Growing Plants Indoors Can Add a Cheerful Touch to Cold Days

If gardening is one of your very favorite things to do, chances are that as the days grow colder you long for the warm days of spring and summer. Unless you live in an area that has a warm climate all year-round, the beginning of fall usually signals the end of the outdoor garden growing season. If you do not want to have to hold on until the warm days of springtime arrive to enjoy your gardening hobby, why not plan to grow some plants inside this year? The sight of green plants growing indoors might be just what you need in order to ward off the gloom of the winter months.

How to Pick the Proper Plants to Place in Your Garden

You’d be surprised to learn the wide range of plants you can grow inside your house. If growing plants isn’t necessarily a particular skill of yours, some excellent plants to begin with may be philodendron, ivy, or pothos, which are all easy to grow inside. Even if your house doesn’t have a lot of light coming in, you can still do very well growing these plants. But you may still want to consider installing some additional light fixtures if you would like to grow other plants like herbs, colorful flowers, and even vegetables. Although there are special “grow lights” you can buy which are specially designed to supply the light spectrum that plants thrive on, in most cases you will be able to effectively grow most plants using nothing more than common fluorescent light fixtures. Simply suspend a fluorescent light fixture from the ceiling over the table, and you’ll have the perfect place to grow a variety of plants. Or, set up a collection of potted herbs on a sunny kitchen or dining room windowsill.

Utilizing Your Household Garden

Depending on the sorts of plants you choose, there are a variety of different ways you are able to utilize your indoor garden during the winter months. If you are looking for some new ideas for things to give to your friends and family, you could choose some household plants that could be split up and used as “starts” for growing new plants to offer as gifts. Or, try pressing some of the flowers you are growing indoors, which may be used to create unique wall art when displayed in picture frames. If you are growing herbs indoors, you will also have the benefit of having fresh green herbs to cook with all winter long. Your green herbs could be dried and used for other things as well, such as potpourri mixtures to give as gifts, or even bath sachets. Other plants which grow very well in your house, especially in a cold place such as your basement, are lettuce and some other leafy green salad vegetables.

Decorating Your Indoor Garden

If you’ve decided to devote an entire spare room to your indoor winter garden, it can be lots of fun to decorate it in a decidedly garden-related style. Get a few picture frames and fill them with prints of flowers and other plants and then hang them on the walls. A water feature may be an additional nice touch, but you should make sure it’s a little one that you might even be able to display on a table. Add a comfy chair and a good reading light, and you may discover that your new “garden room” will become your favorite spot to spend a snowy winter afternoon.

So get started right away on that charming indoor garden you have been dreaming of.