GARDENING INDOORS - CLEAN AIR AND AMBIENCE

Although I garden outdoors, I want to surround myself with plants indoors, but it's tricky.  I like my home very warm.  When I lived in the Caribbean the temperature suited me just fine.  While all around me melted, I thought it was just fine and dandy with the lovely cooling tropical breezes.  Now I want to grow plants in a place with less sun, occasional cold drafts, in conditions that don't suit everything and everyone.  Plants have a will of their own and grow where suits them best.  If they don't like it, they soon show you.  While visiting a garden centre today I bought two Boston Ferns (Nephrolepsis exaltata) and two Spider Plants (Chlorophytum).  I already have one spider plant.  I love them.  They do so much and ask so little, and look fantastic when the parent plant is large and throws out shoots with baby plants on them.  Baby plants which develop roots and can easily be potted and separated from the mother plant.  My new plants are hanging on a curtain rail, hanging above the kitchen sink.  By the way, the ivy is synthetic!  I cheat sometimes.

Nephrolepsis exaltata (Boston Fern) and Chlorophytum

I had a chat with the lady working in the houseplant section at the garden centre, about what I wanted and what was feasible.  I love ferns, particularly Nephrolepsis. Everytime I see a movie located in New Orleans, I notice that they always have these fabulous ferns in hanging baskets dangling around porches.  I get jealous.  I would have them in every room in the house if I thought they'd be happy there.  Boston Ferns like it not too cold, not too hot, some humidity, not dry, with indirect light.  Chlorophytums are slightly tougher but when the beautiful leaves start going brown at the tips, it can be (according to the lady) a sign that the air around them is too dry.  The trick is to mist them from time to time.




Can plants clean the air?   According to NASA they can. 




You might have noted the post I wrote a few weeks ago about a fern I bought at the RHS which they could not name.  Imagine, the Royal Horticultural Society selling plants they cannot identify!  Anyway, I believe it is Pteris fauriei.  It's still growing quite happily on my east facing kitchen window bottom (below the hanging baskets), with no sign of deterioration at all.  Fingers crossed.







Pteris fauriei

I also bought a Philodendron 'Brazil'.  It's low-light tolerant but if I keep it too much in the dark it will lose it's variegation.  That applies to all variegated plants.  I planned to grow in my living room in a hanging basket suspended from the curtain rail above the radiator where it would have got filtered light but I think that's just asking too much of it—the heat, you know.  I'll find a space and a place for it, somewhere, among all the books and other stuff that I have found places and spaces for and which I have to have around me in my 'nest'.  To keep this plant bushy (it's a sprawler, not a climber) I just have to keep pinching out it's stems when it starts to get a bit leggy.  Easy. 

Philodendron Brazil