Our TeamRebecca Straus

Rebecca Straus


Latest Stories

Neem Oil is the Best $10 You Can Spend on Your Plants
It will keep your plants healthier.
Oct 25, 2022
Diatomaceous Earth Is The All-Natural Way to Save Your House (and Plants!) From Pests
It's the chemical-free way to combat spider mites, aphids, silverfish, ants, roaches (and more of your other favorite bugs) at home.
Sep 16, 2022
The Difference Between Parlor Palm, Areca Palm, and All Those Other Palms
So you’re in the market for something tropical to make your home feel bright and beachy all year round. A palm sounds like it would fit the bill, but which one?
Sep 14, 2022
Creepy Carnivorous Plants Actually Make Great Houseplants
Meet Audrey III, IV, V and VI.
Sep 14, 2022
8 Foolproof Ways to Avoid Overwatering Your Plants
Since learning these pearls of watering wisdom, my plants have been happily swamp-free.
Jun 27, 2022
How to Get Rid of Pantry Moths in Your Kitchen
They are the bed bugs of pantries.
May 25, 2022
These Indoor Vining Plants Give Your Home a Jungle Vibe
Aiming to achieve the indoor jungle look? Vining plants are the way to go. Whether you strategically arrange the stems around bookcases and window frames or allow them to go free-range, charting their own course, vining plants quickly up your home’s green factor. These five easy-care picks will stun in a hanging basket or high plant stand—and if you want to explore more plant options, check out our guide to the best indoor house plants.
Jan 26, 2021
5 Confessions of a (Somewhat) Reformed Serial Plant Killer
Let’s just say that a lot of houseplants have suffered at my hands. But, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about caring for plants, it’s that nobody has a 100 percent perfect success rate. There are always missteps, even for people with degrees in horticulture and years of experience. The key is to take your errors in stride, and then apply what you’ve learned the next time around. Learn from my previous mistakes and (hopefully!
Jul 18, 2020
5 Things to Know When Becoming a First-Time Plant Parent
So you are planning to expand your family. Congratulations! This is a very happy time in your life, and you should soak up every minute of joy. At the same time, there’s a lot you need to learn about your new household member-to-be. Here’s what you need to know: Obviously plants do not require the same amount of attention as pets or human children. You don’t need to take them for walks or feed them three times a day or play with dolls after dinner.
Jul 18, 2020
5 of Our Favorite Plants That Are Really, Truly Pastel
Pastels are having a moment right now, even if you are so over millennial pink. And if you look closely enough, you can find hints of soft, pale hues all over the plant world. Here are five gorgeous houseplants that will help you move beyond just jungle green. Pink earth star, or cryptanthus, is a type of bromeliad. Cryptanthus actually come in all sorts of colors, as it is a very large genus, but the “pink earth star” variety is a dreamy shade of pale pink.
Jul 18, 2020
5 Fascinating Things You Didn’t Know About Cacti
Cacti are weird plants when you stop to think about it. They don’t look particularly lush, like most other houseplants, and their stark appearance makes them feel a bit alien. In fact, they’ve been residents of planet earth for 35 to 40 million years, far longer than humans, and they’re a fascinating species. Here are five cool cacti facts that will make you look super knowledgeable when you tell your friends.
Jul 18, 2020
5 Beautiful Houseplants That Are Actually Purple
As any regular reader of design blogs knows, accent colors never fail to add some pizzazz to your decor. In the world of houseplants, you’re pretty much stuck with green as your main color scheme, but you can still add a pop of color here and there. There are actually a fair number of plants whose leaves are all or primarily purple, and these can add some visual interest to an otherwise monotone grouping. Plus, they’re freaking purple! What’s not to love?
Jul 18, 2020
5 of My Favorite Tropical Plants, Because Winter Is Dead to Me
Most of the plants we grow in our homes come from the tropics. That’s because, from a plant’s perspective, our climate-controlled houses more or less resemble the year-round warmth of a jungle habitat. However, there are some universal challenges to growing tropical plants indoors, namely, humidity and water. Jungle plants are used to high humidity, so they can have a hard time thriving in the dry indoor air of North American homes, particularly during the winter.
Jul 18, 2020
5 Bad Houseplant Habits You Should Break Right Now
When you read articles about caring for houseplants, they typically tell you what you should be doing to get your green pups to thrive. But sometimes it’s more effective to hear the opposite—after all, you can’t learn from your mistakes until you know what they are. Here are five bad houseplant habits that all plant parents need to break right now. When I got my first couple of houseplants, back in my college dorm, I randomly chose a peace lily and a sage plant.
Jul 18, 2020
6 Fascinating Plants That Will Perk Up Your Lifeless Room
These will perk up a lifeless room.
Jul 17, 2020
$14 Watering Spikes Are a Forgetful Plant Owner’s Secret Weapon
See if you relate to this scenario. You go to your local nursery and excitedly select a houseplant to be your new companion. After you bring it home, you fuss over its placement on the windowsill, worrying if the sunlight might be a bit too harsh for its delicate leaves. You water it faithfully like clockwork every Sunday morning, lovingly rotating the pot each time so it doesn’t become leggy.
Jul 17, 2020
What Does it Mean When Your Plant Is Leggy?
Healthy houseplants are generally described as full and bushy. They’ll have lots of dense, sturdy growth and the leaves will be crisp and green rather than limp and yellowing. If your houseplant is “leggy,” it simply means it has gotten a bit unkempt and scraggly, like a formerly stylish haircut that’s grown out unevenly and is riddled with split ends. Leggy houseplants are marked by flopping stems, uneven and sparse growth, and a general look of untidiness.
Jul 17, 2020
Air-Purifying Plants Aren’t a Complete Myth (Just a Partial One)
If you ever click on web articles about houseplants (and you’re reading this, so we’ll assume that’s a yes), you’ve probably come across the idea that houseplants purify the air inside your house by sucking up invisible toxins. If you’re thinking that sounds too good to be true, yeah, it kind of is. But it’s not a complete myth either.
Jul 16, 2020
The 7 Most Photogenic Plants of All Time
There are some plants that we’ll never get tired of looking at on Instagram, no matter how many times they pop up in our feeds. Big and small, these showstoppers are the eye-candy of the plant world. With their broad, imposing leaves, staghorn ferns (Platycerium) demand attention in any space. The leaves have deep incisions, resembling a deer’s antlers, hence the plant’s name.
Jul 16, 2020
5 Ingenious Plant Tricks You Haven’t Tried Yet
Tried-and-true tricks to keep your plants happy and healthy.
Feb 11, 2020
These Are the Best Plants for Your Living Room
You just can't go wrong with these guys.
Jan 7, 2020
7 Big Leaf Houseplants to Bring Big Style to Your Home
Want to make max impact with your plants? Try one of these beauties.
Nov 21, 2019
The Very Best Pot for Your Green Plant Babies Is Also The Cheapest
This is a no brainer.
Oct 16, 2019
How to Get Rid of Mealybugs
As far as the ick factor goes, mealybugs are a 10 out of 10.
Aug 18, 2019
How to Prevent Fungus Gnats from Taking Over Your Houseplants
Beyond the ick-factor, fungus gnats are harmless to people and generally harmless to plants, so long as they don’t start breeding out of control because the larvae will feed on and damage plant roots.
Jul 26, 2019
Make Your Friends Green With Envy: These 6 Plants Are the Next Fiddle-Leaf Fig
Six up-and-comers that could soon surpasses fiddle-leafs as the darlings of the houseplant world.
Jun 1, 2019
6 Essential Tips for Container Gardening
For many apartment dwellers, growing flowers and veggies inside containers is the only way to have a home garden. And having a home garden is awesome! Spending time in the sun after being trapped at work all day can cheer you up. Growing your own food, herbs, and flowers is rewarding. Getting your hands dirty will make you feel closer to nature. Plus, container gardens can be as small or as big as you want.
May 9, 2019
Best Flowers to Plant in Spring
You may be thinking quintessential spring flowers like daffodils and crocuses are your best bets for spring planting. However, these early-season bloomers, along with tulips and hyacinths, grow from bulbs, and they get a headstart on the growing season with a fall planting.For that first sunny day of spring when you’re itching to get outside and dig around in the dirt, stick to planting colorful annuals.
May 4, 2019
Why You Should Put Ice Cubes in Your Flower Pots
This past Valentine’s Day, my boyfriend gave me a potted orchid instead of the usual bouquet of carnations and roses. Having never owned an orchid before, I checked the tag for care instructions and learned I was supposed to water it with three ice cubes, or about ¼ cup of water, once a week. I’ve been feeding my orchid its ice every Friday, and it’s been blooming spectacularly for the past three months. But are the ice cubes really the secret to orchid success?
May 3, 2019
Your Plant is An Introvert (and Other Things Black Thumbs Should Know)
Most of us have that one friend or family member who reliably texts you with life updates, posts Instagram Stories about her commute to work, and generally goes out of her way to keep you informed. And then there’s the friend who’s a bit more private about her feelings. You can usually recognize the signs when something’s bothering her, but she makes you guess to figure out what the problem is. Your houseplants are like this second type of friend.
May 3, 2019
The Trick to Growing Your Own Pineapple At Home
Fun fact: Pineapples are actually a member of the bromeliad family, a tropical species long popular with houseplant enthusiasts for their dramatic spiky leaves and neon-colored blooms. And, it turns out, you can even grow a pineapple as a houseplant, too. You don’t need to make a special trip to the nursery either—just add a pineapple to your grocery list and you’ll have exactly what you need to start growing a brand new pineapple plant.
May 3, 2019
6 Plants That Naturally Repel Mosquitoes
I live in a one bedroom “garden” apartment, which means that I get to have my own front door, porch, and small strip of flower bed. The only downside? The flower bed is under the porch roof, which means it’s constantly damp and shady, and also an ideal mosquito habitat. So this year, after frantically trying to squash a few rogue mosquitoes that snuck indoors while I was carrying in groceries, I’ve decided to get myself some mosquito-repelling plants.
May 3, 2019
Finally, Something You Can Actually Grow In Your Pitch Black Apartment
If there’s one thing I could change about my one-bedroom apartment, it wouldn’t be the square footage or the carpet or the weird handle-less kitchen cabinets. It would be the lack of natural light, which sadly stymies my dream of covering every available surface with greenery and growing fresh herbs right in my kitchen. But it turns out there is actually one thing I can grow successfully in my cave of a kitchen: mushrooms.
May 3, 2019
Before You Buy Another Plant, Check Your Local Library
Do you dream of fragrant green herbs sprouting on your kitchen windowsill? Cherry tomatoes ripening on the vine just outside your door? If you’ve got a least a little patch of sun on a porch or balcony, you can grow a container garden. But before you head out to buy seeds, you might want to check with your local library to see if you can “check out” a pack or two. Yep, libraries aren’t just for books and movies anymore.
May 3, 2019
Insecticidal Soap Is Our Favorite Solution to Common Plant Pests
Have you ever peeled back the leaves on a bunch of homegrown kale to discover hundreds of scaly little bugs? Those are aphids and the sight of them will make you throw away your kale and order pizza instead. And anyone who’s had a houseplant infested with spider mites will have been tempted to chuck said plant, pot and all, straight out the window. The damage they cause can eventually kill the plant, and the mites spread quickly.
May 3, 2019