There are many reasons to bring plants indoors. They help clean the air in your home, and add oxygen to the air you breathe. Plants add a touch of the outdoors to indoor living spaces, and they add green to your life in winter. Aside from that there are so many interesting plants available it can become habit forming to collect them. At Broadway Gardens and Rice Road Greenhouses we are collectors as well, constantly on the lookout for new and interesting plants and trends. A visit to our houseplant section will reveal many unique foliage plants, cacti and flowering houseplants.

There are as many houseplants as there are reasons for growing them. We have compiled the following lists of plants for various needs to serve as a guide to selecting the right plant for your situation.

Best Houseplants for average to low light. These plants will live away from bright windows and even in artificially lit environments.

Aglaonema (Chinese Evergreen) Pothos Aspidistra (Cast Iron Plant) Sansevieria (Snake plant or Mother-in-laws Tongue) Dieffenbachia Spathiphyllum (Peace Lily)

Dracaena Chlorophytum (Spider Plant) Ferns Philodendron Ficus (Rubber Tree)

Best Low Maintenance HouseplantsThese plants are tops for ease of care. As with most houseplants allow them to dry between watering. Perhaps the easiest of all houseplants is the Sansevieria. I water mine four times a year and it lives happily in my basement.

Aloe Aspidistra (Cast Iron Plant) Aglaonema (Chinese Evergreen) Draceana

Pothos Schefflera (Umbrella plant) Sansevieria (Snake plant or Mother-in-laws Tongue) Spathiphyllum (Peace Lily)

Best Plants for Cleaning the AirWhile all houseplants are suspected to filter poisonous gasses from the air in our homes, the following plants proved superior at cleaning the air in laboratory tests.

Aloe Ficus Benjamina Boston Fern Chinese Evergreen Croton Dracaena English Ivy

Areca Palm Lady Palm Peace Lily Philodendron Pothos Snake Plant Spider Plant

Pet Friendly Plants More and more people are asking whether specific plants will be harmful to their pets. The following list was compiled from several web pages on the topic posted by various animal advocacy groups.

African Violets Aralia Baby Tears Banana Begonia Burro’s Tail Cast Iron Plant Cryptanthus Boston Fern Button Fern Rabbit’s Foot Fern Gold Fish Plant

Hoya Jasmine Living Stones Palms (most types) Peperomia Prayer Plant Song of India Dracaena Stephanotis Spider Plant Umbrella Plant Venus Flytrap (Unless you have pet bugs)

A Brief History of Houseplants

Today we take it for granted that you can take a living thing out of its habitat and grow it somewhere else under artificial conditions. But this practice is referred to in writings dating back to 500 B.C. when Plato remarked: "A grain of seed or a branch of a tree placed in these gardens, acquired in eight days a development which cannot be obtained in as many months in the open air."

In 100 A.D. the Romans devised a system for growing cucumbers in large containers which were kept warm with pipes circulating hot water and covered with a thin sheet of transparent mica. Thus the Romans ate fresh cucumbers year round. While history is unclear on this it is almost certain that they used this method to grow plants not destined for dinner as this contemporary quote suggests: "Is it not contrary to nature to require a rose in winter and to use hot water to force from winter the later blooms of spring?" During the crusades (1096-1291) a wide variety of hardy herbaceous and woody plants -including roses, tulips and peonies - were brought back from the middle-east to be cultivated in church gardens and royal estates in Europe.

Collectors gradually learned to place less hardy plants into a viridarium - a heated wooden shed - for over-wintering.

The growth in overseas trading by European merchants in the 1600s saw the arrival of orchids from the Philippines, palms from Madagascar, Camellias from China, Sansevierias from South Africa and cacti from North America. Captain William Bligh -of Mutiny on the Bounty fame- brought heart-leaved philodendrons from the West Indies to England. These prolific vines were immediately popular. By the mid-1700s the greenhouses of the aristocracy were brimming with tropical plants, although ordinary people were still not growing them in their homes.

It was not until the 1870s that indoor gardening as we know it really took off. No self-respecting home was without its front parlour filled with exotic plants. An entire industry grew up to service this new phenomenon producing sprayers, plant stands, pots and pot brackets and related paraphernalia to keep the plants happy. Plants that performed well in the dimly lit parlours were of special interest. Since then trends have come and gone like the bromeliad tree craze in the 1920s, the terrarium trend in the 1960s and the macramé planters of the 1970s.

With the continual introduction of new plants the popularity of house plants is sure to last for years to come.

Excerpts from A History of Landscaping Indoors by Scott D. Appell