10 Houseplants To Improve Your Home

Do you need more energy? Are you concerned about the quality of the air in your home? Even if you've never thought you had a green thumb, rethink houseplants. But just make sure your choose the right ones...

Darcie at Such the Spot lists all of the benefits of houseplants and shares how she recently decided to invest in some, also telling us which ones are most beneficial.

It seems not everyone agrees on the top 5, but here are a few more resources we found to point you in the right direction:

• Top Five Plants for Improving Air Quality from Treehugger

• Three Plants that Give You Better Indoor Air Quality

• Top Five Plants - from Seventh Generation

Comments (10)

thanks for this post! we were just at the city conservatory enjoying the palms this weekend, and sadly the smell of dirt and plants made us realize how completely void of plants our home currently is. gotta change that...

Which of these would be non-toxic if ingested by toddlers (or pets)? Seems like a pretty important question to ask if this is posted on a blog about young children.

dcirene, I was coming on to ask the same thing! I'd be most interested in a list that improves air quality AND isn't toxic to my toddler, cats and dogs.

So I was curious, and I spent the last 2 hours researching it, and this is what I found. http://loreleisierra.blogspot.com/2010/03/houseplants.html of all those plants 8 are non-toxic to dogs, cats and people. The majority, are toxic, so be careful!

Okay, four lists that are on other people's sites, and a follow up suggestion posted on another blog.

Wasn't curious enough to click through to any of these other sources, so I guess I'll never know.

Yeah... I wondered the same thing as Lorelei Sierra, here's her list:
1) Kentia Palm
2) Spider Plants
3) African Violet
4) Bamboo palm
5) Gerbera daisies
6) Areca Palm
7) Boston fern
8) Lady palm

My list when I gave it a brief search, was a bit smaller: air-filtering palms such as bamboo/reed (Chamaedorea seifrizii), parlor (Chamaedorea elegans), lady (Rhapis excelsa), and also the spider plant (Chlorophytum comosum), but I think I was also looking for "low-light" and/or "easy-care." I settled on the spider plant for being pretty easy to grow, cheap, and easy to propogate (it grows its own baby plants that you can use to make new plants).

spider plants are actually very good inside. Somewhere I heard that NASA uses them to clean the air in the space shuttle???? Don't quote me on that, but I think they clean air the best of all plants. Also, yes, they are very easy to grow. And once yardsale season starts people sell the babies a lot.

Oh, and toxicity would have been helpful. I'd rather just have a list on this site instead of links to everywhere.

For me, the essential kitchen plant is aloe vera. Requires no real care, lovely green color, non-toxic, and it's really useful if you burn yourself. Plus, if you know someone who already has a plant they can give you one of the little shoots and you're good to go.

Keep in mind that the dose often makes the poison. It's useful to know how much of something is poisonous, not just that it's potentially poisonous in some indeterminate amount.