Home Gardening

Indoor plants improve living quality, appearance
Mississippi Gardens Newspaper and Web Column - December 22, 2003

Is there a place in your home or office that needs an indoor foliage plant? If so, this Christmas season is a great time to fill up that space with some living greenery to improve the appearance and living quality of the places where you spend most of your time. Most of us know we like to look at plants, but few of us realize the contribution plants make toward creating a healthy environment. Actually, there are real physical and psychological benefits that plants provide.

Consider for example that the success of one of our nations' top 10 hotels is attributed to three large and beautiful indoor gardens. This particular establishment, located in Nashville, Tenn., has been awarded numerous times and enjoys an occupancy rate well above the national average. Their secret, which is really not a secret, is nine acres of indoor space with approximately 18,000 tropical plants valued at well over one million dollars! According to my sources, rooms overlooking the gardens are always the first to be reserved by repeat guests demonstrating that people stay there in large part because of the gardens.

Researchers tell us that plants significantly lower workplace stress and improve productivity. From the results of their experiments it seems that people can deal better with stress, have faster reaction time and tend to be more emotionally happy in the presence of plants. Imagine that. We work and feel better when we have green plants around us, and not the plastic kind, mind you.

In the last 20 years or so scientists have also discovered the relationship between plants and clean air. Some buildings have been declared "sick buildings" because of the presence of molds, mildews, bacteria and harmful chemicals in the air. Some energy efficient sealed office structures are often 10 times more polluted than outside air. The good news is that plant-filled rooms contain 50 to 60 percent fewer disease causing organisms than rooms without plants.

There is much more that could be said about how plants clean the air and moderate air humidity to our benefit. However, take a look at the list of plants below that are reported by the Associated Landscape Contractors of America (ACLA) and by NASA to be plants that can help purify air. A group of 15 to 20 of these can remove harmful pollutants from the interior of a 1,800-square-foot house.

Some of the air purifiers include Bamboo palm (Chamaedorea erumpens), Chinese evergreen (Aglaonema spp.), Chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum spp.), Dracaena (Dracaena spp.), English Ivy (Hedera helix), Ficus (Ficus spp.), Gerbera Daisy (Gerbera jamesonii), Golden pothos (Epipremnum aureum), Mother-in-law's tongue (Sansevieria trifiscata), Peace lily (Spathiphyllum spp.), Philodendron (Philodendron spp.) and Spider plant (Chlorophytum comosum). Happy gardening!

These archived columns were written by Kerry Johnson, a hobby gardener, former weekly newspaper columnist and an Area Extension Horticulture Agent for 11 coastal counties in Mississippi.