An Interior Designers Guide to houseplants
House plants are not just for decoration, they’re for life!
We’re going through a plant lovers nightmare in our studio, having chosen them specifically to enhance our creative environment, we’ve nursed our collection through the first 6 months of studio life and now seeing many of them turn yellow, drop leaves, and wilting beyond saving! Covid has meant working from home again and leaving our design studio for days at a time where there is no heating on at all, and now some of our poor plants are going into shock. Hopefully, relocation to warmer homes will save them, but it’s a lesson learnt! We should have considered the Winter environment we were going to subject them to. We were definitely led by what we love and not what suits the climate in the room.
How to choose the right plant for your room
When choosing a plant for your home, the temperature is possibly the first consideration followed by the light conditions. Air quality is vastly improved by the presence of plants, but not if the conditions affect their growth and contentment. For those of you who have tried and failed to successfully sustain plant life in your home, unless you’ve under or over-watered them, the problem is most likely to be their position - they’re in the wrong place. If you need specific advice on which houseplants will thrive in your home, choose your plants from a reliable supplier and one that offers you ongoing support. One of our favourite online sources, Patch Plants, allows you to filter plant selection by room type, and most vital for new plant parents, “Unkillables”!
Why we love houseplants
There’s no doubt that having plants in our home can make us feel better just by tending them and enjoying their good looks and there’s been much reported on how they are great for our wellbeing in other ways. Our own research has found conflicting opinions on whether they truly purify the air and filter out unhealthy VOC’s and radiation, so we can only go by our own findings. People walk into our studio and immediately say how lovely it is. We have bare, black, painted floorboards, white walls and the rest is plants! We’re pretty sure our studio atmosphere is lifted by the natural light and growing organic matter, it just wouldn’t be the same positive, creative, environment without them.
So until proven otherwise, we’ll run with our instinctive belief that plants benefit our homes and the homes of our clients. We always add plants to the list of accessories for our design projects, paying particular attention to areas of relaxation or work and study.
Which plants to start with?
A great introductory plant for house plant novices is the Peace Lilly (Spathiphyllum), as it thrives almost anywhere and only needs a drink once a week. Believed to aid relaxation and promote feelings of positivity. Try adding one to your bedroom, whilst you’re sleeping they’ll be busy producing oxygen for you.
If you’re challenged by homeschooling your children or just focusing in your current work from home situation, try this plant combination to enhance concentration:
Rosemary (Rosmarinus Officinalis) - the scent can help improve cognitive function (1)
Bamboo (Dracena sanderiana) - according to Feng Shui, Lucky Bamboo brings positive energy, stamina and wealth.
Jade (Crassula ovata) - encourages positive relationships
Snake Plant (Sansevieria Trifasciata) - improves air quality by absorbing VOC’s (Volatile organic compounds)
Let us know your findings, it would be great to get feedback!
It’s certainly not all about the aesthetics with house plants, they really should be in everyone’s home, depending on your beliefs, they are, or could be, vital to our wellbeing.
Where to start your plant collection?
We regularly find a gem tucked in our local garden centre, and occasionally at the supermarket, but for sourcing something specific, we can’t recommend Leaf Envy or Patch Plants enough. As well as selling some fabulous plants, they stock beautiful pots and provide tips to make sure they stay alive!