Go to your local building supply store and by a rigid 8' length of steel or copper pipe. Either threaded or plain depending if you can solder. Attach a curved water wand to the end of it. Fiddle with a couple of fittings and for a couple dollars and a quarter the price of a 'fancy store bought model' you can reach quite high. (try the fittings in the garden and plumbing sections).

This was planted in Newport, RI; saw it on a garden tour. Newport is probably more zone 6 than 5, but even finding out that it is a dahilia is more than I knew before :-) Thanks, Diane

The shape of the leaves says aglaonema and not pothos to me. They have similar care requirements. If the plant were mine, I'd cut off that piece you have in your hand with a few inches of the stem and try rooting it in water, and I'd take the crown of the plant out of the pot, trim off dead roots and stems, and repot in a smaller container with fresh soil. You might also check at the Garden Clinic and Houseplant Forums for more advice.

"A" is a pot filled with commercially prepared potting soil. The shaded part represents a rather normal PWT (perched water table) of 4" which is about normal for commercially prepared mixes based primarily on small particulates - peat, coir, compost. composted forest products, sand, ..... The ht of the PWT is primarily based on the size of particles from which the soil is made, and the ht of the PWT any given soil will support is the same in any shaped container. "B" is pot "A" tipped at a 45* angle. Since the PWT ht is going to be the same in any pot, you can see how much extra water was forced from the drain hole when the pot was tipped. When you use this trick of science to help drain extra water from your pots, it's best (but not critical) that you have a drain hole through the bottom of the pot near the vertical wall, and that that drain hole is at the lowest point on the tipped pot. "C" is meant to illustrate that the container shape can have significant impact on how much perched water a planting can hold. "D" is one example of using ballast to reduce the amount of perched water a planting can hold. Compared to "A", you can see it reduces the amount of perched water in the planting by displacing soil that would otherwise be filled with perched water. "E" shows what can be accomplished with the use of a wick. Like B, the wick is best secured through a hole in the bottom where bottom meets the pot wall. It's also most effective when you use the wick and tip the pot, too. These images illustrate how much pot depth (and shape) can influence the amount soil roots will grow into. Most of the plants we normally grow as houseplants are reluctant to grow into saturated soils, and when they do, they're often killed the next time the planting is watered. The cyclic death and regeneration of roots is a very expensive outlay for the plant and comes straight out of its growth/development account. IOW, the energy the plant spends to regenerate roots over and over again is borrowed from energy that would otherwise be devoted to growth and vitality, and keeping the plant's defense systems orderly and humming along as you wish they would. The last images show what happens when a "drainage layer" is used (see middle image), and how you can use ballast at the bottom of the pot to eliminate nearly ALL perched water. Many items can be used as ballast - bricks, soda bottles/milk jugs with the cap still attached, kids plastic building blocks from a dollar store, over-turned pots. For growers not interested in making their own soils that allow the grower to water correctly without having to resort to tricks of science to drain away excess water, I highly recommend using ballast. It won't be as effective as media with a higher % of air porosity, but it will darn well make a big difference in how much of their genetic potential your plants can achieve. Al