Brand is longtime nursery manager of the famed mail-order and destination nursery Broken Arrow in Hamden, Connecticut, and each September he and I teach half-day workshops in my rural Hudson Valley, New York, garden–with one part of the workshop being about gardening for the birds. Our next one is Saturday 16, 2017 (details at the bottom of this story, or at this other page).But no matter where you are listening, we talked recently about strategies and plants that bring in the birds and more—particularly the top genera of powerhouse woody plants that fuel fruit production in summer and fall for hungry birds, preceded by spring or summer flowers that support pollinators and other beneficials. I’ve also inclu

In collaboration with Rutgers University medical toxicologist Lewis S. Nelson, MD,Dr. Michael J. Balick, who is Vice President for Botanical Science and Director of the Institute of Economic Botany at the New York Botanical Garden, has written the new third edition of the“Handbook of Poisonous and Injurious Plants.”I asked him about plant chemistry—why some plants have the toxins they do–and what we’ve learned from, and about, those plants. And how did people figure out which are poisonous in the first place, anyhow?Read along as you listen to the July 27, 2020 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).

Mobee Weinstein is foreman of gardeners for outdoor gardens at New York Botanical Garden in New York City. She’s taught classes in indoor plants at the State University of New York and at NYBG. And she is also the person who first introduced me to many of what have become my favorite houseplants, back when I was a beginning garden writer, and I’d visit her in the NYBG greenhouses while working on a story—some really special times.Mobee shared her list of top indoor ferns to try (including tuber fern, Nephrolepis cordifolia, seen beside her in the photo below); some fern sources; and even some key fern-care advice, like how to water properly.Read along as you listen to the January 27, 2020 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).Plus: Ente

There are many plants we may not know at all, so everything about them is a surprise, of course, when we first come across them. But even commonplace plants like the dandelion have untold stories to share. Dandelions and 79 others are profiled in Drori’s “Around the World in 80 Plants” (affiliate link). Drori is a former BBC documentarian who for nine years was a trustee of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is on the board of Cambridge University Botanic Garden, a trustee of the World Wildlife Fund, a fellow of the Linnaean Society and more.Plus: Enter to win a copy of the book by commenting in the box at the bottom of the page.Read along as you listen to the May 31, 2021 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).around the

Darryl Cheng does better, using all the technical insights he can to make more than 100 houseplants feel at home in his Toronto condominium. But he also accepts that his place is not a conservatory or commercial greenhouse. It’s not perfect.Darryl is better knownon Instagram as @houseplantjournal, and as one of his 620,000 followers, I can say I enjoy being treated to his frequent posts, showing off his latest insights from ambitiously growing a condo-full of diverse houseplants. He began sharing his earliest

All in time for World Carnivorous Plant Day on Wednesday, May 4th, we’re also going to learn about the plight of carnivorous plants in the wild, where they’re disproportionately endangered.Kenny Coogan is a board member and education director for the International Carnivorous Plant Society (which also has a popular group on Facebook). Kenny’s also author of the recent book “Florida’s Carnivorous Plants,” and he operates a carnivorous plant nursery there