Use inexpensive green plants to brighten up yourhome!

Okay, you have moved into your newhome, and it’s great. You have a wardrobe-sized dunny and shower, folding bed, stove, and a small bench to wash up. Your computer sits on a wobbly table, which doubles as a dining table as well. But it’s yours, at least while you pay the rent, anyway, and it’s new and shiny. Well, perhaps not new, and it’s not really shiny either, in fact it could be described as a ‘bit shabby’!

Or your pad is a bit bigger, and you share with a friend. But it’s yours, and it may be the first home you share with someone. Perhaps it’s an apartment, or a flat, or even a house. It may even be a new house! You’ve spent all your savings, and mortgaged the next 30 years of your life to get into it. You are a bit short on furniture, but what the heck! Whatever it is, it’s yours, it’s your home and you love it. I’ve been there, done that, and I know the feeling!

So how can you brighten it up, and make it more like a home? Think about plants. It’s pretty easy to turn ‘just a pad’ into a real home with real plants and real flowers. If you have a small garden as well, it’s easier still, because you can take cuttings of few plants, and you can have instant houseplants.

When you have read this page, jump over to our plant propagation page and you will find lots of information about how easy it is to take cuttings from plants.

But it’s not just cuttings that can brighten up your home. Have a look in a health shop, they have lots of grains and legumes which will often germinate easily. Peanuts, soy beans, buckwheat and many others. Pet shops sell parrot food, which is full of sunflower and millet seed. Grow some, they look great! Soy beans look good climbing up a short branch stuck into a container, or sprawling over a bench, or even in a hanging basket.

A packet of flower seeds is not expensive, and they grow well in a pot or a hanging basket. You can easily construct a hanging pot holder from a couple of wire coat hangers.

Many vegetables provide nice green plants, sweet potato, choko, passion fruit, many herbs, even onions, and especially spring onions. Pick up 3 or 4 onions which have started to sprout, and plant them in a pot. With in a few weeks you will have lovely green shoots, and you can snip a few off for spring onions for salads.

Many fresh herbs you buy can be put in a glass of water, and often they will shoot from the stem nodes. A packet of sweet pea or even bean seeds planted in a sunny spot by window will grow well, and climb everywhere. Tomato and/or chile seed planted in a pot, look great by the kitchen window. Try everything!

Don’t forget around the front door. Get some green stuff and put in pots by the entrance, it will create a whole new dimension for you when you enter your home. A hardy fern, or palm, or some herbs look good at an entrance! Herbs are especially good, seeds are cheap, they grow quickly, and also provide a refreshing aroma. Try basil, or coriander, or tarragon, or even a packet of mixed herb seed.

If you can get to the local tip on Sunday morning when the home gardeners bring in all their garden trimmings, you can get loads of cuttings. You may have to give the tip operator a six pack of beer, but it would be worth it. You can collect hundreds of dollars worth of cuttings at a tip. I know several people who collect garden cuttings like this, propagate them, and then on-sell them as potted plants at weekend markets.

If you jump to our houseplants page you can find out all about acquiring cheap pots for your plants. While you are at the tip you will probably get some very cheaply from the salvage shop, but there are many ways of getting attractive plant containers.

Have a look at the second hand shops and weekend markets. Often old kitchen utensils can be used as plant pots, and some of them look great. Old teapots, glass jars, etc can have a hole drilled in them with a masonry drill, and they make perfect plant pots. Short pieces of masonry pipe, small plaster containers, old vases, all can be utilised.

I have a climbing plant in a nicely shaped bottle of water on my desk, its been growing there happily for several months. Plant some lettuce seeds in a container, sit it on the table, and you have an instant salad garden. Be original, think laterally, get plants and flowers, and turn your pad into a really green, colorful, and comfortable home!

Cheers, Patrick!

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