honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Friday, June 17, 2005

HAWAI'I GARDENS
Little fishes go with plants in water

By Heidi Borrnhorst

We went to one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants for my birthday celebration — the lovely JJ Bistro and French Pastry on Wai'alae Avenue.

Dust your plants

Dust and dirt on indoor plants not only looks bad, but also since they don't get a lot of light already, dust blocks light that the plants need to grow. Dust also harbors insects and disease. A slightly soapy rag or sponge is good to clean off the leaves and wipe out any insects.

Don't drip soapy water into the jar if you keep little fishes in it. If you don't have fish, a bit of liquid soap aids in mosquito-larvae prevention.

Besides the food, I like this place because live plants make up part of the decor. Interesting, thriving healthy vigorous plants are used here in an unusual fashion.

Live plants are soothing — much more so than the dusty plastic ones some businesses use. To me, green is a healing, calming and soothing color. And real plants give us oxygen, while filtering impurities and floating toxins out of the air we breathe.

As we ate and sipped our drinks, I looked around and noticed all the usual house or office plants. I also spied a very fine specimen growing in a cool way you can duplicate in your own home.

They had grown a vigorous philodendron vine, with its roots in a jug of water, up and trained it across a wall. It framed a picture and the doorway to the gourmet kitchen.

One good way to grow plants like philodendrons, pothos and syngonium or taro vine is in water. You can put fishes inside to prevent mosquitoes and stagnation. An attractive large vase or jar works well for this.

All you need to do is refill or refresh the water and rinse and clean the leaves if they get dusty. A stout wire or recycled piece of suji fish line can be used to train the vine up the wall.

Heidi Bornhorst is a sustainable-landscape consultant. Submit questions to islandlife@honoluluadvertiser.com or Island Life, The Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802. Letters may be published or distributed in print, electronic or other forms.