My Indoor Plants

Before I start this post, let’s get one thing straight. I don’t have a green thumb. At all. I don’t kill every plant I touch either, I guess I’m somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. If all I need to do is water a plant, I can keep it alive for years. Pretty much the only plants that always die on me are supermarket-bought herbs, but that’s normal, right? I also have this weird refusal to throw out any plant that’s still alive. The fact that it doesn’t bloom anymore is no reason to get rid of a plant!

First off, why do I have plants at all? In my opinion, plants add life to a room, they make a house more homely. They’re pretty and when there are none in a space, I always feel like there’s something missing. Plants complete an interior. They also help purify the air and produce more oxygen for you to breathe.
All of my indoor plants are special to me in some way, so I’d like to share them with you today.

Peace Lily

This peace lily has a special place in my heart. My mom gifted it to me when I first moved out of the house and into Amsterdam. My mom thought every room needed a plant as well, so she got my housemate and I this peace lily to put in the living room. I’m going to have to admit it wasn’t taken great care of in the beginning, but that’s the great thing about a peace lily: it’s near impossible to kill. After I took it with me to Utrecht, I brought it back to glory and it started producing flowers twice a year. I guess I feel kind of guilty for allowing this plant to be neglected in the beginning, so I’m trying to make up for it now by taking extra good care of it. It’s been with me for 5 years now and is still doing great!

Bonsai Ficus

This one is the same age as my peace lilly! I got this one for my bedroom when I moved to Amsterdam, and it’s been gracing my spaces ever since. I think this is a very beautiful plant, I love having it around and looking at it. It recently started growing like crazy, as I’ve been giving it more water since I came home from vacation. I’m excited to see how bit it’ll get! I don’t plan on cutting it any time soon, haha :)

Decapitated Orchid

Yep. This is an orchid. This is one plant I did cut and it was a terrible mistake. I got this orchid through Robbert’s mom who got it from her daughter who won it in a cycle race, and pretty soon after I got it, it lost all its flowers. The stem went dark and I looked up what I should do. I found out that if the stem goes dark, you can cut it off and a new one will grow back with new flowers. If the stem doesn’t go dark, you should leave it on and just wait. By that time the orchid had been sitting in my room for months and months with a bare stem, so I thought it must be the growing-back kind and cut it off. That was about two years ago… Oops. I don’t think it’s ever going to grow back, as the orchid has been growing new leaves regularly but no stem. I’ve just embraced it as a green plant now, as least it’s a lot more compact this way, haha!

Herbs & Mystery Plant

On my windowsill I keep a couple of pots with varying contents. I often have some kind of herb in one or two of them, usually basil or mint. The herbs never last longer than a couple of weeks, I just cannot keep them alive.

There’s also a mystery plant there. One day I was sitting on the bus when two men entered, carrying about a dozen of these plants each, and they started handing them out to passengers. The plants were a thank-you gift for filling in the bus company’s consumer questionnaire a few days earlier, but they didn’t bother to check who did or didn’t fill them in and were just handing out plants. I got handed this plant with gorgeous tiny pink flowers, which lasted for a surprisingly long time. After they fell off, it never bloomed again, but like I mentioned before, that’s no reason for me to throw out a plant. It may just bloom again one day, and if it doesn’t, I’m happy keeping it as a green plant. It is looking a bit too orange at the moment, but I’m working on it.

So those are the plants that live with me! Do you have any indoor plants?