Plants grown indoors have been enjoyed for countless years, and many special methods for accommodating the pots on window sills, movable units, and metal boxes have been devised.
It remained for contemporary architects to make indoor plantings a part of the original design and construction and to make gardening indoors possible for the average homeowner.
The greatest demand for indoor plant space is, of course, in cold climates where gardening is restricted to a limited season. Still, even in warm climates, the indoor garden is used to good effect as an aesthetic bridge between the indoors and the outdoors.
Factors Influencing Indoor Garden Design
The indoor garden is now a highly developed design element in a home. Its design depends on several factors: a person’s desire for and ability with plant materials, type of site, general house design, and budget.
It can be small enough to water by hand or large enough to make mandatory installation of a hose bib and out-of-sight storage for the hose. You should be able to enjoy the planting from a room or rooms used in everyday living.
Therefore, it must be arranged to enhance the design of the rooms and not interfere with the everyday use of the area.
Plant space, wall, and flooring materials must be carefully chosen to minimize upkeep and promote success with the plant materials.
Location and Lighting Considerations
The plant area may be located at an entrance (in cold climates protected from cold drafts by the door). This could be either at floor level or higher but must be where it is out of circulation through the entrance hall, never located so that people will step into or bump into the plants.
An indoor garden may have little light in a hall. Recessed ceiling fixtures for hall use, supplemented by focal lights, will work out to the best advantage.
Focal lights and low feature lights give good light in a living room plant space.
Preparation For Planting
The preparation for planting in an earth-filled area should include 6” inches of drainage material, such as broken pots, pieces of brick, or medium-sized stones.
The area should then be filled with good garden soil mixed with dried manure and bone meal. This mixture will take care of plants for five years with the occasional addition of liquid fertilizers.
The soil should be loosened up about once a year. Acid lovers should be kept in pots and fed yearly with acid food.
Do not overfeed or overwater plants in an indoor garden. To prepare a pan or box planter, use a 2-inch layer of pea gravel and the same soil mixture given above.
Optimal Glass Placement
There are several basic construction rules for obtaining optimum results with indoor gardening. The glass providing natural light for the area should start no more than 8 inches above the top of the soil.
This is to avoid leggy growth and make it possible to start small plants in the area. Having the glass go to the ceiling for as much “overhead” light as possible is desirable.
The glass area for the plant space should face southeast, south, or possibly southwest—listed in the order of desirability.
There are few problems connected with southeast- or south-facing windows when properly protected from the hot summer sun by an overhang, as they are in well-designed contemporary homes.
As the sun moves to the southwest, it becomes more difficult to control, and a west-facing window cannot be protected from too hot a summer sun except by adjustable vertical blinds.
This is rather a nuisance under normal circumstances and an impossibility when you consider getting the blind down without breaking the plants. If expense were not important, it would be possible to use motor-controlled exterior blinds.
Designing For Access and Maintenance
If access to the area is from one side only, the ideal width from the front to the back of the area is 2’ feet, but 1 ½’ feet will do.
An area wider than 2’ feet is difficult to plant and care for; narrower than 1 ½’ feet affords less opportunity for the graceful arrangement of plants and is apt to impart a “marching” look to the planting.
If access is from two or three sides, these dimensions may be doubled. It should never be necessary to crawl into an indoor plant area to work in it.
If “on grade” as in slab construction, a raised planter can be made of any masonry material—brick, concrete block (not cinder block), stone, or tile on brick backers.
The soil in it should go down to meet the original grade. In other words, a masonry well would be built right down to the ground.
This should be treated inside with approved mastic or membrane waterproofing. A floor-level plant space with slab construction is built with a partial foundation wall or footing all around it. This is usually of concrete and goes to about 4 ½’ feet below natural grade level in northern New England.
If a raised planter is built on wood floor construction, a wood frame may be built and lined with a metal pan 10” to 12” inches deep made to be lit.
The exterior should be faced with waterproof plywood or some other material that can withstand spillage during watering.
In this type, it is mandatory to install a drain and a method of shutting it since, unlike the “on-grade” installations, there is no natural drainage for these plants. The drain should be closable for times when the homeowner may be away for a few days.
Both the raised masonry box and the floor level “on grade” plant space have a decided advantage over the indoor garden built on top of a floor and enclosed by a metal pan because there is natural storage and drainage of water at all times, as there are out of doors.
Areas such as these can be left unattended for ten days to two weeks if deeply watered before leaving—even longer if the heat is turned down and the area gets little sun.
Combining Soil and Pot Planting Methods
Since the development of the indoor garden, there has been considerable argument pro and con of growing plants directly in the soil or pots set into the soil. A combination of the two methods often works out best.
Many house plants benefit from a summer outdoors to gain strength, and many plants develop their blooming- potential for the winter during the summer outdoors.
There are other plants that either do not like or do not need to be put out for the summer (the philodendrons arc in this group).
If those plants that gain from summer vacation are kept in pots, the plant and pot can be sunk in the soil in a suitable spot outdoors.
If plants that prefer to remain indoors all year are planted permanently, there will always be some plants in the area, and various indoor summer bloomers may be used to fill the gaps left by those on vacation.
A word should also be said for using a gravel-in-a-metal-pan type of planter. It is clean—a feature many like—and pots can easily be moved about for different plant arrangements.
It is true, however, that plants do not flourish in gravel as they do in soil, for even though potted, they seem to feed on the nutrients in the soil surrounding the pot. The evenness of moisture as it is distributed in the surrounding soil is also a factor.
Selection of Plants For Indoor Gardens
The plant inhabitants for a built-in space should include several bold tropicals for permanent effect.
Use any of the many varieties of philodendron, from the tiny heart-shaped Philodendron cordatum to the 24-inch leaf of Monstera deliciosa, whose fruits are delicious and flower distinctive.
For bright colors, there is a button for a happy indoor occupant, blooming with scarlet, pink, or yellow blossoms almost all year round. The epiphyllums and zygocactus make for foliage variety and a spectacular show once a year when they bloom.
The sturdy begonias—especially the fibrous-rooted Begonia Thurston—will give leaf color and blossoms for picking almost all year. B. Thurston is a thrifty grower with metallic red-veined leaves and pink flowers.
Radiant floor heat makes it possible to grow some of the orchids successfully since it does not dry the air unduly. The cymbidium orchids, with their sprays of fifteen or more blossoms, are very successful in a soil-filled area.
However, these must spend the summer outdoors to form buds for winter blooming indoors.
One or two blossoming, and not bloomed-out, annuals such as calendula or nicotiana, or a summer climber may be brought indoors in the fall (having been thoroughly sprayed for insects beforehand). In early April, they will burst again into full bloom.
Additional Enhancements For Indoor Gardens
The most successful indoor plantings consider that not all plants bloom all or most of the time, so the ones used must also contribute attractive and varied foliage while not blooming.
Here are a few suggestions to add extra spice to planting:
- A dwarf Meyer lemon, in bloom or fruit most of the time, from which you can pick luscious lemons for pics.
- The vanilla orchid will set fruit if hand-pollinated.
- Miniature salad tomatoes or herbs for fresh winter production.
An indoor garden is less careful than a collection of plants; it adds to the beauty of a home and provides relief for the Northern gardener in winter when spring seems to recede rather than come nearer each day.
44659 by Mrs. M. K. Hunter