People who love plants and gardening do not always have the space, weather, or time to garden outside. An excellent solution to this is to grow plants in pots. Sunrooms, patios, even living rooms or offices can be enlivened with live plants.
Decorating with Plants
Greenery or bright blossoms add interest to any interior design. While somewhat debunked because it would take a lot of plants, some people believe that house plants help clean and refresh interior air. Certainly, they give a bit of liveliness to interior designs, as well as giving frustrated gardeners a chance to practice growing things when the weather outside is too cold, too hot, too dry, or too wet for growing your favorite plants. Grow lights can become part of your interior décor, along with bright, colorful pots.
Big Plants Need Big Pots
Trees can be grown indoors. Some, such as the Tahitian Lime, are naturally diminutive in size and can easily brighten up a corner in a reception area, office hallway, living room, or sunroom. With a spacious GRC (glass reinforced concrete) pot with a design that complements the rest of your furnishings, you can grow almost any sort of young tree. This gives you the option to nurture young trees until they can be planted outside. You can even sometimes have fruit trees indoors or grow trees or other plants that normally cannot be grown outside in your location.
Here are a few favorite trees for growing indoors:
- Avocado (Persea Americana). Avocado trees grown outdoors for fruit are usually cultivated in a warm climate and are started from cuttings or grafting. With that said, a great deal of fun can be had by growing an avocado from seed, especially if it is one that you found especially tasty. The challenge of growing something from a grocery store throwaway is a great way to learn about growing plants without investing a great deal of money in your indoor garden.
- Young citrus trees. These can include Tahitian Limes (citrux x latifolia), or native Australian Finger Limes (citrus Australasica). These will need at least six hours per day of strong sunlight, or the use of a grow light. Remember, you can incorporate grow lights into your overall room lighting, or into ambient light displays.
- Queensland Bottle Trees (Brachychiton Rupestris) can easily be trained as a bonsai. There interesting trees can be grown in shallow pots and judiciously watered and fertilized to create miniature versions of these majestic trees. Of course, you can also grow them in larger pots in preparation for planting them out in the spring. They can be started from seed or from cuttings. If you plant them outdoors, be sure to give them plenty of space. Unrestrained, they grow to be quite large.
- Olive Trees (Olea Europaea) Grown nearly everywhere in the world where the weather is mild, their naturally gnarled trunks and silvery green leaves make them a delightful feature tree, indoors or out. In some areas, they grow so well that they are nearly considered a weed tree. By growing them indoors, you can easily keep your olive tree under control.
- Golden Barrel Cactus (echinocactus grusonii) A chubby little charmer that can serve as a feature “tree” indoors or out. The chubby ball of green ribs with its halo of yellow thorns is a conversation piece all on its own. But with careful care and appropriate lighting, it also produces a ring of colorful blossoms on its top.
Important things to Remember
Important things to keep in mind when growing any plant indoors is an appropriately sized pot, the right kind of soil and plant food, the plants preferred watering cycle, and lighting. Whether you are growing a potted plant indoors or out, locating a pot that is the right color or design to go with the rest of your home décor will make it even more esthetically pleasing.
Pets and plants are also an important consideration. Many attractive house plants are poisonous to dogs or cats, so it is imperative that pet owners either select plants that are non-toxic to their four-footed pets, or that the plants are kept in a separate room. The latter is often a better bet than trying to house plants and pets in the same area, especially if you have cats. Kitties frequently have a hard time distinguishing a pot of earth from their litter box.
Always purchase your plants from a seller who is licensed and certified to handle them, especially those that are endangered in the wild. Here at Designer Trees, we are licensed and certified to sustainably harvest and handle a wide variety of trees and plants. Our trees each get their own tag, which lets you know that they are appropriately grown or purchased.