The Best (and most beautiful) House Plants for Cleaner Air

April 26, 2017
47 Comments
Posted in: Gardens, interior design

Hey Guys– I’ve had some requests to do a post about house plants.

I did do one post a while back which you can see here.

Aside from that– I love house plants.
However, as a rule, they don’t love me.

Oh, on occasion the odd one survives. In fact, for years I had this scraggly topiary that I got somewhere.

And now, I have kept a little tree alive that I got from Trader Joes in December 2015. I took a photo of it, but my computer is not letting me add it even though I spent 30 minutes deleting stuff earlier. Well, it’s a little evergreen and it’s still alive. Or at least it’s making me think it’s alive.

I can assure you that it’s only a happy accident since the other 15 plants I bought that day were mostly dead within a few weeks. Only one small poinsettia hung on for nearly a year until it too succumbed to my obvious ineptitude with growing anything green. Except mold. I excel at growing mold. Thank God for Tilex. That stuff is amazing!

My next life-time I will be an opera singer (or a concert pianist) and a superb gardener.

But, house plants if done right can add a tremendous amount to the decor of a room.

A terrific article on One Kings Lane about house plants

And more inspiration from the incredibly talented Maura Endres.

A wonderful vignette from her dining room. Oh, the colors! The flowers!

She has a real potting shed and bench and the whole shebang. I hope that doesn’t sound like some sort of urban snob. I admire this immensely!

And there’s a blue and white Chinoiserie cache pot. I hope that y’all are following M.O.Endres on instagram. These images are from her fabulous feed.

So, because I know what I like, but don’t know how to make it work, I did a lot of studying. :]

First of all… I often hear that there are house plants that purify the air.

Well, don’t ALL plants purify the air?

I do recall from 8th grade bio that plants create and give off oxygen and take in carbon dioxide.

So, in typical laurel-fashion, I went interwebbing to find out more.

Well… I found a lot of info about which plants do clean the air (better than some others, I suppose) And then I came across another article that refutes the findings unless there’s a charcoal filter around. Well, something like that.

Fine. I confess. I didn’t read every. single. word. I mean, what difference does it make if it cleans the air or not if it’s going to be dead in two weeks?

But still, for the less plant challenged, I have come up with a list of some of my favorites.

In the end, I kept seeing mostly the same plants over and over and so I made a graphic for you to save as a reminder. I did eliminate plants that I can’t stand such as rubber plants. That is not an uplifting specimen, IMO.

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12

But did you know that many flowering house plants that also smell sweet do purify the air too?

And did you know that you can grow little citrus trees indoors? Oh, I am so, so tempted.

These are those delicious sweet and sour Meyer’s lemons. And how delicious that is in the blue and white cache pot from Wisteria. (hang on, more fab containers coming up!) I would love to see a little orange tree in this container too.

And here it is again with a lovely, classic Ficus or weeping fig tree. I believe that they are the same thing? But you horticulturists out there, please correct me if that is not true.

While we’re on blue and white Chinoiserie porcelains, I found some other images to share.

Alfresco Emporium

The Source Collection

How delightful is that!

Carolyne Roehm

You must check out her beyond amazing home. It’s in the link.

I’m fascinated by growing fruit indoors. Has anyone done that?

Ballard Designs

I love these olive trees and they really can grow real olives!

Apartment Therapy has a terrific article on it plus tips for growing olives.

And here’s another article on growing olive trees indoors.

My new favorite source for everything garden and other home accents is Terrain. I brought it up in last Sunday’s post. And if you need the perfect Mother’s Day Gift, they have an amazing selection. Here are some of my favorites.

And of course, no post about house plants would be complete without Loi Thai’s magnificent myrtle topiaries.

Loi is so cute and everything he touches is golden. Please check out his blog Tone on Tone if you don’t already know it. Swedish Antiques, gardens, flowers, houses… oh my…