Gardening Tips, DIY Ideas & Plant Care for Every Home
Emma Cade The first time I filled a paper bag with dandelion greens, chickweed, and violet leaves from my own backyard, I felt slightly ridiculous — and then I tasted the salad. Wild herbs taste sharper, weedier, and somehow more alive than anything from a grocery bag, and most of them are already growing within twenty feet … Read more
If you’ve spent any time pulling “weeds” out of a lawn or garden bed, there’s a good chance you’ve yanked out a plant that was quietly worth eating. Wild violet (Viola sororia and close relatives) is one of the most overlooked edible-and-useful plants growing in shady yards across North America and much of Europe. The … Read more
Nobody starts out knowing how to keep a plant alive, and a staircase — with its mix of shadowy corners and occasional bright landing — is actually one of the more forgiving places to learn. I killed three plants in my first apartment before I figured out that the problem was never my lack of … Read more
Most rental leases have a clause somewhere about holes in the walls, which is exactly why so many apartment staircases sit bare while the rest of the home gets all the styling attention. I spent my first year in a rental apartment convinced a staircase garden meant drilling I wasn’t allowed to do, until a … Read more
Most of us walk past a dozen medicinally significant plants on an average nature walk without recognizing a single one, dismissing them as ordinary weeds along the trail edge. I started learning to identify wild medicinal plants after a herbalist friend pointed out plantain growing in my own backyard, a plant I’d been mowing over … Read more
Most perennial beds hit a wall by midsummer — the tulips are long gone, the peonies had their two-week moment, and suddenly there’s a stretch of green with nothing much happening. I redesigned my own border around bloom time rather than just color three summers ago, and it’s the single change that finally kept the … Read more
A cluttered staircase full of mismatched pots can feel busier than the rest of the house combined, which is exactly the opposite of what most people want from the space they pass through every day. I stripped my own staircase down to three plants two years ago — a single snake plant, one trailing pothos, … Read more
The difference between a nice staircase and one that looks like it belongs in a shelter magazine spread usually comes down to three things: material quality, plant maturity, and restraint at scale — none of which require the budget most people assume. I consulted on a friend’s entryway redesign last year where swapping her plastic … Read more
A staircase built from reclaimed wood or worn pine already has half the farmhouse look built in — the plants just finish the job. I started with a single galvanized bucket of pothos on my own landing two autumns ago, and by winter the whole stairwell had that lived-in, gathered-over-time feel that no amount of … Read more
Most staircases sit there doing nothing but connecting two floors, which always struck me as a waste of good vertical space. I started with a single pothos cutting on my own landing three winters ago, and by the following spring the whole stairwell had turned into something guests actually stopped to look at. A boho … Read more