Check out all our blog posts on Indoor gardening.
The best ZZ plant companion plants are snake plant and haworthia, because they’re among the few common houseplants that also like to dry out completely between waterings. Pothos, Chinese evergreen, cast iron plant, dracaena, hoya, and peperomia also look great beside a ZZ, as long as each one sits in its own pot with its … Read more >>
Pothos is the plant I’d pick first if you want a room to look full fast. Golden pothos is the best fast-growing indoor plant for most homes because it handles average indoor light and can trail a foot or more a month in spring and summer when it gets bright, indirect light. Close behind it … Read more >>
For most homes, the best indoor plants that like direct sunlight are desert and dry-climate plants. Aloe, jade, echeveria, ponytail palm, bird of paradise, tropical hibiscus, rosemary and Meyer lemon all grow best when sun lands right on their leaves for several hours a day. If you have an unobstructed south- or west-facing window, I’d … Read more >>
The tiny black bugs on indoor plants are most often fungus gnats, followed by thrips, black aphids, and black scale. Fungus gnats hover over damp soil. Thrips, aphids, and scale stay on leaves and stems, where they suck plant juices and leave marks you can see. Where you spot the bugs tells you most of … Read more >>
Pothos, snake plant, and ZZ plant are the easy indoor plants for beginners I’d start with, because all three handle missed waterings and average indoor light better than most houseplants. If you want something that trails, get a pothos. If you forget to water for weeks at a time, get a snake plant or ZZ … Read more >>
A potted plant on your windowsill does very little to keep mosquitoes away. The oils that bother mosquitoes stay locked inside the leaves until you crush or rub them, and even then the effect reaches only a few inches and fades within minutes. If you want a real defense, I recommend tight window screens, emptying … Read more >>
There’s little evidence that indoor plants that repel spiders keep spiders out of a house. A potted peppermint or lavender gives off far too little scent to change where spiders go. Spiders come inside to hunt insects and find quiet shelter, so the fixes that work are cutting their food supply and closing the gaps … Read more >>
For most offices, a ZZ plant or snake plant is my top pick: both handle fluorescent or LED ceiling light, and both can go two weeks or more between waterings. If you want something that trails off a shelf, golden pothos is the next easiest choice and grows faster under overhead lights. Office plants fail … Read more >>
Yes, several beneficial bugs work well indoors. Predatory mites are the best pick for most houseplant owners with spider mites or thrips, because they’re tiny, they stay on infested plants, and they hunt pests in the leaf creases and undersides where sprays miss. For fungus gnats, beneficial nematodes or soil-dwelling mites handle the larvae in … Read more >>
If you want a bold look indoors, my top picks are Monstera deliciosa, fiddle leaf fig, rubber plant, bird of paradise, Alocasia, Philodendron selloum, banana and Calathea. Each one brings broad leaves that fill a corner faster than a shelf of small plants. For most American homes, I’d start with Monstera deliciosa, because it grows … Read more >>