Learning Together

Let’s dive into the world of calatheas! These are some of our favorite plants in the shop because they hit a couple sweet spots: they’re pretty tolerant, they’re safe for pets and they have striking foliage.  Calathea is a genus of flowering plant belonging to the family Marantaceae—the arrowroot family. There are about 200 calathea species. Of course, we only carry a small handful of that, but it’s fascinating to know these beloved plants have so many cousins. Most varieties of calathea fold up their leaves to varying degrees as the sun goes down, exposing the brightly colored underside of...

This week is graduation week in Gettysburg. Congratulations class of 2021! We think plants and flowers are excellent gifts for outgoing students. A piece of nature, something that grows. What could be a better gift for this season of life?  So, here are our gifting ideas for grads! First off, a bouquet! A bouquet of flowers all grown within 100 miles of where your student attended college is a lovely way to tell them congrats. Flowers can bring them some joy, color and maybe good smells at the end of their time at school. They also won’t weigh them down as...

Watering is one of the main ways you care for your houseplant, so it’s important to get it right. That can be tricky sometimes. Thankfully, we’ve created little care cards (more on those in our last post) so you can at-a-glance identify your plant’s watering needs. In this post, we’ll go deeper in depth about what each of the droplet icons mean.  Our watering guide is based on frequency of waterings, with plants that seldom need watering on the left and ones that need frequent watering on the right. Of course, that leaves three in-betweens, which can seem difficult. But...

Air plants can be confusing. A plant that doesn’t need to be planted? In fact, it doesn’t want to be planted? Or watered much? Really?  Really.  They’re funny little things, members of the tillandsia genus. And while they’ve been in vogue for a number of years, there’s still a lot of mystery about that. Where are their roots? Why don’t they need to be watered? Should they be submerged in water or misted? Well, let’s clear up some of those mysteries and let you in on the secrets of the wonderfully strange air plant.    What’s with the “air” thing? ...

Finding the right light situation for your plant can be challenging. Knowing what direction your windows face can help.  How to figure out the direction of your windows Head over to Google Maps. Type in the address of your house or apartment. Chances are, unless you’ve been playing about in Google Maps, it will be oriented with the top of your screen being north. Maybe grab a sheet of paper and sketch out your building as it is oriented on Google Maps, adding dots where the windows are. Put a compass rose next to it and you’ll be able to...