The complete gardener has two gardens…outdoors and indoors.
Your indoor garden consists of houseplants that are full-time residents and those that vacation outside for the good weather season. As a lifelong enthusiast of woody plants, I like to equate my indoor garden with the term’ urban forest’ and my outdoor garden with ‘rural forest’.
Everybody needs an indoor garden. Houseplants provide us with the same environmental benefits as outdoor plants, including providing oxygen and cleaning the air. They use the carbon dioxide that we exhale and provide us with the oxygen we need to breathe. Unlike outdoor plants, however, houseplants do so in a much smaller space.
Houseplants do a great job of cleaning the atmosphere. Outdoor plants also remove dust and dirt that’s flying around but the wind and rain usually remove it. Indoors, “plant parents” have to help. It’s easy; just wipe the leaves occasionally with a damp cloth.
Outdoor plants take in the water they need from rain, supplemented by irrigation. Hopefully, there’s no rain in your house, so indoor plants depend on you to keep them sufficiently hydrated. If they’re looking a little stressed, they’d like their water spiked with fertilizer.
Every climate has a season for outdoor gardening. There’s no season for indoor gardening. It’s a year-round activity. This means you have the pleasure of beauty and the possibility of flowers 12 months a year. Tending your indoor garden is also an enjoyable way to keep your green thumb green in the off-season. Best of all, you won’t even have to kneel.
A trend is to take the inside environment outside. It includes living room-quality patio furniture, complete outdoor kitchens, and even weather-resistant television sets. Since most of our time is spent indoors, it’s only natural that we should also bring the outdoors inside. That’s what houseplants will do, and it’s fun to shop for them at your local garden center for instantaneous joy.
As with all adaptive gardening, indoor adaptive gardening boils down to working smarter rather than harder. When planning your indoor plant palette, consider your indoor climate. Do you keep your house warm or cool? How high is your humidity? When and how much light will the plants receive? Can you reach hanging plants to water them?
Unhappy Holiday Cactus
This heirloom holiday cactus is showing signs of stress living in front of a west-facing window in a cool house.
Happy Holiday Cactus
The same heirloom holiday cactus after a few years living in its new, consistently 76-degree home.
The two photos of an heirloom holiday cactus illustrate how a plant can rebel against its environment. The photo of the stressed plant near a living room window is at my son’s house. My daughter-in-law inherited the plant from her grandmother. They keep their temperature in the low 70s or 60s and often open those windows, even in our Upstate New York winters.
One Sunday, she texted me this photo and asked if I wanted the plant. I texted back, only if it came with the stand. An hour later, this tropical plant was at its new 76-degree home and is now thriving. I explained to the kids that the plant’s native habitat is the rainforests of South America, not the North Pole.
Original Air Plants
Other plants in my warm environment include two other holiday cacti, a rubber plant, various other cacti and succulent varieties, as well as offshoots from the only Haworthia plant I ever had to buy. Even my Tillandsia (Air Plants) are warm-climate natives. The darker green Mesic species are native to Central American rainforests, while the lighter green Xeric species are native to the desert southwest.
My interest in Tillandsia dates back to the mid 1980s. Out of curiosity, I bought my first two plants from a vendor at a Fourth of July celebration. Over the years, friends and family have bought some, I’ve bought some, and others in my collection are offshoots (pups). One of the two original pants is still alive and healthy; the other one died about 10 years ago.
My Houseplants: A plant rack (left) or a baker’s rack (right) is ideal for displaying smaller houseplants.
Nobody has to be a retired gardener, especially those with indoor gardens
When physical limitations make outdoor gardening impossible, your indoor garden will continue to appreciate your TLC, allowing you to continue enjoying the pleasure of gardening with far less impact on your body.
I’m a case in point. My outdoor garden of about 95 percent woody plants is mature, so I turned maintenance over to professionals many years ago and concentrated on my indoor garden. After surviving a stroke in 2020, it was difficult to carry a watering can on my walker. My Sweetheart took over watering the potted plants, but I still wanted to be actively involved.
With a container I can hold while still navigating on my walker, I collect all the Tillandsia every other weekend. After soaking in the container full of tepid water for an hour and a half, I place them, upside down, on a towel that says “Sometimes I wet my plants,” to dry. The upside-down placement is to drain the water from the base. When dry, I take them back to their homes. Regular watering is necessary because Tillandsia get their nutrients from the water and air.
The three or four hours tending my Tillandsia is a far cry from the hours I spent gardening in my younger days, but it still keeps me gardening, proving that houseplants provide adaptive gardening pleasure for the rest of your life.
Single Air Plant: Pebbles are a good medium for displaying air plants.
No matter how our pace changes, the simple act of nurturing a plant reminds us that beauty and growth are always within reach—for the rest of our lives.
Written by: Duane Pancoast
Author of:
- The Geriatric Gardener: Adaptive Gardening Advice For Senior
- The Geriatric Gardener 2.0: MORE Adaptive Gardening Advice For Seniors
Read more by Duane at
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