Refresh your home with a garden indoors

Plants can cool the surroundings and bring a touch of fresh greenery into the home

You may try the fanciest of lighting arrange ments to brighten up your home, or may get the most expensive and classy sofa sets to decorate your living room, but nothing can match the cool, green effect of indoor plants. A tinge of greenery not only adds welcome colour to the drab city abode, but is an essential factor in today's polluted atmosphere.

For those of you who don't have the privilege of a garden, you can satisfy your yearning for greenery by growing plants on your terrace. The modern trend is to bring nature inside house, be it in a significant a place as your living room.

PLANTING CHEER

House plants brighten up your home or office. Caring for house plants make for a great hobby too. Apart from the clean air they provide, plants also brighten up the room providing a cheerful at mosphere and sight for those dry and summer days. The variety of house plants is varied and broad. There are flowering types or non-flowering types. You can grow cacti, small shrubs and flower bulbs. However, most of these plants require more sunlight which might be difficult indoors.

CHOICE OF PLANT

Check out carefully how healthy the plant you want to buy is. It should look fresh with abundance of healthy leaves. If it's a flowering plant does it have more than one bud? Buy a plant which has a number of buds.

POTTED VARIETY

Clay pots with their capacity to retain moisture are the best containers for house plants. See that the pots are well baked so that they provide for all season plants. But each pot must have a hole which is plugged loosely so that if there is any excess wa ter in the pot, it does not break easily. You could also go in for cement pots. To make the pots look attractive, mask them in baskets, brass containers. Ordinary earthen pots are printed using oil paint. These pots are quite pretty, elegant and a few plants preferably cactus variety which need less water bring them to life. Use an old plate or try filling them with pebbles placed beneath the pot will help collect water.

SAND TIME

Equal parts of the sand soil and manure would be generally acceptable blend. Place the plant in a hollow created in the pot. Hold the plant and fill the pot up to three centimetres below the rim. Water it. Ferns are beautiful plants. Even if you start off with just one leaf, the plant can grow full and fresh. But when the beautiful green suddenly has brown leaflets, some glamour is definitely lost. This means the pot is too small for the plant, simple repotting can revive it.

If you are staying on the ground floor and have some space in the backyard of the house, cultivate a kitchen garden in your balcony. A couple of tomatoes for your salad or a bunch of coriander leaves for your raita from your very own garden is indeed delicious and safe from harmful pesticides. Lady fingers, methi, curry leaves or other small plants which could be of use in your kitchen and which require little space are all choices for you to select from. While spinach requires a little attention and does well at your washing place where adequate water is ensured, lady fingers need only 4 to 5 weeks to produce a crop.Seeds could be either had from professional sellers or selected from kitchen shelf.

If you live in a multistorey and have access to the roof, a terrace garden is best for you. The plants you could consider are rubber and a wide range of vines.

SOME POINTERS

For a plant to grow well, you just need to remember four things; light, air, temperature and humidity. These affect plants nearly the same way as they affect us. If a plant is being deprived of water, leaves and stem first become dry and brittle and crisp. Too much water causes the leaves to go limp. As per watering is concerned, overwatering is as bad as underwatering and should be avoided. In summers, more water is needed as it evaporates faster and, for the same reason, plants kept in shades re quire less water.

Source : Times of India, Bangalore