A home is a haven far from heaven. And it will be best with an ‘oasis’. This is why decks are being built in most homes. For your most preferred result of a beautiful home, you can have a customized one. This will embody your personality and your choices. The need to having it accentuated and fully designed depends on you but it is highly recommended.

If you are a person of the world, you definitely want a bigger and lavish type of deck. You can either add posh deck chairs, tables, and planters to match your feel of things. You can also add high chairs and party accessories to complete the scene. But if you are a person who just wants to stay by yourself, then there is no need for you to have a big deck. But in either circumstance, you have to customize your deck to ensure that you can display the real you.

Customizing your deck though, must not compromise the real purpose of your deck and its railings. It must be beautiful and functional for your satisfaction. Also, it needs to adhere with the building code that is being implemented in your place. So even if you want something totally unique, you still need to ensure that it will not be making any bad effects to your neighbors or the entire community.

Earlier this century the aspidistra must have been an essential part of almost every parlour window, and there was many a young lad or lass who earned their Saturday pocket money by cleaning the leaves of Grandma’s cast iron plant. This must indeed have been an unforgettable introduction to house plants for many of them.

Initially, one should purchase plants with full foliage and plenty of flower buds with a small number of buds fully open. Don’t be misled into believing that plants in very tight bud will give a longer flowering period – in some conditions they may not flower at all. The temperature advised above is that for maintaining plants in the best posSible condition while they are indoors; plants will naturally have to endure higher temperatures when they arc put our of doors during the summer months.

An adequate supply of water is the all- important consideration, as it will he totally fatal for the compost to dry out for any length of time. Soft water or rain water will invariably give better results. (In hard-water areas softer water can be provided simply by immersing a hessian sack filled with peat in a water butt or tub).

Vines Selections for the NORTHEAST

ENGLISH IVY – From Massachusetts southward this plant, called Hedera Helix in scientific circles, is found as a ground cover 8 inches tall and as a vine climbing up into trees and on walls 50 feet or more. It will grow in any good soil in sun or partial shade; its broad leaves are a good green throughout the year.

WINTERCREEPER – A vine and ground cover for the sun, Euonymus Fortuni is also found from Massachusetts southward. It is an interesting plant and will grow in any garden soil, reaching up into a tree 50 feet or more or spreading on the ground forming a foot-high carpet.

BEARBERRY – Best for dry sandy soils, this is an extremely hardy plant with broad leaves. It grows from 6 to 12 inches tall and prefers a location in the full sun. It is listed as Arctostaphylos Uvaursi

CREEPING JUNIPER – In front of evergreen shrubs, in rockeries, on steep banks Juniperus horizontalis (and its varieties) is wonderfully effective, its needles forming an interesting textural contrast to other plantings. Always dependable, it is extremely hardy and will thrive in sun or shade, sometimes growing 18 inches tall.

Epiphyllums require very similar conditions to those described above for echevcrias and, like them, they may be placed out of doors in a sheltered, sunny position during the warmer months of the year.

Pinch out the growing tip to encourage a more bushy shape, and don’t be too disappointed if what seem to be perfectly healthy plants should suddenly collapse and die for no apparent reason; it appears to he a peculiarity of many of the eucalyptus. On the whole, however, they are not too troublesome.

In recent years epiphyllums have become much more popular and as a result there arc many new hybrids available, and there is little doubt that they would provide considerable interest for anyone wishing to specialise. New plants can be raised from seed or from leaf sections a few inches in length inserted in sandy compost. Cuttings may be taken at almost any time if the conditions are favourable.

Colourful leaves are arranged in a flat rosette that form a typical watertight urn which must be kept filled with water at all times. Cream and pink variegated leaves will remain much more attractive if the plant is given good light in which to grow, but very hot sun must be guarded against.

As the plant matures and is about to flower the shorter leaves in the centre of the rosette change colour to a brilliant red, giving it a most striking appearance. The small blue flowers produced remain more or less at water level in the urn and are not so attractive, but the plant itself will more than compensate for the poor show of flower. The main rosette gradually ,dies off after the plant has flowered and new plants are made from the shoots which appear close to the base of the parent stem. For general cultivation one should follow the information given for the aechmea.

In the main it is generally reckoned that the more colourful the foliage the more difficult the plant is likely to prove in cultivation, but there are exceptions to almost every rule and the coleus is just that. These plants may he raised from seed or by means of cuttings, but cuttings of named varieties are far and away the best bet as they produce plants in colour and habit which are much superior.

Cuttings of firm young shoots root with little bother at, almost any time of the year, and an interesting and varied collection of these plants’ can quite quickly be built up. When they become too large and overgrown they should be replaced; in fact, it is wise always to have a few young plants coming along for this purpose.

Keeping cyclamen plants from one year to the next defeats many, perplexes many and satisfies a few. At the various flower shows we attend we meet many plant growers who have the most astonishing collection of problems. One lady informed me that she had tried for many years to keep her plants without success and after her experiences that year she had finally decided to give up. It seems that of two cyclamen corms that were kept one grew and produced nothing but leaves and the other corm produced a few flowers, but no leaves at all. It was probably as well that she accepted this.

When anything goes wrong with a citrus plant then the florist, nurseryman and everyone down the line is in trouble. The main reason is that these are expensive plants to buy and the purchaser is more likely as a consequence to seek advice. When first bought, plants normally have an abundance of glossy green leaves, small orange-coloured fruits, green unripened fruit and, for good measure, heavily scented white flowers.

With all these attractions the plant is almost bound to be costly, even if you discount the length of time it takes to bring it to maturity: the longer plants spend in the heated greenhouses of the nursery the more the customer will have to pay for them.

Under natural conditions the potted plants would grow to normal chrysanthemum height, but by use of carefully measured doses of chemical plants,can he restricted to a maximum growing height of some 18 in., which makes them a much more marketable proposition as decorative flowering plants.

These are insectivorous plants with sensitive leaf hairs which, when a fly lands on them, induce the leaf to close up slowly and trap the fly inside. The plant feeds on all manner of insects in this way and an incredible number of gullible people buy this plant fondly thinking that they are going to take it home and sit indoors watching this wonder of nature methodically gobbling up all the flies in the room.

They had grown to some 3 ft. 6 in. in height and, incredibly enough, had lost practically no leaves in this time, while similarly aged individual plants had long since passed their best. Later experiments with equally difficult plants were tried and it seemed proved beyond doubt that the majority fared very much better when placed in larger containers with moist sphagnum moss packed around the pots.

Almost as much a part of the Victorian era as the aspidistra, the hare’s-foot fern is not encountered very often today. Something of a pity, as this is one of the easiest possible plants to grow besides being rather interesting and to some extent amusing. For ferns the leaves are rather coarse and not very attractive, but the rhizomatous growth from which fronds emerge will always attract attention.

These hairy rhizomes creep over the edge of the pot and look fOr all the world like hare’s feet. Kept on the dry side in cool conditions in winter and watered and fed during the summer months, they present few problems. Having acquired one plant it is not difficult to increase by division of the rhizomes in the early part of the year. Grow them in pots or hanging baskets; when planted in hanging baskets they can take on a rather weird appearance in time.

Koi pond filtration is the process of removing waste products and other harmful substances from the Koi pond. This is a basic requirement if you want to keep your Koi healthy for a long time.

That unsightly green scum we all seen on stagnate water is the result of poor filtration. Don’t let this happen. Parasites and other harmful bacteria will develop and spread quickly among the fish. With all this the water will quickly start to smell. If this happens it will be a deadly situation for your fish.

A koi pond is a big investment. Don’t risk that investment and the health of your Koi by not planning for a proper Koi pond filtration system. Take the time to carefully plan the kind of system that’s best for your particular pond.

Some Koi experts recommend a filter system that will handle a volume of not less that 33% of the total pond water volume. Therefore, a 3,000 gallon pond should have a filter capable of handling 1,000 gallons of pond water at any given time. At the very least, it should not be less than 10%.