How to Grow Hardy Fuchsias

Propagating bromeliad pups is both fun and rewarding, allowing you to easily fill your home with beautiful plants.

A fishbone cactus is easy to care for, durable, and fast-growing which makes it ideal for beginners.

Tips for Growing Strawberry Geraniums Outdoors

Heaths and heathers are easy to grow if you give them the right conditions. They only loathe clay soil and summer humidity (although you can find exceptions), and you can’t do much about those. Other than that, you can provide the conditions or find the species or cultivar that suits your spot. The best source for in-depth information is Gardening with Hardy Heathers by David Small and Ella May T. Wulff.

Dramatic and elegant, amaryllis (Hippeastrum) are bulbous indoor plants that cheer us through the coldest months. The huge flowers bloom atop tall, sturdy stems, opening like colourful trumpets, as if about to blast away the winter blues with a clarion call.

How to Grow and Care for Banana Leaf Figs Ficus maclellandii

How to Grow and Care for Bamboo Palms Chamaedorea seifrizii

Karen Delahay

This extensive unirrigated planting of cold-hardy cacti and succulents basks on a warm south-facing slope in the Undaunted Garden at the Gardens on Spring Creek in Fort Collins, Colorado in zone 4b/5a. In late May and June, the cacti bloom in hot colors along with the ice plants. Thanks to these plants’ interesting evergreen forms as well as the finer textures of similarly dry-loving companion plants such as red yucca for contrast, the garden has abundant year-round appeal. The maintenance for this planting is simple and not extensive—a bit of cutting back and cleaning up of companion plants both as they finish blooming and in early spring along with weeding is all that’s needed. However, this requires agility and dexterity as many plants are sharp and prickly.

Coleus plants are easy to care for, low-maintenance, and grow quickly, which makes them ideal for beginners.

Silver birch (Betula pendula) is a deciduous tree with a slender shape and graceful appearance, which has given rise to its lovely name of the ‘lady of the woods’. Silver birch trees look attractive year-round with white bark, spring catkins and yellow autumn leaf colour. The catkins and seeds are popular with wildlife such as bees and birds, while several species of moth lay eggs on birch leaves.

You can take an Englishwoman out of England, but you can’t change a deeply ingrained English garden aesthetic. Pom Shillingford has lived in America for 26 years, but she still yearns for the garden she knew as a child — her grandmother’s beloved Arts & Crafts garden in Hampshire, which she remembers always being filled with seasonal flowers. She and her husband David and their three young children moved from Manhattan to the small town of Salisbury in Connecticut in 2013. ‘I had always loved Manhattan, but suddenly I didn’t love it any more and needed to go back to green fields and the outdoors,’ says Pom.