Houseplants are a great antidote to winter
21.05.12
It’s houseplant season. </p><p>Outside, winter has a firm, gray grip on the landscape, but indoors, prospects are lush and green.</p><p> Houseplants are living decor and mostly as undemanding as the furniture. Gardening experience is helpful but by no means necessary. Most houseplants are tropical or semi-tropical forest plants well adapted to the lower-light conditions indoors. Growing them does not involve digging or weeding, and watering is not that complicated: Some need more, some a little less.</p><p> For most people, choosing a houseplant takes only a second. </p><p>“I buy by looks,” says Emily Bibens, a marketing consultant who lives in an apartment in Kansas City, North. “I prefer little things. They make a nice display.” </p><p>In her apartment, half a dozen houseplants are arranged in decorative pots on top of a trunk and on a couple of tables close to a north-facing window. Bibens grew up on a farm, and “something that is living and green and pretty makes my apartment seem more homey,” she says.</p><p> Shopping for houseplants isn’t really risky. Plant tags make it easy to choose a ficus or a fern appropriate for the light in your home and let you know how much moisture plants need. </p><p>The employees at garden shops can also be relied upon for expert advice — they’re likely to be houseplant fanatics who can grow even the most temperamental plants. </p><p>Janet Palmer, who manages tropical plants for Suburban Lawn & Garden, has dozens of houseplants at her home in Olathe. </p><p>Through the winter, “every table in the house has at least one plant on it,” she says. They move onto her deck in summer. </p><p>Nancy Nidiffer, who works in the same department at the Suburban Lawn & Garden at 135th Street and Wornall Road, stopped counting her own houseplants when she got to 300. </p><p>“If you can call this an addiction, I have it,” she says.</p><p> Nidiffer likes to combine several different houseplants in large pots. Like planting a garden, there’s an art to it.</p><p> “There are so many things that go together,” she says. “As long as their watering requirements and lighting needs are the same, they’re great.” </p><p>Nidiffer relies on bright leaf colors in her designs, playing the soft pink variegation in a Dracaena leaf against a Maranta’s magenta veins and showing them both off against the glow of a golden-leaf schefflera. </p><p>For an arrangement in the houseplant department at the Suburban Lawn & Garden at 105th Street and Roe Avenue recently, she chose the coppery leaves of a philodendron as a foil for the snazzy spots on a Calathea “rattlesnake” and softened the effect of the whole with a wispy cloud of maidenhair fern. There’s not a flower in sight, but the effect is spectacular.</p><p> Some combinations are a recipe for disaster. </p><p>Planting a Sansevieria (sometimes called snake plant or mother-in-law’s tongue) with a diffenbachia is “one of my pet peeves,” Nidiffer says. The Sansevieria will be fine if it is watered only once a month, but the diffenbachia needs regular watering. </p><p>“One of them is going to die,” she says, unless they are in separate pots and watered separately.</p><p> Coaching customers through their insecurities with houseplants is part of the job at garden shops. Most customers tend to over-water, Nidiffer says, thinking that if a little is good, more is better. Some people water with an eye-dropper, fearing they might kill their plants. </p><p>The best approach is somewhere in between. Poke your finger fairly deep into the soil, and if it feels dry, it’s time to water. Water thoroughly.</p><p> Bibens grows just one plant per pot to simplify watering, but she also doesn’t buy demanding plants. </p><p>“If it needs water more than once a week, it’s going to have a hard time,” she says. </p><p>She also has two terrariums, which she waters with a turkey baster, on the advice of the salesclerk at the shop where she bought her plants. </p><p>The turkey baster lets her water small plants without getting water on their leaves, which might spot them. A little thing like that hardly shows in a big garden outdoors, but indoors, you’ll be seeing your plants up close all the time, and water spots detract from the beauty.</p><p> Plants in 6-inch pots are the biggest sellers at Suburban, Palmer says. </p><p>“Anyone can handle those,” she says. They are large enough to put on a good show, yet small enough not to crowd a tabletop.</p><p> At home, place houseplants in bright, indirect light, away from drafts. This usually involves some experimentation. </p><p>Southern exposures have the strongest light, sometimes too strong; east- and west-facing windows are often ideal for houseplants. It should be a spot where the plant looks great, of course, and where you will not forget about it, says Mike Rimland, an Anthurium expert and grower for Costa Farms, a wholesale grower of more than 1,500 different houseplants and tropical plants, with greenhouses in south Florida.</p><p> “It may look great in the corner behind your couch or next to a painting, but remember, it’s alive — there is a maintenance issue,” he says. “A plant doesn’t raise its hand and say ‘I need a glass of water’ or ‘Hey, I need some light.’ ”</p><p> Most plants will survive the gardener’s learning curve and will adjust gracefully to changes while you find just the right place for your plants.</p><p> “Every plant has something you have to figure out about it,” Rimland says, and that should be part of the pleasure of growing houseplants.
Source: Kansas City Star
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