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.
14.06.2024 - 05:49 / balconygardenweb.com / Editorial Team
Even a toddler can look at a strawberry and call it one! But as the saying goes–all that glitters is not gold, and all berries that look like strawberries are not so! With this article, you’ll learn to discern the real ones from these mimics.
Botanical Name: Duchesnea indica
Also known as the Indian Strawberry, this one’s a bootleg of the true strawberry. With a similar red, bumpy texture, it’s a reasonable misunderstanding. But an easy giveaway is its tiny size, much smaller than the strawberry. And in a single bite, you’ll have caught this poser red-handed, as it is way less sweet, with a dry, bland taste.
Botanical Name: Rubus idaeus
Edible, sweet, tarty, but not a strawberry! Red Raspberries look like strawberries from afar because of their red, juicy, conical clustered appearance. But even if you popped them expecting the other, you’ll only be pleasantly surprised.
Botanical Name: Rubus illecebrosus
Even a trained eye may struggle to distinguish these Japanese natives from true strawberries. Its luscious reddish-magenta form will make you wish these were strawberries!
But fret not; these fruits are just as sweet and juicy, with a slightly chewier texture than strawberries. Maybe they even look like a bunch of raspberries clumped together!
Botanical Name: Waldsteinia fragarioides
Often, the delicate and bright yellow flowers of this plant overshadow the tiny red strawberry-like fruit. The plant is mostly used as an ornamental groundcover, and its fruit is ignored because it is inedible.
Botanical Name: Rubus spectabilis
Mostly appearing in orange, when it ripens, the salmonberry does take on a reddish hue, looking somewhat similar to the strawberry. Found in moist, forested areas, these large fruits are not true berries and are
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.
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.
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You walk through the produce section of your supermarket and everything looks so familiar. But the fruits and vegetables you see bear no resemblance to their ancestors from thousands of years ago. Most of them don't taste the same either.