Let's talk a about decorating your home with houseplants.
How do you bring more beauty to your home by using these houseplants? Well what we have here, these are called cover pots. This is used a lot in our industry to hide the mechanics of just the plain grow pot. So, you can buy a cover pot and just simply plonk the plant right in there. This one fits very very well. I'm going to add my saucer down in there because as I water it needs drainage.
Now that’s a very simple look. Metallics are very hot this year. This can go anywhere, which leads to the question do you match your containers to your home or do you match them to the plant? It’s up to you.
This container, of course, basically asks for something tall and bushy in it. I usually put a pony tail palm in here. You can see how you can mimic the look of hair. In the summer, I might put grasses in there as well. That’s just a little fun thing I've got.
This one it’s a classic look. It holds a four-inch plant perfectly. Now this one would like nice in a formal because this type of planter is more formal.
Right here I've got what started off as an outdoor container. It has a big drainage hole. So, to make it a cover pot what I need to do is make sure that I have a saucer in there and I can put the plant in there and not worry about the drainage hole at all. What we don’t want to do, and I see this all the time. We don't want to do that, not pretty. Use your saucer inside.
Sometimes the container itself is so pretty that you really don't want to cover it up with a draping plant. So, what you might want to do is use plants like these bromeliad's that fit right in there and don't cover the top of the pot.
Now any time you use two's it’s a more formal look. When you want to use three’s, it leads to a more informal look.
This is probably the greatest container I've ever purchased for this. I got it for like 50 cents at Goodwill. It fits three plants perfectly. I can put three bromes’ in there. I can put three other plants in
there. Stack them up, fill it up. I also use this in the summertime outside on my dining room table out on my deck. It takes a lot of beautiful beautiful annuals and it looks great.
And by not direct planting them I can change it out as I wish. Change it as the season and add my moss to cover my mechanics. Moss is messy. But it makes it look more professional. Something else you can do when you do this, and I'm working from behind here so you can add silks. The succulents that are done in silks these days are so wonderful I think they add a lot to any container. You can see, I didnt even look doing that and I think that looks okay.
The other thing you can do is to match your house plants to the container itself. I'm going to go back to this outdoor one which is pretty yellow and take out my yellow bromeliad. Now if you put the yellow in there it’s kind of matching. However, if you put the darker bromeliad in there you get more of a contrast. So really you need to think in terms of color contrasts, whether or not you want your plants to match the pots or be offset by the pots.
This is how I operate at home too, I've always got my fingers in the soil and I'm always just playing around with things.
Use small pots, again doesn’t matter just size it up to the plant that you have. Orchids look great in single pots. Here's a nice orchid that we can just put in here. Again, metallics are very popular. With this orchid I would definitely add some frou-frou here.
And don't be afraid of moving your house plants around in your home. When I first started collecting house plants some forty years ago, I'd line them up by the window so they got the correct light. You don't really need to that because you can move them around in your home this way in their cover pots. Take an area that needs some livening up and put the plant there. When it seems like it’s not getting enough light move it back in to a higher light source.
As far as grow lights and lights are concerned, indoor lights do count in a plants total light value. Any more we use more LED's and fluorescents than incandescent. I don’t think incandescent are even sold anymore. LED's if you buy a cool warm you'll get either more blue or more red. So, what I recommend for house plant lights is to use a mix of cool and warm lights. You don’t need to spend
the extra money on the so-called plant lights because they are basically just a combination of cool and warm. You want to get that full spectrum.
The more blue in the light spectrum that encourages more photosynthesis. So, you don't want to not have blue because you want plants to continue to be healthy.
On the other end of the spectrum the reds, the warmer ones, that’s more for the hormonal parts of the plants for interior kind of things that they do inside.
So, you need all. Sunlight of course is the best, but if you want to have lights mix some warm and a cool together and you'll get adequate grow lights. And you can keep them live during the winter and send them outside in the summer.
You can do anything with plants and I hope you do because I do, this is my life I love it. Have some fun with plants today.