Gardening Tips for Indoor or Outdoor Living

Whether you live in a condo, or a house with a small or large backyard, gardening lends itself to all styles of living. Plants have many benefits; not only do they promote healthy living, they can also provide a peaceful atmosphere. Making your home greener with plants will improve your home’s environment and purify the air. An outdoor garden will provide hours of enjoyment and encourage butterflies and bee pollination. Aesthetically, plants or a flower garden will add drama, colour, and if planted right and nurtured, months of natural, colourful beauty. Gardening and plants are known to reduces stress, force you to slow down, promote patience and care while increasing your creativity! Choosing what’s best for your home doesn’t have to be a chore, rather, take it as a meditative process. Here are a few tips on how you can maintain a healthy garden or add some greenery to your condo.

Your Backyard Garden

1. Choose Wisely - Do select light-appropriate plants, shrubs and flowers. You want to make sure the plant grows and produces to its fullest potential. Light is everything - even the absence of sun can produce beautiful and bountiful hostas and other shade plants, so make sure you consider how much sun or shade your garden will have during the day. Make sure to incorporate wildflowers so you can promote cross-pollination and the flowers will come back each year.
2. Test Soil - You want to make sure it has enough iron and magnesium. These two nutrients produce a healthy, full, greener lawn. Some plants flourish in acidic soil while others don’t. For example, hydrangeas like a spot near a blue spruce...depending where you put them you will have blue or pink flowers.
3. A Good Soaking - Do water your plants longer and deeper rather than in short intervals - water getting down to the roots is essential; and remember, never water during the hottest periods of the day. Often, soil becomes hard in between watering so be sure to loosen it up so the roots absorb the water rather than it just running off.
4. Variety is Best - For a beautiful garden, variety is best - colours, textures, flowering and non-flowering plants offer a more eye-pleasing garden. Also, you will have a longer flowering season when planting various shrubs for spring summer and fall.
5. Pruning - Another way to promote growth is to prune dead leaves and snip dead flowers heads. This can be done a regular basis and prevents the garden from looking worn and dried up.

Indoor Gardening

In a home, embrace the simplicity and low maintenance of growing some smaller, healthy plants while still reaping the benefits they offer. Depending on the amount of light you get in your house or condo, or which direction you face, some plants will thrive more than others. Do have plants in every room to encourage great air quality and include one or two in the bedrooms. Any room with some natural light, not necessarily sunlight, can thrive. All in all, you can’t go wrong with the following plants suggestions. They’ll add life to any home.

1. The Snake Plant - These beauties thrive in light but tolerate shade and purify the air in your indoor garden.
2. Succulents - With little care these small plants are super aesthetically pleasing. They’re great in terrariums, on their own or as a group. Don’t over water these lovelies, they like it dry like the desert, but do keep an eye on them. Just make sure they’re dry before you water again.
3. The Boston Fern - Not to be confused with other ferns, these plants love low light, thriving in thoroughly watered conditions and dense soil. They add volume to an area and provide texture. Be sure to add at least one.
4. Fiddle-leaf Figs - These babies love light, especially near a window. Minimal care is needed and be sure to water every 7-10 days. Like many tropical plants, some misting is required especially if your condo is dry during the winter months.
5. Birds of Paradise - Not to be confused with the orange tropical Bird of Paradise - these tropical plants, well known for their colourful plumage, are a great choice for smaller spaces as they fit into corners and grow upwards instead of outward. They are also easy to tend to, as just like the Fiddle-leaf Figs, they only require watering every 7-10 days, and a misting in the dryer winter months.

Container Gardening

Just because you have limited space in your home doesn’t mean you still cannot cultivate a miniature garden of your own. There is no difficult work required when prepping your personal garden, because as the title states, all you need is a container. Set up your container outside so that it is perfectly positioned where it can get proper hydration and sunlight, then fill it up with soil and plant your seeds. Voila, you’re all done! The great thing about container gardening is that there is a wide variety of plants you can grow in a compact space. Tomatoes, basil, chives, and peppers can all have a little home in your container garden and save you a weekly trip to the supermarket.

Plants of any kind are a living breathing species. Like any living thing, they do require love and care and ongoing nurturing. Following the above tips and considerations, you’ll come to enjoy them.

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