If you want to beautify your home with potted plants, you have an incredible number of options. Here are some tips for choosing the right houseplant, varieties and care.
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Requirements for the potted plants
There are tons of popular green and flowering potted plants. There are just as many requirements for a good potted plant. The first step towards your favorite houseplant is to think about what properties these potted plants should actually have. Potted plants usually have characteristic properties. If you choose from the following five variants, you will most likely like the potted plants you choose from the respective category:
- Potted plants should be green, easy to care for and air purifying
- should be green and ideally deliver something edible
- Houseplant absolutely needs to develop flowers
In the following groups, you will be presented with a few examples of potted plants that have the corresponding properties.
Easy-care potted plants that create a good climate
These are, so to speak, the beginner plants that offer great benefits with little effort. There is a whole range of indoor plants that are almost indestructible, and therefore suitable plants for those who have little time and / or have not yet discovered their “green thumb”:
The Efeutute is a climbing plant with large leaves that can be accented with white or yellow markings. Efeututen can be kept in a pot or in a hanging basket. You should get a climbing aid so that you can develop plenty of leaf mass for air purification, but are otherwise really undemanding. They even thrive in almost shady places and need little water. Therefore, if you occasionally forget to water, they will survive.
Green lilies are quick to grow and produce a lot of air-freshening leafy green with little water consumption. You are satisfied with almost any location, even ungrateful ones like the parking space on a cupboard or a side table, which is usually in the shade. With green lilies, you can gradually green your entire apartment. After flowering, they develop small offshoots that you can simply cut off and plant. These offshoots are called Kindel. If you cultivate the green lilies in a traffic light, these children hang down on the sides and thus develop their own design effect.
A prime example of needlessness is the bow hemp . The houseplant, also known as Sanseveria, requires little care. It doesn’t really matter to her whether you grant her a plant-suitable spot by the light or banish her to a dark corner. You can even forget about watering once in a while, but the bow hemp does not want to freeze. Below twelve degrees it gets rough, which is why a bow hempCertainly never have to endure such temperatures in an apartment. The sword-shaped, upright leaves of the plants native to African deserts can be up to one and a half meters long, which is why they are also called bayonet plants. It is not entirely clear where the nickname mother-in-law tongue comes from. The name bow hemp comes from the fact that the plant was actually used to make bowstrings in the past. So possibly just the right houseplant for nature-loving guitar lovers.
The good old rubber tree is also an impressive model of frugality and is probably therefore always popular. But it is actually also a very beautiful potted plant that develops its conspicuously large green leaves in a balanced design when you turn the side facing away from the light into the sun from time to time. Rubber trees can be placed on the balcony or terrace in summer. They should not be excessively watered and they can also cope with shady locations in the apartment. They may then just grow a little more slowly.
The dragon tree grows into bushy, decorative “bobbed heads” with the slightest care requirements, which form its narrow, pointed leaves above the slender trunk. It also needs very little water and is one of those houseplants that can green the shady areas of your home.
The yucca palm will easily grow many leaves of impressive size from its sturdy trunk if you give it a fairly deep pot and place it in a partially shaded place. Care is basically limited to occasional watering. The yucca palm may only be watered again when the top layer of soil has dried out. If you manage to keep the yucca palm from waterlogging and give it a little extra moisture from the flower sprayer every now and then, the yucca palm could develop into a really impressive plant in your apartment over time. The yucca palm also contains poisonous saponins. So pets should not have access to the leaves.
A kind of insider tip is the zamie , also known as the lucky feather or cardboard paper palm. The arum plant from tropical East Africa has not been commercially available from us for very long. But it was able to convince very quickly because it combines lush and decorative green with unpretentiousness. The Zamioculcas zamiifolia (the correct botanical name of the attractive plant) forms many shoots growing next to each other from a rhizome growing horizontally through the potting soil. A magnificent bouquet of twigs with strong green leaves up to the size of the palm of your hand is developing before your eyes.
In addition, the zamie likes our normal room temperature very much, gets by with both shade and full sun (the middle, a light to partially shaded location, is best for her). It has a water reservoir at the base of its branches. Even if you forgot to water for a very long time, nothing more would happen than that it wilts to the thickened base of the shoot and sprouts again from there. Such a treatment would not harm the Glücksfeder either, as she is used to such a seasonal sequence from her home country.
Decorative potted plants
Many of our common herbs and spices like to thrive in our living rooms. Basil and mint, parsley and rosemary, thyme and sage, chives and cress. Have you ever considered that nobody is forcing you to cultivate these herbs in more or less unattractive herb pots in the kitchen, where they usually stand in the way?
There is nothing wrong with combining green home decoration and constant growing of fresh herbs. From the culinary and health aspect, there is a lot to be said for it. Always have fresh and guaranteed pesticide-free herbs available. The decorative aspect can also be satisfied if you grow your herbs in really nice plant pots that don’t look like “herb pots” at all, but like real, beautifully designed flower pots.
Since most herbs do not like the temperatures in the kitchen anyway, but rather thrive much better in a moderately heated winter garden or on the windowsill in a much cooler bedroom, this idea also benefits the harvest. Herbs from southern climes find their place in the better heated rooms of the apartment. Basil z. B. loves warmth, it grows best at temperatures between 24 and 30 degrees.
Cress grows everywhere, and you could even use it to do some design experiments in your home by sowing cress on non-woven fabric. This plant fleece can be cut into any shape. If you can pin it up, you could green both a trash can and the edge of your bathroom mirror with cress.
Then there are potted plants that combine real houseplant character with unusual seasoning options. The Jamaican thyme z. B., a stately plant with large and almost fleshy, slightly hairy leaves. It is not really a thyme, but like this it belongs to the mint family, a family of plants from which many aromatic and medicinal plants come. Jamaica thyme, with its botanical names Coleus or Plectranthus amboinicus, also exudes a pleasant, spicy (thyme) aroma and can be used well in the kitchen. It goes well with many salads and is one of the most important spices in Jamaican cuisine. But it is also used in Spanish and Mexican cuisine. Plus, it’s really easy to pull. All he needs is a bright location without drafts and always moist soil.
The laurel is also a very decorative, pleasantly slow-growing potted plant with shiny green leaves and a spicy scent. Native to mild climates, the plant likes the temperatures in our homes much more than the climate in our gardens, and it is not difficult to cultivate. In a bright location without direct sunlight, it should thrive with even watering. Bay leaves are a wonderful and important spice for flavoring many stews and soups. Fresh bay leaves a much better aroma than the dried bay leaves from the trade.
Potted plants with flowers
Those who cannot enjoy blooming plants on the balcony or in the garden will be happy to bring blooming plants into their home. Here are a few suggestions:
The wreath loop combines lush greenery with abundance of flowers and few demands on care. It develops shoots that tendrils and can grow to a few meters long if they are supported by a climbing aid. The wreath loop does not need a lot of water, does not tolerate direct sunlight and should not be turned under any circumstances, then it usually sheds its flowers.
The Christmas cactus or limb cactus blooms in winter and is easy to care for. If you don’t care exactly when it blooms, all you need to do is water it every two weeks.
Angel’s trumpets are particularly attractive flower beauties, which in winter also give off a bewitching scent in the house. The beauties are not that easy to look after. They need a lot of light and do not like drafts at all and are also quite happy to be attacked by pests. If you can keep the pest infestation in check, give some fertilizer in spring and summer and take care of the angel’s trumpets in winter, you can look forward to an impressive flower spectacle in your living space. However, the angel’s trumpets are highly poisonous in all parts.
The Oncidium Orchid is a type of “orchid for beginners” , which, in contrast to most other species, is quite easy to look after. Oncidium orchids like bright locations where they are protected from direct sun and drafts, regular watering and high humidity (spraying) and some fertilizer in the spring. There are two groups of Oncidium orchids with slightly different temperature requirements. You can choose these orchids according to the usual temperature of a certain room (winter temperature 12 to 18 degrees or winter temperature 17 to 20 degrees). The first group is kept a little drier during the cold season, the second group is simply continued to cultivate as normal.
The azaleas are one of our most popular flowering houseplants . Probably because there aren’t too many plants that loosen up the dreary German winter with magnificent flowers. Azaleas can bloom in many colors from red to purple. They are offered in an unusual variety of shapes, with large and small flowers, with single or double flowers.
Azaleas are not entirely without problems, however. It happens quite often that an azalea gives the impression that it is not getting along very well with its surroundings. You can prevent this by making sure that you get a sturdy specimen with fresh green leaves that already shows several buds, at least half of which already show a little of the later flower color. It is also advisable not to buy an azalea until September. The early varieties, which were already offered in August, have probably accelerated their ripeness, which often results in an unbalanced development of the buds.
Azaleas would prefer to have temperatures around 10 degrees around them in winter. So you should think of the coolest place in your home where you can still enjoy the flowers. If you can offer the azalea outdoor recreation in the summer, give it acidic soil and a slightly shady location and evenly moisten it with lime-free water, you can enjoy your azalea for years to come. Which the azalea definitely gives back: Since it wants to be watered daily in order to keep the root ball with the very fine roots always moist, it acts like a natural humidifier, as part of the irrigation water evaporates.
Conclusion
There are various aspects to consider when choosing your favorite potted plants. The above are by no means all: You can also choose a real eye-catcher as a potted plant (mimosa, elephant foot, rose of Jericho) or your rooms with fragrant indoor plants in an “odorama” (camellias, scented geraniums, lilies, Arabian jasmine and more).
