Around the House: Celebrate Spring With Houseplants and Potted Flowers
By Yehudit Garmaise
If you love the sight of greenery in your home and silk flowers just don’t do the trick, try to maintain some beautiful living houseplants or flowering plants to brighten your home, spark joy, and purify your indoor air.
With spring coming tomorrow and Purim and Pesach quickly approaching, now is a great time to choose fabulous flora to add color, fresh scents, and life to your home. Not only do plants brighten space and reflect sunlight, but plants clean the air in your home. Plants freshen a home’s air by converting carbon dioxide to oxygen and filtering out airborne toxins.
All plants need at least some sunlight and regular, weekly watering to thrive. Another part of plant maintenance is keeping an eye out for dead or yellow fronds. These should be carefully snipped with scissors and not torn off, which can kill the plants. Many plants benefit from being misted weekly or every other week with water from a spray bottle.
Consider the following plants to warmly welcome spring into your home.
1. Succulents: Although sometimes confused with cacti, which are a type of succulents that have thorns instead of leaves, succulents are plants that have the look of the desert. With 60 plant families that contain succulents in a wide variety of colors, shapes, and sizes, you should have no trouble finding a succulent plant that appeals to you.
Find a sunny spot near a window that brings in a lot of light, and remember to water your succulent infrequently as too much water can actually kill the plant. Succulents can also fight air pollution by converting carbon dioxide to oxygen, which means that the plant filters out airborne toxins, such as benzene, xylene, toluene, and formaldehyde.
2. ZZ Plants are great if you like the look of wide, smooth, and richly dark green waxy leaves. Like succulents, ZZ plants store water in their leaves and underneath the surface of the soil so they can survive for a while without being watered. ZZ plants grow slowly to a height and width of two to three feet for smaller spaces or lower ceilings. ZZ Plants don’t require a lot of direct sunlight.
3. Fern's lacy fronds do not store water, as do succulents and ZZ plants, ferns must be watered and misted once a week without fail. Over-watering ferns can turn their delicate, light green leaves yellow, and forgetting to water ferns for a few weeks will turn them brown. If ferns droop from malnourishment, trim the dead leaves. Then, while being careful not to over-water, start again to moderately water and mist the plants weekly. Ferns also require indirect sunlight.
4. Philodendrons have large, heart-shaped, large, green, glossy leaves that look great on high shelves or hanging from the ceiling. Plant lovers can choose from hundreds of species of beautiful varieties of philodendrons, some of which can vine for several feet around some kind of support structure, such as a trellis or a basket. The non-climbing varieties grow upright and provide excellent foliage for philodendrons that stay rooted in planters. By watering philodendrons weekly and keeping them in medium, indirect light, the easy-to-care-for plants will grow quickly and provide a tropical flair.
5. Monsteras are lush and leafy plants that, if planted in large floor planters, can create a stylish jungle as it grows horizontally in an irregular shape. Monsteras need weekly watering and bright light, so place it in a spot beside the biggest and least obstructed window.
6. Waxed Amaryllises bulbs, which are coated in colorful and decorative wax, are easy to care for and grow partly because they don’t even require soil and don’t like water. Just place the bulb in bright, indirect sunlight and watch it grow buds and foliage.
7. Begonias are flowering houseplants that should be watered weekly and located in a bright location that receives several hours of direct sunlight.
8. Orchids are gorgeous and elegant potted flowers that require direct sunlight and weekly watering to thrive.