You can actually do so many things to impress your guests. And installing the glass railings is one of them. With a properly installed deck and glass railings, you can surely have a good time at your deck and at the same time give you the chance to admire nature.

If you are the type of person who just love outdoors, then a deck with glass railings is the perfect option.

What used to be a protection to the deck now becomes a great embellishment in achieving a more elegant home. Today, railings are designed to show off the modern look so people from your neighborhood can just be green with envy. To have that modern look you’ve been dreaming of, manufacturers now product railings that are made from different materials, designs and styles. Glass is one of the materials that are mostly preferred by many homeowners because of its exceptional look and styling. Though glass railings may seem a little odd, it still has the capacity of giving you the stylish look plus providing an unrestricted view of the outside world. Glass railings can be used in different ways so it would give you greater chances of enhancing not just your deck but also your entire home. In the early days, glass used as a railing material may seem a little inappropriate. But today, homeowners come to accept and appreciate the benefits given by glass railings.

For two years I had a plant of Motherwort, Leonurus cardiaca, labelled Perovskia atriplicifolia and my confusion on discovering the mistake will stop me committing any further careless follies of similar magnitude. The beauty of the grey foliage, near white sterns, and subsequent lavender-blue flowers depends very much on the associate planting. Grown at the edge of a flagged path to intermingle with the purple-leaved Cotinus coggygria, the shrub achieves a certain distinction. A well-drained soil and position in full sun are two further essentials for success. Cuttings taken in June or July will root in a sun frame.

The ever-popular Mock Orange will be found in the oldest, most neglected garden, still producing a crop of flowers in July when less strong- minded plants have passed on to Elysian fields, and this is sufficient evidence of the shrub’s all-round adaptability. A small complaint so far as I am concerned is the lack of a really attractive branch outline in certain instances, but a prudent removal of the old wood in February corrects this to some extent. The soil texture seems to make little difference, but they do their enchanting best on a light loam.

In the light, airy room that affords a constant temperature throughout the year there is an endless range of plants to choose from which will soften and improve the surroundings.

All these sources of knowledge can, no doubt, solve many problems but, to my mind, the best way to learn about the everyday problems of plant growing is to be responsible for a plant display at any major flower show. There you will hear astonishing tales about success and failure, and some of the incredible things that can happen to a humble rubber plant or sansevieria.

My job takes me to many such flower shows, and requires me to answer a vast number of letters on the subject of indoor plants. Some letters are amusing, others quite sad; some concern premature loss of leaves while others are from perplexed householders who have room ceilings too low for rampant monstera plants.

The entrance hall is often the most suitable place for an effective grouping of plants, or for the more mature individual plant. It is the first place that the visitor steps into and there is much to be said for the warm welcome that a cheerful entrance hall can provide. Conditions are often cooler here, though, so one must choose plants carefully to ensure that they are not too delicate and will tolerate the lower temperatures that are likely to prevail.

Olearia nummularifolia always looks more like a hebe than an olearia to me, but botanists understand these things better than I do. Its rather stiffly erect branches, with their copper- green leaves, make a pleasant contrast in the borders to thalictrum or senecio.

Cuttings of firm, current season’s wood taken during October and inserted in a light, open compost root easily. Alternatively, one can take semi-hardwood cuttings in July inserting them into a sun frame.

As a shrub enthusiast there are certain plants I yearn to grow well, and I go to a lot of trouble to achieve these ambitions. Now after six years of endeavour, my 4-ft. high bush of Osmanthus delavayi has rewarded my efforts with a creditable show of white, perfumed flowers.

Mahonia lomariifolia is a very imposing species but it is only sufficiently hardy in milder districts. The deep yellow flowers are borne during winter on long racemes. The flowering crabs may not make the immediate appeal of the flowering cherry, but their acceptance of a wider range of soils maintains the balance between the two genera in the public opinion poll.

Plants grouped together are infinitely more effective than an equivalent number of plants plants growing indoors will be some way below perfection.

Fortunately, there is an ample range of indoor plants from which to choose, so it is not difficult to create a wide variety of differing effects, and this can often he done by simply rearranging the same plants. Many of the plants will fit into almost any colour scheme, while others require selection and placing with some care.

Although I have no particular preference, as a group of plants the Dracaena deremensis types have much to commend them; mostly grey and white in colour they invariably give one’s plant arrangements a touch of the exotic with their broad, boldly striped leaves.

The questioner wanted to know what my ten favourite house plants were. After thinking for a moment I gave him my answer, and it struck me that the plants mentioned were in fact my ten fivourite display plants - the ones without which I would feel rather lost in an exhibition hall or flower show marquee.

Of the so-called Japanese Cherries I can never have a surfeit. Amanogawa, the ‘poplar’ of the race, has a military erectness so useful in the smaller garden. The pink flowers which wreathe the branches are scented. Ichiyo opens shell-pink flowers later than most. Kanzan, majestic in the profusion of shell-pink full double flowers, is the most widely planted of all cherries.

Cheal’s Weeping is a good small specimen tree for a lawn with deep pink double blossom. Shimidsu Sakura is oriental in the superb fragile picture it makes as the pink buds open to pure white. Tai-haku, with flowers 2 in. across, is a poem of loveliness against a background of pines. Ukon, with copper-tinted leaves and cream-yellow flowers, looks magnificent with scarlet azaleas.

Prunus suhhirtella has a modesty of demeanour in contradiction to the flamboyant aspect presented by the others. The best known is possibly autumnalis, which, whenever the temperature stays above freezing point, opens fragile white flowers.

The species formosa forrestii is very much a bird of passage in exposed gardens, but where shelter can be provided it is a magnificently furnished evergreen shrub, especially in the selected form available under the name Wake- h urst. The contrast between vivid red young foliage and waxy textured white flowers is one of gardening’s delightful spectacles.

Employ a deeper container filled with moist peat. Plants do particularly well in such containers if the pot is plunged to the rim in the peat. The individual requirements of each plant can then be checked.

There are many beautiful dieffenbachias available, the majority of which are a little difficult to care for; Jenbuchia Pia can be among the most troublesome. The main difficulty is that the leaves contain very little chlorophyll, being almost entirely creamy white in colour.

This in itself makes it a very fine plant for exhibition work, and it is especially useful and attractive when incorporated with blue saintpaulias. On the nursery no one was very keen to be given charge ofgreenhouses containing D. Pia, as the chances of success were not particularly good.

Purely by chance we discovered the best way to grow this plant when a container, measuring some 3 ft. across, was filled with sphagnum moss into which plants of D. Pia were plunged to their pot rims before being taken to a minor show. Containers filled in this way with one sort of plant can often be much more effective than a collection of assorted plants in the same sized container. Anyway, the large howl of plants came back from the show and, instead of adopting the usual practice of dismantling the arrangement, we left it intact and placed it in a warm greenhouse.

Viburnums must surely qualify to rank with roses, forsythia, and the other aristocrats, because they include some of the most attractive shrubs one could possibly desire for winter and spring flowering. In almost every respect the trusses are beautifully fragrant. Soil type does not seem to matter. tbo much provided there is moderate fertility and no waterlogging.

Paul Thirion, the last to flower with trusses of rose blossom fading to lilac, is like so many inhabitants of this globe, admirable when young but with a distinct tendency towards decrepitude with advancing years.

Flourishing under city smoke and the rural lane alike the cosmopolitan V. x hurkwoodii has leaves which are evergreen and pink flowers which scent the air from February to April.

Viburnum x carlcephalum and its parent V. carlesii are the most widely planted of the viburnums with attractive grey-green leaves and large white globose blossoms which are richly fragrant in May.

I could not possibly include all the offspring of S. vulgaris, the Common Lilac, so will select only the best of those under my care. Among the singles there is Esther Staley, earliest to open with bright pink trusses, medium height ; Etna, panicles broad and heavy, deep claret fading to washed-out pink; and Hugo Koster, purple crimson.

This is a magnificent family which includes the lovely winter-flowering Jasminum nudiflorum. I always grow this as a wall plant and the long rambling shoots are then displayed to the proper effect.

One of the most erect forms I grow is Ilex aquirolium camelliaelblia. The smooth, dark green leaves are almost spineless, and when mature the berries are produced in abundance.

Flowers are produced from the leaf axils in February through to April and are a deep rich yellow and delicately fragrant. Pruning is restricted to cutting back each flowering shogt in April to within two buds of the base. Jasminum officina.

Popular names can be misleading, but in the case of Kolkwitzia amahilis the sobriquet Beauty Bush is thorofighly merited. Introduced from Western china at the turn of the century, this very attractive shrub has not achieved the popularity its beauty of form and flower warrant.

A bush twenty years old will reach 6 ft. or rather more in height, densely furnished at the base but with long arching branches festooned in June with soft pink, bell-shaped blossoms shaded yellow in the throat. Pink Cloud is, in my experience, a rather sprawling bush, but the flowers compensate for this by being a lovely shade of pink. Cuttings or layers will root if taken in September.

February in the North is an exceedingly trying month for “the home gardener” The days are growing longer and winter seems to be on the wane, but there is so little that can be done and there is a great desire to be doing something. Some gardeners just cant wait to get started and they do things that should not be done.

For example, there are those who make the mistake of starting flower seeds in the house expecting to get a head start on the coming season. In the North, February is much too soon for this. The germination of the seeds is not the problem; they sprout very readily, but seedling plants do not have good enough growing conditions in the house at this time of year.

When they have grown a few inches tall, they start to lean toward the light and soon grow pale, thin and spindly. What was started with high hopes soon becomes a great disappointment and usually discourages the eager gardener from trying this interesting and profitable adventure when it should be done, under more favorable circumstances and at a time when there is a very good chance for success.