> Next: Bulbs Indoors
Containers Indoors
Flowering Plants as Houseplants
Gain inspiration from these indoor uses of flowering plants with ideas for your own houseplants in containers.
Flowering and foliage plants are perfect additions to any home’s decor. Adding houseplants—much as when you display a vase of cut flowers—invites members of your outdoor flower garden inside as privileged guests.
Every room in your home will benefit from living flowers and foliage plants. Consider flowers, for instance, for entryways and halls, staircases and landings, kitchens, baths and bedrooms, kitchens or dining rooms, as well as family rooms and living rooms.
Also consider ledges, windowsills, and counters in your home as spots you might fill with flowering plants.
Or, go all out and make a sunny room into a solarium—an indoor greenhouse you will fill with flowers.
Inviting Flowering Plants Indoors
When gardeners plan to include flowering plants in their home’s decor, it’s wise to think of that decision as one with both indoor and outdoor considerations.
It’s natural to want flowers in your home. Some flowering plants bloom in spring, others in summer or autumn. A few bloom during the winter, and—of course—bulbs may be induced to bloom whenever their flowers are wanted [see: Forcing Bulbs].
That means that you should consider indoor displays as an on-stage show period.
There’s also lots of time when the flowering plants are growing, have finished their bloom for the season, and—for annuals—are ripening their seed or—for perennials—are going dormant. Those times are the off-stage period, and they typically live outdoors for most of it.
Use these off-stage times in your plants’ life cycles to repot, fertilize, prune, pinch, or give them the sun they missed while they were in your home [see Flower Plant Lifecycles].
Small-home dwellers may use a balcony, porch, or outdoor window ledge as temporary homes for off-stage flowers.
Those with landscape gardens typically place their containers of plants around their yard while they’re off-stage, using them as foliage plants and decorative centerpieces of their outdoor living spaces.
Some divide their growing spaces into special areas, setting aside room for off-stage houseplants, cutting gardens where flowers used in floral arrangements grow, and nurseries.
The goal of this time of rest is to prepare the plants—keep them healthy, well-fed, disease- and pest-free, and correct any deficiencies—and set up another on-stage appearance within your home.
These are activities once you become more involved in the hobby of enjoying a home filled with flowering plants.
For now, let’s concentrate on making the most of the time that your flowers are on-stage and winning you praise and complements.
Making the Most of Indoor Flowering Plants
While flowering plants are certainly wonderful decorative elements of a home’s interior, they differ from other featured items of decor. First and foremost, they are living beings, and they bring life into static and lifeless rooms.
This necessarily leads to the difference between living plants and other decor. A homeowner may hang pictures or place figurines in their rooms once and promptly forget them.
Plants are different. They need regular care and deserve attention to show off the beauty of their flowers and their foliage.
That’s the thing gardeners love about houseplants and flowers. They are co-partners that jointly make homes beautiful.
Great gardeners find clever ways to display their flowering plants to best advantage. They choose decorative containers with a careful eye.
When they move plants indoors and into the on-stage spotlight, they may tuck a container of flowers within a temporary home, create groups of container plants, add furniture such as plant stands, or add decorative touches to make their flowers sparkle.
Gardeners love to match flowers to niches in their home’s rooms.
They dress up bathroom counters with flowers in pots that match the color scheme of the room and other fixtures. A plain tabletop becomes a frame for a flowering tea service set on a silver tray.
A ribbon, bow, or an added dollhouse-miniature item completes the plant’s dress. Stakes and trellises keep plants growing upright, and hidden wire forms help hold wayward leaves that fill empty gaps.
There are practical concerns, too.
If a plant in its nursery pot is set into a decorative container without drainage, it needs lifts to keep it from setting in water. Add plastic watering spikes to such container plants—it provides an empty space to collect water and hold it until the plant’s roots need it.
Combine the practical with the artist in you to fully enjoy your home’s flowering houseplants and add to their natural beauty.