House Plants

As the weather gets warmer, I spend more time in the house, at least during the hottest part of the day.  At one time I had lots of indoor plants to keep me company.  I started collecting them when I was in high school, although my collection didn't explode until my future husband and I got our own apartment in West Los Angeles.  He built a floor to ceiling set of shelves to hold plants for me.  Unfortunately, I've no photos of it, or my former plant collection.  When we bought our first house after we'd both completed graduate school and were working full-time, the plant shelf unit was retired and I spread the plants I had throughout the house.  With the house I finally got my own garden and that shifted my attention to outdoor plants.  It was a tiny garden but, given that I was a certified (or certifiable) workaholic, it gave me a sufficient outlet for my growing plant addiction.  When we moved again two decades later, several months after I retired, we got a house roughly the size of our former townhouse sitting on a half acre lot, which is large by local standards.  At that point, my focus shifted almost exclusively to outdoor plants.

As as my house plant collection shrunk, I began cutting more flowers to bring inside than I ever had before.  

I featured this arrangement in my last In a Vase on Monday post but, since then, the second Lilium 'Pretty Woman' opened.  I usually have at least 3 fresh flower/foliage arrangements in the house each week.

Still, during the brutal peak of summer I wish I had a more robust collection of indoor plants.  I'll never have a collection anything like those compiled by many of the hard core house plant influencers but our home interior could certainly use a little more green.

Here's a look at my current, rather paltry, indoor plant collection.

The ever reliable Chinese evergreen (Aglaonema commutatum) on the fireplace hearth in the main bedroom

Velvet Calathea (Calathea 'Rufibarba') in the laundry room

A large spider plant (Chlorophytum comosum), also in the laundry room

Song of India (Dracaena reflexa) and neon pothos (Epipremnum 'Aureum') in the front entry

Another pothos in the main bathroom

Variegated Peperomia (Peperomia obustifolia) in my home office

Peperomia obustifolia 'Golden Gate' on the buffet cabinet in the dining room

My current favorite house plant, Philodendron 'Birkin', in the living room

Another Philodendron 'Birkin' and Fatsia japonica in a basket in the bedroom

My largest and possibly oldest indoor plant, Schefflera arboricola, in the front entry

A variegated peace lily (Spathiphyllum 'Domino') on a bedroom dresser

A dried arrangement of plant material from the garden on the living room mantle.  The contents include bunny tail grass (Lagurus ovatus), Cape rush (Chrondropetalum elephantinum), and seedheads of a South African lily (Aristea inaequalis).

Maybe I'll add a couple of large house plants during the course of our interminably long summer.  Do you have any favorite houseplants you can recommend?

All material © 2012-2022by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party