Adding some greenery to your home is a great way to breathe new life into your living space. Plants fill up space and make your home look more natural and comfortable. You can place them virtually in any room you wish, as long as you take into consideration the plants’ needs.
You can simply place a few plants in the empty corners of your house, shelves or windows.
Or, if you have any empty walls that you’d like to fill up, you could create an indoor vertical garden. Still, before you get down to decorating your home with plants, let’s talk about some important things you need to keep in mind.
How Much Light Do Your Plants Need?
Getting enough light is key for the development of every plant. It goes without saying that the light here refers to the natural sunlight. Depending on the amount of available natural sunlight, we can distinguish full sun, partial sun, partial shade, and full shade.
Full sunlight is usually available only right in front of windows. Of course, unless something is blocking it – skylights, glass doors or patio doors. Places that are set away from the windows, such as corners shelves, tables, wardrobes or cabinets, offer full or partial shade.
Before you get a plant, it is important to do some research about how much and what type of light the plant needs. You can ask plant experts, look the information up online or simply ask the person selling it to you.
Also, be careful with direct summer sunlight. Even if your plant needs full sun exposure, be aware that direct summer sun can damage it, cause some discoloration, or even scorch it. Therefore, it is best to avoid it.
Check the Required Level of Humidity
This aspect can easily be overlooked or forgotten, but it is an incredibly important consideration when it comes to indoor plants. Some plants can thrive in drier spaces, while high humidity is optimal for others.
Bathrooms and kitchens, for example, will usually have high humidity levels, due to all the water and steam created from washing and cooking. On the other hand, rooms where the heating is on, such as living rooms, will have lower levels of humidity.
Set the Right Room Temperature
Keep in mind that the temperature in the rooms where you keep plants isn’t always the same, it changes during the year.
For example, in the summer, rooms usually receive heat from the sun, and during winter the majority of homes has the heating on at all times. If your plants are near a radiator or any heater that is turned on, it can get too warm, and the leaves can get damaged or dry out. Definitely check that your plants can endure these changes.
The best way to keep track of the home temperature is to have a thermometer somewhere in the room so you will always be able to know when and if it changes. If necessary, move your plants around the room during the year, according to the conditions.
Which Plants to Choose?
Some of the best options when it comes to indoor houseplants are different kinds of fern, pothos, lipstick plant, vine, peace lily, philodendron, succulents, orchids, and others.
What makes them good solutions is that they don’t need a lot of sunlight, they can withstand dry or humid conditions, they don’t need a lot of watering, and are in general low-maintenance.
A good way to go is also choosing native plants and perennials since they are already well adapted to your local conditions, the climate, and the type of soil. This makes them more durable, resistant, easy to maintain and they will last longer.
Some concrete suggestions and examples of resilient and ideal houseplants would be fiddle leaf fig, ZZ plant, rubber plant, Boston fern, and dracaena. They are all low-maintenance, look good, don’t need a lot of watering, and thrive best at medium to bright light.
Where to Put Your Plants?
Apart from simply putting your plants on windows and in different spots of your home, you can arrange them in the form of a living green wall or a vertical garden.
Vertical gardens can be placed indoors or outdoors, on any wall of your choosing, and can have plants that are pre-grown, or planted on the site. They are very handy if you don’t have a backyard or enough horizontal space for a conventional garden.
There are many ways to create a vertical garden in your home. For instance, you can build it in the form of pockets. It is a fun way to organize your garden, and it allows you to experiment with it and rearrange the pockets in any way you like. Simply build a frame and then distribute the planted pockets on it or attach them directly to the wall.
These pockets can be the conventional pots you use for plants, or you can use some other things that you have laying around your house that are not being used.
You can re-purpose some empty containers or jars that you don’t use and plant in them or even plastic bottles. Attach those containers and bottles to your wall and arrange them in any way that fits you, your style, and the walls of your home!
You could also choose to have your entire wall covered with lush greenery. In that case, choose a plant that can grow two to three feet and then plant it on the top of the wall. It will grow out from the wall towards the ground.
Since it will create shade when growing out from the top, plant some other plants beneath or underneath it that don’t need much sunlight – fern for example. You will get a nice waterfall effect on your wall.
