Some do need a rest to complete their growth cycle, but for others this hack could be stressful

The problem
Winter plant advice is full of contradictions. Rest your plants; don’t rest your plants. Move them to a cooler spot; keep them warm. One common tip is to put certain houseplants in a dark, cool spot, to mimic natural dormancy and give them the rest they need.

The hack
Some plants need a period of reduced light, cooler temperatures and minimal watering to complete their growth cycle. Forcing this dormancy by moving them somewhere darker and cooler in winter is said to result in stronger growth, better flowering and a healthier plant come spring.

Cutting out dead material will make the plant look better without damaging it. But be careful not to slice into the living leaf

The problem
You can really love your plants and still be rewarded with crispy, brown leaf tips. While they won’t kill your plant, they aren’t aesthetically pleasing.

The hack
The tidy-up is simple: cut off the dry, brown parts of the leaf. The plant looks instantly better, and the theory is this does no harm because the tissue is already dead. But the worry is it will hurt the plant or make the browning worse.

Iboga root, central to several Gabonese ritual traditions, is believed to have huge potential for use in treating addiction and some mental illnesses

The temple is dark, its sandy floor edged with candles. People sit shoulder to shoulder beneath palm fronds hung from the rafters. Through the night, they swallow what they have come here for: a bitter root bark called iboga.

Tabernanthe iboga is a slow-growing central African rainforest shrub, the root bark of which has long been used in several Gabonese ritual traditions.

Citizen scientists on UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme recorded insect visits to flowers during 10-minute surveys

Ubiquitous urban plants often derided as “weeds” are the most attractive to pollinating insects.

The autumn blooms of common ivy, rich in pollen and nectar, are the most visited by insects including bees and butterflies, according to an eight-year study.

You want to garden sustainably but don’t want to transfer pests to new plants. Here’s how to decide whether to refill or recycle

The problem
Most plant people end up with a never-ending supply of plastic nursery pots, stuffed in cupboards or bags. Throwing them away feels wasteful, but reusing can transfer pests, fungus spores or disease to new plants.

The hack
Reuse them, but clean thoroughly first. Nursery pots are brilliant for houseplants because the drainage holes stop root rot. Water thoroughly and let the excess run out, then slip the pot into something decorative.

The annual month-long festival takes place at a flower farm in the Victorian town of Silvan when tulips and other springs flowers are at their most vibrant

Species with leaves large enough to be seen from space is already critically endangered – and plans are afoot to protect it

A chance social media encounter has led to the race-against-time discovery of a new species of giant waterlily that has until now been hidden in the depths of Colombia’s jungle.

But the plant, which is so huge it is visible from space, is already considered critically endangered.

Firms working on reproducing compounds without need for repeated harvesting but conservationists are sceptical

Many of the world’s most expensive perfumes begin with a wounded tree. When some Aquilaria trees are damaged, they produce a dark, fragrant resin that becomes agarwood, or oudh – an ingredient so valuable that wild trees have been illegally felled in its pursuit.

The result has devastated wild Aquilaria populations. But what if perfumers could create the smell without cutting down the tree?

It may be flooded with light, but that window ledge is only a pane of glass away from the elements. What’s the best way to protect your plants?

The problem
That bright window spot you chose for your houseplants to receive maximum sunlight can become one of the coldest places in the house in winter. The glass itself can get cold, and with heavy curtains drawn, it creates a cooler box area around your window. For tropical plants like anthuriums and philodendrons, which are used to less temperature fluctuation, the cold can be fatal.

The hack
Move sensitive plants back from the glass overnight, then return them to their brighter position in the morning.

Don’t water based on the month or the season – be led by what the plant is actually doing

The problem
Cutting back on watering for winter has become so ingrained that people start rationing by the calendar, giving plants just a fraction of the water they had in summer, because the season changed.

The hack
The advice to reduce is because, as light levels drop, most houseplants slow their growth, use less water and dry out more slowly, so watering as you did in summer risks waterlogging the roots and causing rot.

Cardigan: Taking a walk beside the River Teifi, I encounter trees beginning to fade into new season colour, and the low blur of a weasel

It is rare for me to visit the same place twice within a couple of weeks, but my walk in the Teifi Marshes recently was curtailed by heavy rain, and I feel that I have unfinished business. Last time I started from the Cilgerran end of the marsh, so today begin at the seaward side – crossing the bridge over the Teifi and heading upstream past the site of the old, sadly long-departed Cardigan railway station.

My route follows the former course of the railway line, but I briefly divert along a boardwalk into the broad reedbeds at the heart of the marsh. Here, I am surrounded by the ambient sound of the wind in the reeds, which ebbs and flows with an almost animate organic static – pushing back the distant sounds of traffic on the main road. Scrub and small trees interact with the reeds at the margins, their autumn bounty of fruits already well advanced. The blackberries are almost over, but the sloes are plump and mature with the promise of a warming winter spirit to come.

The theory is your plants will perk up if you reflect some extra light their way over the long winter months

Most houseplants are hungry for sunlight, which is in short supply during a UK winter. Plants on a shelf or coffee table often get insufficient light, so they stretch, lean and thin out. Not everyone can move their plant to a south-facing sill, so the hunt is always on to make the most of what little light there is.

The hormone-packed pothos plant might encourage healthy root growth in other cuttings – or it might not. But you’ve nothing to lose by trying

The problem
Propagation can provide never-ending plants, but sometimes you have to wait weeks for something to happen. Anything that speeds up those reluctant rooters is worth knowing about, especially if it’s free.

The hack
According to a popular plant hack, placing a pothos in the same water as other cuttings encourages them to root faster. This is often attributed to pothos releasing auxins – the plant hormones involved in root development – into the shared water.

Ailsworth, Cambridgeshire: Trifid bur-marigold is struggling nationally, but thanks to a little ‘Goldilocks’ land management, it has the perfect conditions here

After a night of storms, the air feels freshly washed. I breathe in delicious scents of damp grass, earth, and sweet, winey blackberry from hedges weighed down with a bumper harvest. Once again, I’m drawn to the River Nene, a ribbon of blue and green that snakes lazily through the valley. I stand for a while on the bridge over Ailsworth weir, where water spills and chatters over bright green swathes of river water-crowfoot. For a moment its steady white noise overpowers the nearby A1.

The main river is slow and silent, yet its margins are bright with flowers: purple loosestrife, marsh woundwort, water mint, water forget-me-not and celery-leaved buttercup. Together they make a loose embroidery of mauve, blue and yellow among the green – quite the contrast from the scorched gold fields I’ve become used to. But the plant that catches my eye is trifid bur-marigold, with its understated, button-like golden flowers. Its name comes from its mostly three-part leaves and fruits that are tipped with barbed bristles, ready to hitch a lift on passing cattle, dogs, maybe an otter, or even humans.

Dust and hard water can leave deposits that slow photosynthesis, but don’t believe everything you read about using acids to remove them

The problem
Dusty leaves are more than a cosmetic problem. A film of dust blocks light, which slows photosynthesis and dulls the plant. Hard water makes it worse, leaving chalky white mineral spots on the foliage that a damp cloth simply smears around.

The hack
The acids in white vinegar, or lemon juice, dissolve the mineral salts left behind by hard water – just wipe a very diluted solution over the leaves with a microfibre cloth.

Horticulturalists begin moving and propagating plants before the rusty and warped Palm House begins renovation – but some are too tall to save

It will be a gut-wrenching moment for the horticulturalists at Kew Gardens when some of the magnificent trees in the Palm House have to be felled.

“There are some sad moments ahead,” said Palm House manager, Will Spoelstra, who knows all the plants inside the cathedral-like greenhouse.

Farmer Derek Sayer let a boggy field run wild and just one annual hay-cut has led to remarkable biodiversity

Tucked away on a country lane, a small field bursts with yellow and pink flowers. Quail and whitethroats call from the thick hedges and the plants, including common centaury, yellow rattle and marsh and common spotted orchids, bounce with hoverflies and butterflies.

More than 150 plant species have been recorded on Sayer’s Old Meadow, in north Norfolk, England, which is remarkable when there was just one – oilseed rape – growing there 21 years ago.

While grown in huge numbers commercially, macadamias are a vulnerable crop. A group of wild Australian nut hunters is seeking to change that

We are bouncing over a rough, steep gravel road on the hunt for macadamia trees in the wild. Here in the tangled rainforest at Mary’s Creek in Queensland is the macadamia’s main ancestral home.

Ian McConachie has always been partial to a macadamia nut. As a boy in Brisbane in the 1940s he used to climb fences to steal them from people’s back yards. “We’d put them in a little hole in the concrete under the house and hit them with a hammer.”