Indoor Gardening

If you’re living in the middle of the Amazon jungle, the last thing I would recommend for you to do is try your hand at indoor gardening. Why attempt to compete with mother nature and come out looking like an amateur?

However, if, like most of the population of the western world you don’t actually live at the foot of a rain forest then indoor gardening comes into its own as a place to grow tropical plants and enjoy them. At least you'll be able to dream of warmer climes.

Why would you go for an indoor garden - as opposed to an outdoor one? The reasons are pretty simple really. There isn't any really dirty work involved and it doesn't matter what the weather conditions are, they won't bother you too much. It will make your house look nice and give you impressive plants to look at which ultimately makes you feel good.

If you hark back to the good old days of high school and peer pressure, you might just remember vaguely hearing something in science class about plants and photo-something-or-other.

To refresh your memory, it’s a procedure called photosynthesis, where plants take carbon dioxide, CO2, from the air through their leaves, process it and release oxygen into the atmosphere, thereby removing pollutants from our environment. If you’re living in a jungle there’s not too much of a problem with that, but living as we are in our singular little houses, indoor plants are the next best thing to producing nice oxygenated air that makes up feel better. Thus indoor gardening is good fun and good for you.

When planning your lovely miniature rainforest or indoor garden there are a huge range of plants from which to choose. The plants are ones that the gardner, more used to outdoor work, might not be privy to but we won’t go into a list of possible indoor plants in this article as there are a huge number and many of them prefer different conditions and have many different characteristics. The best thing to do is have a visit to your local garden centre and see what's on offer.

You’ll get a good idea of what types of plants there are for you to choose from and also what types to avoid. Some just won't grow indoors! You’ll also find with indoor gardening that some plants can be temperamental and will flat out refuse to grow anywhere indoors!

Watch out for poisonous plants. These are frequently found and really aren't that bad but take care and read the label. This is especially important if you have very young children, who tend to like a nibble of a tasty leaf not and then!

Why not start in the kitchen with a few potted herbs? These can be grown fairly easily and provide a source of fresh herbs as well as looking and smelling nice in the kitchen.

Gardening indoors is great, especially if you’re not an outdoor type of person or prefer not to have a close encounter with the wormy or spidery kind. Or any other type of crawly insect that resides in your outdoor garden come to think of it. Some people just don't like then and indoor gardening is where these people should definately try out their planting skills.