Most gardening advice will tell you to amend your soil, fertilize on a schedule, and deadhead religiously. Here’s what that advice skips: the plants that truly take care of themselves don’t want any of that. The real secret to a garden that practically runs itself is choosing plants designed to be ignored; ones that evolved …

Propagating houseplants is one of the most satisfying things you can do as a plant owner, and it costs almost nothing. A single $6 pothos purchased at a garden center can be multiplied into a dozen plants over a season, all from the same parent. You don’t need special soil, rooting hormone, or any prior …

You already know what a cottage garden feels like. The loose tumble of blooms spilling over a pathway. The hum of bees in the lavender. That specific, irreplaceable scent of roses and sweet peas rising together on a summer morning. If that picture makes something in you go quiet and settle, you are not alone …

You’ve been staring out the window all winter, dreaming about this moment. Spring is just around the corner, but before you jump into planting, there are a few critical steps you need to complete to set yourself up for success. Preparing your garden for spring planting is a specific sequence of tasks, some of which …

Your grocery bill didn’t double because you started eating better. It doubled because the produce you already buy, like fresh herbs, salad greens, tomatoes, and peppers, quietly became some of the most expensive items in the store. The good news is that every vegetable on that list grows easily in a backyard raised bed, a …

Most people think a pollinator garden requires tearing up their entire lawn, hiring a landscaper, or knowing the Latin names of plants. None of that is true. You can start with a five-by-five-foot patch of dirt, a bag of native seeds, and an afternoon, and by midsummer, you’ll have bees and butterflies visiting like clockwork. …

Most people who say they “can’t garden” have never tried growing the right plants. They started with something fussy like a finicky heirloom tomato or a temperamental pepper and concluded that gardening just wasn’t for them. It wasn’t them. It was the plant. The truth is that a handful of vegetables are almost impossible to …

Spring is the season when more plants are purchased, and more bad ones are brought home, than at any other time of year. A single infested plant can introduce spider mites or scale insects to every healthy plant in your garden. A root-bound tree can look fine for two years, then fail slowly and expensively …

Every April, millions of home gardeners harvest fistfuls of bright rhubarb stalks, lop off the enormous leaves, and toss them straight into the trash or compost without a second thought. That is a mistake. Those leaves are a free natural insecticide, a zero-effort weed barrier, and even the raw material for beautiful garden stepping stones. …

Most backyard bird feeders are not bird sanctuaries. They are, by nearly every measure that conservation biologists use, the fast food drive-through of the avian world: convenient for the customer, questionable in its health outcomes, and decidedly more beneficial to the franchise than to anyone it claims to serve. That may sound harsh, especially for …