House Plants Lift Your Mood During Trying Times
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Did you know that houseplants can lift your mood during these trying times, with COVID infections surging everywhere?
With the year we’ve had, we need house plants to see a sign of nature in our homes.
My house plants are like old friends I see every day. They give me so much enjoyment on both good days and bad.
And they help me get through a pandemic we never saw coming a year ago.
Enjoying & Taking Care Of My House Plants:
I walk around and check the leaves for ailments or bugs. And I show my appreciation for their beauty by attempting to keep them dust-free. If you don’t, you’re inviting pests.
I watch to see how the light is affecting them. Sometimes you need to move them around to see where they’re happiest.
I often move mine around until they seem to be putting out new growth. Watch to see if their leaves look healthy and shiny, and they’re not growing leggy, trying to get more light.
According to a report from NBC News, research shows that plants can lift your mood, lower stress, and boost productivity and concentration. They can also clean up your air and even help you sleep.
House Plants Are Good For Your Well-Being:
House plants are good for your health and well-being in so many ways. When you’re spending a good deal of time indoors, that is very important.
Huddle your plants in groups, and they will provide their own little rainforest, offering the needed humidity for one another.
One of my favorite places to visit (and one of the few stores I’ll enter because it’s so spacious inside) is my local nursery. While walking among the house plants, I am always in awe of their beauty and how peaceful they make me feel.
When I leave the nursery, I always seem to feel more relaxed.
Give House Plants As Gifts:
There are many different types of house plants. There’s something for everyone. Want to give a gift to someone who seems to have everything?
Take a house plant over and set it down on their porch or doorstep. Knock on the door, then step back. Then watch them open the door to find it so it doesn’t sit out in the cold. To make it appear more festive, you can tie a ribbon around the pot.
You can even order live plants online. You can also always gift them that way.
Plants Liven Up A Room:
A cozy and loved home, in my way of thinking, always has house plants to liven it up. Bringing nature into our homes with live plants helps us concentrate and relax.
After Christmas, you’ll be looking for ways to warm up your home after the decorations are put away. Bring house plants into your rooms. Create a vignette with a few of them and your beloved treasures.
Place a tall plant in an empty corner. Plants always help to soften an angled space.
Place Plants Where You Can Enjoy Them Most:
As long as you have adequate lighting, you can place one in the center of your table to enjoy while eating meals. Hang a couple from the ceiling to keep curious cats out and to enjoy the overhead view.
If you have a window in your bathroom, consider bringing in a plant that thrives in high humidity. Ferns thrive in this environment because they originally came from tropical regions. It will thank you for the droplets hanging in the air after you shower.
It helps to set the ferns in pebble-lined trays to increase humidity and keep the soil and roots out of the drained water.
Order A Pretty Pot That Fits In With Your Room Decor:
I’m not one to spend a lot of money on pots. However, I recently ordered a few boho-style pots from Amazon. It helps the plants blend into my decor.
I prefer not to disrupt my plants unnecessarily by replanting them often. Sometimes that seems to upset their roots, and they go into decline.
However, most plants will eventually outgrow their current pot. You’ll know this when you see roots emerging from the bottom of the pot’s drainage holes.
I don’t buy pots without drainage holes. Here are my tips for repotting your house plants.
Easy Plants To Grow Indoors:
Here are a few plants to get you going if you’re starting your houseplant journey. These are easy to grow and cost-efficient.
- Monstera deliciosa (Swiss cheese plant): It is relatively inexpensive to buy a 12-inch Monstera, and it grows quickly. So you can achieve some height and bountiful leaves in under three months.
- Epipremnum aureum (golden pothos or devil’s ivy): This is a great group of plants to get started with, as they are relatively low maintenance. However, they are toxic to cats and dogs. So keep them away from curious pets.
- Hedera (ivy): Ivy is almost indestructible. It has a distinct telltale sign when it needs watering: the leaves will appear limp and soft. However, I don’t have good luck with this plant indoors. But ivy grows well on my patio.
- Chlorophytum comosum (spider plant): These are great low-maintenance plants, which need watering from the bottom, perhaps once a week. Occasionally mist with water from a spray bottle. They sprout babies regularly off the ends of their leaves, which are easy to propagate.
Just because it’s too cold to garden outside doesn’t mean you have to stop enjoying plants. It just means you have to bring your hobby indoors.
Enjoy your house plants!
Even in these pandemic times, having indoor plants and a garden helps me relieved the stress I am feeling right now. Thank you for sharing your blog. Inspiring indeed!
I love house plants. I have two in my kitchen – one on top of the fridge and the other on a stool. Both are by my back door which get some sunlight. All my other plants are in the two spare bedrooms because those get the most light and that’s where my plants thrive. Unfortunately, Monkey has eaten all my spider plants! I have one left and it’s half chewed, but I’m trying to nurse it back to health. It’s practically impossible to find a spot that he can’t get to and chew this plant. He’ll climb anywhere.
When I was a child, it seemed like only “old ladies” had house plants. My mom and other young moms didn’t seem to have any. (It’s probably because we kids knocked them over and they got tired of cleaning up the mess!) When we went to my grandma’s house or visited other older women in the neighborhood, I would see African violets, sansevieria, pothos, Christmas cactuses and many others. I was intrigued but also a little worried. Some of the plants were a bit creepy looking. My maternal grandmother had lots of plants, and, as with most everything she did, she was very slap dash about how she managed them. She would put them in any container imaginable, from an actual flower pot to a cottage cheese container or an old paint bucket, and the jumbled display only added to my feelings of wariness about house plants. But, surprisingly, when I went off to college I thought that I just had to have a plant. I really don’t know why, except I guess my intrigue of plants outweighed my wariness. I settled on a sanseveria, or as my grandma called it, mother-in-law’s tongue. (Which was funny since she was a mother-in-law herself.) I think I chose a sanseveria because it looked the most simple. Over the years, I have tried out having other plants, and eventually decided I just like a few varieties that are fairly low maintenance and look good together. I have only sanseveria, pothos and Christmas cactuses. I like them because they have smooth matt leaves. Also, they just don’t seem too fussy. Granted, the cactuses rarely bloom, probably due to over watering or something, but the plants still look interesting even without blooms. I keep meaning to start herbs inside for use in the kitchen, but I never get around to doing it. I do grow some herbs outside and dry them. But I think I would enjoy some herbs inside, and maybe I will actually get them started some day!
We spend winters in the south, summers in the north. I have found houseplants are difficult to have when you’re not in one place. It’s really had to find someone to plant sit for months at a time. But, oh how I miss them. When my husband and I were first married we had a “wall” of plants in from of our big window. I bet we had more than 30 plants. when my husband got a job in NY we packed our car with all our plants. We only had room for our personal items. Thankfully my husbands new employer moved every thing else for us. What a fun memory to relive.
Brenda,
you are a true care-giver! Fur babies and plants…. and your apartment and patio!
I hope your hands are improving. Praying for everyone that the vaccinations start to halt this China-virus that has destroyed so many lives, families and countries.
Susan
Wow great advice, Brenda…wish I could use it…unfortunately my hubby is allergic to the mold that grows in the dirt of house plants…so had to give that up years ago…but if someday a good substitute comes out, perhaps I can have a few…
Brenda, I think you have the greenest thumb for indoor and outdoor plants. I have never been able to keep an indoor plant alive because I always over water them. This past year though I bought a plant and it is still alive, I am so proud of myself!
Thank you for the tips!
Wow…you have some green thumb. Your plants look rain-forrest lush.
Boouuutiiiifullll.
When I downsized my home in 2014 I gave away most of my house plants. I just didn’t have the space to put them in the much smaller home I moved into. I kept two, a plant from my father’s funeral in 2002 that now sits on a cake stand anchoring a corner in the kitchen/dinette area where two windows meet above the sink. That plant is nearly 20 years old. The other plant is even older, it’s from some time in the 1990s when it was a tiny Norfolk pine on a coffee table in one of the reception areas at a firm where I worked at the time. At the end of the Christmas holiday it was still there – it seemed nobody wanted to take it for themselves. So I took it to my office and kept it there until 2002 when I changed firms and took it home, where it’s been with ever since. It’s no longer tiny, though. I’ve cut it back several times and transplanted it probably 4 times over the years. It needs to be transplanted into a larger pot again but I will wait until spring to do that, when it’s warm out and there is lots of sun coming into its space once again. I talk to my plants every day and touch them, keep them trimmed as needed, feed with mild plant food once a year in the spring. I make sure Dad’s plant, which is 3 different plants in the pot, is always dusted, and I run my fingers gently over the soft greenery of the Norfolk pine regularly. They’re beautiful and they’re my babies since I don’t have fur babies any more.
I have a very (emphasis on very) brown thumb; therefore have never done well with indoor plants. My daughter has come to love and enjoy indoor plants this year and it’s been so much fun to watch her care for them. This morning as I was reading and taking in all the great information you shared about the benefits of indoor plants I came to a screeching halt when I spotted your quilts on the shelf. They are both beautiful on that shelf but that scrappy blue one had me captivated.
I made those quilts back in the nineties.
I used to have a green thumb and had many house plants. My favorite time was many, many years ago when working in an office. We (coworkers) swapped cuttings and ended up with lots of plants to enjoy. The house I lived in then had
great sunlight, and they thrived so well. We moved, and for about 20 yrs I had no indoor plants, then just two or three
that didn’t do well.
After finding your blog Brenda, and seeing and reading about your houseplants, I decided to try again. Now I have about 20 plants of varying sizes of which some are propagated from cuttings. It is challenging in this house because we have a lot of trees and they diminish the light coming inside. I have learned so much through trial and error and have enjoyed every moment. Thank you for sparking my interest again and steering me into a hobby to divert from all the bad going on in the world. I have one unique plant, a gold fish plant that gets little orange blooms, shaped like a fish. I repotted an it at the end of summer and moved it to another room. It withered and became sickly. I babied it, but I figured it was a goner, but couldn’t bring my self to toss her out.
Imagine my surprise when I came into the room one morning with my coffee and Goldie (yes, I name my plants!) was sporting a beautiful little orange goldfish blossom! This was about three weeks ago when Covid reports of death were
sharply increasing and projected winter cases and deaths looking grim. When I saw that bloom on the plant, I thought
“ there is hope after all” for her. Now she has four blooms and she has reminded me there is always hope and things can get better. So again Brenda, thank you for writing your wonderful blog. You inspire me and you touch people’s lives more than you know.
Also, those of you with cats, know that I struggled with getting plants out of concern my cats, six total, would tear them up or get poisoned. What I found was after the initial plants came in and the newness wore off for the curious and onery little critters, they ignored them. I have not had a cat or dog get sick from them either, and some of my plants are deemed toxic to animals. I tested the kitties out first with spider plants and when they weren’t interested any longer, I’d add another plant to see how they would do, and all was fine. So, I have been able to relax and enjoy my pets and plants!
It’s not unusual when re-potting plants for them to go into “shock”. With a bit of your TLC your plant is now thriving. I can feel how much you love plants from your post. Glad Goldie is blooming again!
I worry about which ones are poisonous to my cats.Even moving them up to a high spot wouldn’t work with my little mischief maker.
I am lucky. Ivy doesn’t bother my plants.
Hi Brenda,
I am really not a good indoor plant lady. I have tried and they just do not seem to do well for me. I do however have one ivy plant that is done great in my kitchen that I am very proud of. I do better with outdoor plants. Have a great week.