If you ever looked around your home and wondered what you can do to improve your design, look no further. The space might not be begging for an extensive renovation or a major furniture overhaul—it can simply come down to styling.
18.06.2024 - 17:35 / balconygardenweb.com / Ralph Astley
Weeds can rapidly multiply through runners, seeds, offsets, and cuttings, taking up space and resources required by important plants planted around them.
They are tough and have many ways of spreading their numbers, one of which is shooting seeds when stimulated or disturbed. This is their way of reducing competition among seedlings and spreading more and farther from the mother plant to colonize. Won’t believe this? Check out the list below!
Botanical Name: Cardamine hirsute
Arguably the most notorious seed-shooting weed, the Hairy Bittercress is a cool-season weed that can spread year-round. It is identified by its small, fan-shaped, white flowers and a basal rosette of leaves.
If you accidentally touch the cigar-shaped fruit, be ready to search for seeds as far as 6 feet away, as it can catapult them that far. This shooting makes it a nuisance for gardeners, even though it’s a really cool phenomenon.
Botanical Name: Impatiens parviflora
Small Balsam is a weed that releases its seeds forcefully if disturbed. It’s also considered invasive in many parts of the States, Washington being one of them. Don’t confuse it with Touch-me-not (Mimosa pudica)–that one is an ornamental plant.
It can be up to 5 feet tall and has bright orange flowers with spots/blotches and a translucent stem. The seed pods actually coil up tightly inside the fruit, and when touched, they uncoil rapidly, flinging the seeds outwards to fall as far as they can.
Botanical Name: Oxalis corniculata
The Wood Sorrel is like the plant above but maybe on steroids and less pretty. Why, you may ask? This is because when stimulated with slight pressure, this weed shoots seeds up to a distance of 16 feet. Amazing, right?
But there are two sides to a coin, so along with
If you ever looked around your home and wondered what you can do to improve your design, look no further. The space might not be begging for an extensive renovation or a major furniture overhaul—it can simply come down to styling.
In Hannah Muller’s debut book, Designing With Dried Flowers ($22.31; Penguin Random House), she shares expert advice straight from the fields on how to create beautiful, everlasting works of art for any season and occasion. It’s packed with gorgeous photography, handfuls of tips, flower growing and harvesting suggestions, plus inspiring dried flower crafts that go well beyond vase arrangements.
Say you’re done making your favorite recipe, and run to your herb garden for some home-grown seasoning. But all you find are leggy shadows of a once-robust plant! Well, you can avoid this picture if you gently top your herb when it’s young with sets of true leaves and even after.
Weed Watch: Pokeweed Learn how to identify and control pokeweed, a toxic native perennial. Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) What does pokeweed look like?
Want your backyard to be a personalized fruit market? Then, prune your favorite established fruit plant, gather its cuttings, and start multiplying.
Homeowners and renters alike have flipped the switch on how their lighting should feel. Bright and sterile overhead lighting is getting replaced with small and moody ambient lighting as more and more people ditch the big light for more custom options. You’re probably already familiar with the concept of mood lighting, but there are more benefits to leaving your big light behind than just for the sake of ambiance. Try a combination of our creative ideas for unique ways to light up your space without the typical overhead light to discover them for yourself.
This year Chelsea Flower Show was full of interesting trees and shrubs with lots of dreamy woodland-edge planting in dappled light underneath leafy canopies. Native trees such as hawthorns, hazels and silver birch were the favoured choices in many of the show gardens, with a mixture of native and non-native ornamental plants selected for resilience and sustainability. In Ula Maria’s Forest Bathing Garden, white foxgloves, cow parsley and other umbellifers like Baltic parsley (Cenolophium denudatum) and valerian (Valeriana officinalis) were mixed with the simple shade-loving grass Melica altissima ‘Alba’ while Tom Stuart-Smith showcased intricate tapestries of interesting foliage in different shapes and textures. In other gardens, orange was a popular colour in many shades, from deep rusty orange irises to pale orange geums, especially in Ann Marie-Powell’s exuberant Octavia Hill Garden. As always, the Grand Pavilion is the ideal place to discover new and interesting plants showcased by some of the country’s leading nurseries.
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Stuck looking at a boring wall? Or running low on floor space? These clinging vines are climbing ninjas that use sticky tendrils or disks to conquer any surface. Let’s go!
Welcome to an exploration of flowers that start with the letter “B”. From the stunning Begonia to the vibrant Bluebell, this list covers a wide range of flowers, each with its own unique charm.
Smitten by the lacy fronds of ferns and the clever runoff of vines? Our selection of vines with bright green, fern-like foliage offer graceful alternatives to the ferns and come with their own set of unique perks! Read on to find out.