The plant anyone can grow

TO ANYONE CLAIMing a non-green thumb: I have a houseplant that even you can grow. The most common problems in growing houseplants arise from improper watering. Too many houseplants suffer short lives, either withering in soil allowed to go bone dry between waterings, or gasping for air in constantly waterlogged soil. Worse off yet are those plants forced to alternately suffer from both extremes.

The plant I have in mind is called umbrella plant (Cyperus alternifolius) and requires no skill at all in watering. Because umbrella plant is native to shallow waters, you never need to decide whether or not to water. Water is always needed! The way to grow this plant is by standing its pot in a deep saucer which is always kept filled with a couple of inches of water. What could be simpler?

One caution, though. The top edge saucer does have to be below the rim of the pot. Umbrella plants like their roots constantly bathed in water, but not their stems.

Umbrella plant isn’t a homely

Fireplace

CONTINUES FROM PAGE F2 plant, sacrificing good looks for ease of care. The plant grows as a graceful clump of bare, slender stems, each stem capped with a whorl of leaves that radiate out like the ribs of a denuded umbrella. The stems are two to four feet tall, and each leaf four to eight inches long.

A dwarf form of the plant, botanically C. albostriatus, grows only a foot or so high, and has grassy leaves growing in amongst the stems at the base of the plant. There also is a variegated form of umbrella plant, C. alternifolius Variegatus, and a wispy one with especially thin leaves and stems.

Umbrella plants are not finicky about care other than watering. They grow best in sunny windows, but will get along in any bright room. As far as potting soil, your regular homemade or packaged mix will suffice. Umbrella plants like a near-neutral pH, as do most other houseplants.

The plants do require periodic repotting as they begin to crowd their pots. At that time, a large plant either can be shifted to a yet larger pot, or new suited to her style.

4. Stage a serene scene plants can be made by dividing the large clumps into smaller clumps and potting each of them separately.

Pillar-candle-filled fireboxes are popular, but Kymberly Glazer, director of marketing and sales for the Decorative Plumbing and Hardware Association, had a fresh idea for adding an element of drama, dimension and height. She found a maker on Etsy who could create the custom candle risers she had in mind - and for less money than the mass-produced items she found.

Glazer says she and her husband renovated their first floor when they bought their place, but purposefully kept the nonworking fireplace as a focal point. She says it doesn’t make economic sense to install a gas insert in their New Orleans climate, but she loves the fireplace nonetheless.

One way wild umbrella plants propagate is by taking root where their leaves touch ground when the stems arch over. This technique can be mimicked to propagate an umbrella plant indoors. Fold the leaves down around the stem with a rubber band, as if you were closing the umbrella. Cut the stem a few inches below the whorl of leaves and poke the umbrella, leaves pointing upward, into some potting soil — kept constantly moist, of course.

Though you may be unfamiliar with the umbrella plant, you probably have come across its near-relatives either in the garden or in literature. One relative is yellow nutsedge (C. esculentum), a plant usually considered a weed and inhabiting wet soils all the way from Maine down to the tropics. But esculentum in the botanical name means “succulent,” and refers to the sweet, nut-like tubers the plant produces below ground. I grow this plant, and

5. Create a fairy-light fantasy now consider it quite esculentum, although if it takes over the garden I may also call it a weed. Umbrella plant’s other famous relative is papyrus (C. papyrus), a plant that once grew wild along the Nile River. In ancient times, papyrus was used not only to make paper, but also to build boats and as food. Papyrus looks much like

Hattie Kolp, an interior design content creator in New York City, used fairy lights, or small string lights, in her firebox to achieve the ambiance of a roaring fire. “My apartment is from 1890, and my [gas] fireplaces have these really gorgeous original tile and iron inserts,” she says. Though the fireplaces no longer work, Kolp wanted to emulate the coziness they once provided and highlight their original features, such as the faux logs. Her solution was to wrap a “very long” strand of string lights around the logs and up to the top of the firebox to create the look of licking flames. To achieve some height with the strand, “I wrapped them around a hook I stuck up inside the chimney,” she says.

6. Add a shelving unit

A fireplace makeover should take its cues from the room and from your functional needs. Kelly-Jeanne Lee, an urban homesteader in Atlanta, nailed this concept in her child’s bedroom by installing a perfectly sized shelving unit into the unused fireplace. “Adding this bookcase felt like the best use of the space,” she wrote in an Instagram post, “and then filling it was a joy.”

7. Add mirrors

Mirrors can have a big effect on a room, especially in a small space. Young used custom-cut mirrors to line his firebox, but stick-on mirror tiles are an easy DIY option, too. He says mirrors not only reflect light but also reflect the next room in open-concept designs. They add interest and make it seem the umbrella plant, and being subtropical, also would make a good houseplant. But with stems that may soar to 15 feet in height, this species is to tall for my living room.

Any gardening questions? Email garden@leereich.com and I’ll try answering them. Come visit my garden at www. leereich.com/blog as if there’s something beyond the fireplace niche.

You can style with mirrors when something is in the fireplace, too. Young chose natural wood, but statement pieces such as the stone slab or oversize vase that Emma Lee of London photographed would also complement a mirror-lined firebox.

“Just have fun with it,” Young says. He has long loved fireplaces and mantels; he and his husband bought a 1730s home that was once called Hearth House because of the large number of fireplaces, and his forthcoming book features nine of them.

“They just speak to me,” he says, “and I don’t care if they’re functioning or not functioning, because I’ll find a way to make them interesting.”

Terry & Kim Kovel | Antiques & Collecting