Easy Home Accessories

Restful and easy-to-live-with as they are, vines are not at their best trained haphazardly on a wall – any available wall – the way paintings are often hung to fill an empty space.

The lines of vines are so prominent that using them in a by-guess-and-by-golly manner can cause confusion and even offense. Except for spectacular specimens that become focal points wherever they’re placed, vines are usually most effective used in combination with other plants or items like pictures, mirrors, pieces of furniture.

But used with care, vines can create breathtaking effects against walls, fireplaces, railings of stairs, and other vertical areas. To harmonize and connect a background – the wall – with a table or chair standing before it, hang or train a vine just above the furniture. Stand back and squint at the composition to see if it is balanced. Check the relative proportions of space, to furniture, to plant. Decide whether the shapes are harmonious, whether colors and textures have interesting contrast. Then, congratulate yourself on achieving one of the difficult but most artistic types of interior design.

Or arrange a vine with or around a mirror that reflects the image and doubles the effect. To lower a high ceiling, train a vine horizontally at some point above eye level; try the reverse with vertical lines. Experiment with breaking up a large, bare surface with the line, light, and shadow effect of a vine.

Available variety of suitable vines, of course, depends partly on cultural conditions. Walls are not usually brightly lighted, so foliage vines are used for their fresh greenery and the pattern of leaf, stem, and shadow. Small, slow-growing varieties are out of scale on large walls; massive, heavy vines are too dominant for limited areas. Some clinging vines will climb a smooth wall without support; stem-and tendril-climbers need cord or wire. Take all these qualities into consideration, then take off on one of the following suggestions or a creative idea of your own.

In a living room corner where a rough stone fireplace joins a wall of smooth plaster or paneling, the abrupt change can be softened and the two surfaces blended by a soft foliage vine trained up to the ceiling and across the top of the second wall. Fatshedera would do well here, or some of the climbing philodendrons.

In the bathroom, where the air is moist so it can have guttation in plants, tropical climbers will grow faster and cling tighter even to smooth walls. Try a flat-clinging variety up the side of the shower. In the library or TV room, cut a hole in the top of a bookcase, just large enough to hold a pot by the rim. Provide a plant-to-ceiling support like a thin, straight tree trunk or moss pole, and let several variegated scindapsus cover it with white-splashed, overlapping leaves.

On the fireplace mantel, avoid the trite matching bowls of ivy. Try one large, low, centered container overflowing with nephthytis, or balance a tall candelabra at one end against a low, spreading asparagus fern at the other.

In a contemporary house I know, the wall dividing living room from kitchen stops two feet short of the ceiling. On top, the talented home decorator sets a bowl from which long stems of garden ivy hang down to break up the broad expanse of bare wall. When the ivy fades, she replaces it with potted philodendrons or other foliage vines, sometimes balanced by a bark-mounted staghom fern.

Join Keith Markensen at http://www.plant-care.com. We’ve created the perfect resource for you on the topic of guttation in plants. Grab a totally unique version of this article from the Uber Article Directory

It is easier to understand what unity does than to explain what it is. Any design – a small dish garden, cut-flower composition, living-room decor, patio planting, landscape – has unity if the whole hangs together to make one pleasing picture. Without unity a design “goes off in all directions,” has a restless, disorganized, discordant effect.

Not quite the same as unity, but an important part of it, is harmony – a restful quality created when all parts of a design or decorative effect add up to one style or mood. An extreme example may illustrate the point. Setting an urn of clean, stark contemporary lines beside an ornate, Victorian garden seat would be inharmonious; each style is foreign to and unsympathetic with the other. But a low fence is in harmony with the rose that clambers over it; vining plants can unite harmoniously the upright plants in a window box with the box itself.

There are innumerable techniques for unifying a design, of which the following five are probably basic.

1. To have unity, a design usually has only one focal point or center of interest. For example, a vine or other planting and its container can be the object of interest against a wall; or the vine can be so arranged that it supports a center of interest, like a fireplace. Any attempt to use it for both purposes can result in either chaos or complete lack of interest.

2. To have unity, a decorative effect should be designed to hold the eye inside the picture. The flowing lines of vines are particularly effective here. Training a vine around a large window, for example, holds the eye and keeps it from wandering off.

3. To have unity, the elements of a design can often be arranged so that they interlock or overlap. Here again, vines are useful. Without a vine planted at its base, a tall shrub may seem entirely separate from the tub it is planted in; when a vine overlaps the container below and the shrub above, the two are tied together.

4. To have unity, the important parts of a design must be in pleasing relative proportion or scale. The vine selected to blend a shrub like yucca branched and its tub should be neither so small that the shrub overpowers it, nor so large and bold that it dwarfs the shrub.

5. To have unity, a design or decorative effect should be executed with restraint, moderation, good taste. Too many elements create a disturbing, helter-skelter, cluttered appearance. So a single wall bracket or hanging basket, or a matching or harmonious pair, is generally preferable to a varied assortment.

Create your own unity in the landscape with vines!

Know the secret why many people are interested on yucca branched. Join us http://www.plant-care.com/yucca-branched-tree-form.html. Grab a totally unique version of this article from the Uber Article Directory

Lilies are making their appearance in garden center stores in ever-increasing numbers during October. The southern strains of Easter lilies are now ready for planting. These are hardy in southern gardens and produce great quantities of pure white blooms every spring. Plant them 6 to 8 inches deep in rich, well-drained soil.

Don’t overlook the wonderful ever increasing new hybrids. They grow beautifully in our gardens and can be had in nearly every shade and tone of white, yellow, orange, pink and red. You can have lilies in bloom from April to August by proper selection of varieties : Madonnas and the other new hybrids, April and May ; regales and tigers, June; rubrums and auratums, July; and formosanums, August.

Peonies can be planted in the Upper South only. They are too far out of their natural range to be grown successfully below Atlanta, Birmingham and Greenwood. Plant in a rich soil to which well-rotted manure has been added. Don’t plant the crown or eyes more than 1-1/2 inches below the soil level. They won’t bloom if you do.

Sweet Peas can be planted in the Lower South. November is better for the Middle and Upper South but soils can be prepared now in all sections. Use a trench 6 or 8 inches deep and put several inches of well-rotted manure in the bottom. Over the manure, place 2 or 3 inches of well-prepared garden soil. Don’t fill the trench to ground level until later. Then, as the new plants develop, gradually pull in the remainder of the soil to fill to ground level. Early varieties should be planted first.

Roses appear in stores this month but it is too early to plant them. Wait until November or December. Too early a planting causes soft growth which is killed by freezing weather. Instead, use this time to prepare the soil well.

Tender house plants should be brought indoors before night temperatures become cold. Sudden temperature fluctuations cause considerable trouble.

Fall lawn planting continues through October. For a rye grass overplanting on Bermuda lawns sow at the rate of 5 pounds for each 1,000 square feet. For straight rye grass plantings double the rate. In either case, apply 100 pounds of pulverized sheep manure or other organic food and 30 to 40 pounds of 6-10-4, 5-10-5 or 6-8-6 per 1,000 square feet. Keep newly-seeded lawns well watered at all times to insure a good germination. Aerate old lawns to improve growth.Lilies Show Up in October Southern Roses Make a Planting Date Fall Lawns Bring Green Lawns

Lilies are making their appearance in garden center stores in ever-increasing numbers during October. The southern strains of Easter lilies are now ready for planting. These are hardy in southern gardens and produce great quantities of pure white blooms every spring. Plant them 6 to 8 inches deep in rich, well-drained soil.

Don’t overlook the wonderful ever increasing new hybrids. They grow beautifully in our gardens and can be had in nearly every shade and tone of white, yellow, orange, pink and red. You can have lilies in bloom from April to August by proper selection of varieties : Madonnas and the other new hybrids, April and May ; regales and tigers, June; rubrums and auratums, July; and formosanums, August.

Peonies can be planted in the Upper South only. They are too far out of their natural range to be grown successfully below Atlanta, Birmingham and Greenwood. Plant in a rich soil to which well-rotted manure has been added. Don’t plant the crown or eyes more than 1-1/2 inches below the soil level. They won’t bloom if you do.

Sweet Peas can be planted in the Lower South. November is better for the Middle and Upper South but soils can be prepared now in all sections. Use a trench 6 or 8 inches deep and put several inches of well-rotted manure in the bottom. Over the manure, place 2 or 3 inches of well-prepared garden soil. Don’t fill the trench to ground level until later. Then, as the new plants develop, gradually pull in the remainder of the soil to fill to ground level. Early varieties should be planted first.

Roses appear in stores this month but it is too early to plant them. Wait until November or December. Too early a planting causes soft growth which is killed by freezing weather. Instead, use this time to prepare the soil well.

Anthurium care house plant should be brought indoors before night temperatures become cold. Sudden temperature fluctuations cause considerable trouble.

Fall lawn planting continues through October. For a rye grass overplanting on Bermuda lawns sow at the rate of 5 pounds for each 1,000 square feet. For straight rye grass plantings double the rate. In either case, apply 100 pounds of pulverized sheep manure or other organic food and 30 to 40 pounds of 6-10-4, 5-10-5 or 6-8-6 per 1,000 square feet. Keep newly-seeded lawns well watered at all times to insure a good germination. Aerate old lawns to improve growth.

There is much more on anthurium. Drop by today at http://www.plant-care.com/anthuriums-flamingo-flower.html. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service