Booklet Offers Tips On How To Care For Trees

The National Arbor Day Foundation has published a new booklet - Conservation Trees - available for free.

The booklet includes descriptions of conservation trees as well as tips for using shade trees and windbreaks to save energy, attracting birds to your yard, saving trees during construction and pruning and planting directions.

For a Conservation Trees booklet, send your name and address to Conservation Trees, The National Arbor Day Foundation, Nebraska City, NE 68410.

Watch someone else do it

The 12th season of the popular show “Hometime” begins Jan. 3 with the completion of a shingle cottage.

The project includes landscaping and decorating. Also this season, the shows will document the building of an Arts and Crafts-style bungalow, finish the basement of a newer suburban home and build an addition on a Colonial Revival house.

“Hometime” airs at 8:30 a.m. Saturdays on KSPS-7 TV.

Think green grass

The annual Turf, Tree and Landscape Conference will be Jan. 29-30 at the DoubleTree Hotel in the Spokane Valley.

The conference attracts about 300 participants ranging from landscape designers to arborists to turf managers (basically anyone involved in the business of urban horticulture).

The 12th annual conference is sponsored by Washington State University, WSU Cooperative Extension and the WSU Conferences and Institutes.

For more information, contact the WSU Conferences and Institutes at (509) 335-3530 or (800) 942-4978, e-mail to wsuconf@wsu.edu or visit the Website at www.eus.wsu.edu/c&i.

Double-pot it

Most decorative pots don’t have drainage holes in the bottom, including some which come with a protective glazed saucer. If the pot you select doesn’t have a draining hole, your houseplants will be happier when double-potted. Otherwise, water may pool in the bottom of the pot and the roots will rot even if the surface soil seems dry.

Use a slightly smaller clay pot for the plant and set it inside the decorative pot.

, DataTimes