It's been years now that our dear Abby has thought she had a black thumb just because every time we gave her a plant, even if it is a very hearty plant, she seemed to kill it. But one step into Abby's magnificent home will reveal that it's not her fault! Her apartment just doesn't get enough light for the plants she wants to grow.
So if you're in a similar position, feeling that you have no luck with plants, don't worry. It's pretty hard to grow plants in the dark, but you'll increase your odds if you pick plants that don't need much light. You will be sad if you try to grow succulents in the dark. Also, we tried to pick plants that don't remind you of the doctor's office or, really, any office for that matter. If you're looking for more common house plants, try this post about hard to kill houseplants.
5 Interesting Low Light Plants:
• Maidenhair Ferns are a great option because they have frilly fun leaves that vary from the usual thick leaves of indoor plants. Most Ferns do well inside with low light (and ferns look great in terrariums) so check out others like Silver Lace Fern with variegated leaves.
• Begonias: These plants offer a wide range of leaf colors and shapes and if you get a Rex Begonia, it will live quite happily without any direct light. Just make sure you don't overwater it. Soak it and let it dry out, soak and dry.
• Mint: Mint will normally grow in a bog, so as long as you keep it moist and it gets a little bit of light, you should be able to harvest mint for tea, for fruit salads and it has the added advantage of giving off a nice scent indoors.
• Swedish Ivy: This plant has an old fashioned look that sort of reminds us of gramma, but consider a new way to grow it, like as a part of a vertical garden.
• A Moss Terrarium: If you seriously have very little light, consider creating a terrarium of moss. It just needs moisture and glances of light, position it near a window where it will get bounced light and it should thrive. If you don't know where to start, consider a kit to get you going.
(Images: Fern Terrarium from Eddie Ross, Maidenhair Fern from Gifts Alive, Rex Begonia by Laure Joliet, Moss Terrarium from Warm Country Meadows, Mint from Sandy Austin licensed under Creative Commons)
Before & After: Emily Henderson Transforms a Senior's Studio Space
Monica & Austin's Charming Bungalow
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
White Enamel Four-P...
How to Make Easy 3-Ingredient Energy Bars at Home
True Greek Recipe: Paximadi Bread Salad with Tomatoes, Feta and Capers
Magnificent.
I can't tell you how many maiden hairs I've killed and I'm pretty good at keeping plants alive. They are my favorite plant. Maybe I just love them to death. The begonia on the other hand seems happy no matter what I do to it.
me to with maiden hairs - they are not that easy to keep alive!
I'll second being a Maidenhair killer. Inevitably, I either don't water enough or water too much and kill it. They are on my list of the most finicky plants around. Though I've never tried one in a terrarium - maybe that constant level of moisture is the key?
I've had one in a terrarium and it rotted! I have about 5 terrariums in my home, not to mention the 10 or so small plants inside and the 10 or so potted plants on my patio. None of those died on me, but the maidenhair sure did, and I loved the way it looked in my terrarium until it did. :( I need a special green thumb just for that plant, I guess...
Another thought about low light house plants, supplementing with light. GE makes daylight fluorescents and they emit just the right wave length to grow without the expense of grow lights.
My window herb garden didn't flourish until I changed the bulbs on my overhead lighting.
.
Ohhhh i appreciate this post so much. I'm a serial killer when it comes to plants.
ruggedor--what specific bulbs are you using, this sounds like a great option for those with no light but who love plants!
Probably the best plants for low-light conditions are snake plants (Sansevierias), cast iron plant (Aspidistra elatior) and good old pothos, which is an indoor weed and almost impossible to kill (you should see what it's doing to Hawaii). Its relatives the philodendrons are also fantastic low-light plants.
It just so happens that I was making a list of low-light plants the other day I have a northeastern exposure... I think. See what my memory's like? This is why I can't have nice plants. Anyway, do some research before buying, because I've learned that "low light" can be tragically subjective. I've also learned that some variegated plants will revert to green if not in the sunlight, but this knowledge comes from reading and not experience, so don't quote me:
Snake Plant (Sansevieria trifasciata 'Laurenti')
Dracaena Janet Craig
Cast Iron Plant (aspidistra elatior 'variegata")
Philodendrons (cordatum; butterfly nephytis; arrowhead)
Lucky Bamboo (Dracaena sanderiana)
Chinese Evergreen (Aglaonema modestum)
Money Tree (Pachira aquatica)
Rochford Holly Fern (Cyrtomium falcatum)
Peace Lilly
Hosta (don't know if these grow indoors, though)
Prayer Plant (maranta leucoreura)
Bamboo Palm
Kentia Palm
Pothos
P.S. I'd also like to know the name of the G.E. fluorescent bulb, please!
I second the aspidistra - it even survives months without watering and heating(!) during winter in our summer house.
Erm... excuse me but what does that last post have to do with plants?
I kill everything. I'm trying to save my peace lily and majesty palm (which I hear now is really hard to grow). I've all but given up on my boston fern. Ihave grandeous dreams of being a master gardener and growing veggies and having an orchard, but I can't ever keep plants alive longer than a few months...thank god I'm doing better with my kid...
My office plants - jade and mother-in-law tongue - never get any sunlight and they're doing great.
I kill English ivy and cactus. Everything else I do fine with. Two things that are suppose to be sooooo easy to grow!
I second (third? fourth?) cast iron plants, draceanas, pothos/philodendron, peace lilies and snake plants. Add "ZZ" (aka "Zizi") plants in there, too--those are gorgeous and tropical-looking, and handle the worst-lit areas in my house with no problems.
Great. I allowed myself to be seduced by a mainenhair fern this spring. So far it is doing great outside in this humid weather. According to the green house employee humidity is the key. In the fall I am going to bring it, along with the mini hosta planted in the same pot, in and mist it on a regular basis. I hadn't thought about a terrarium but I might divide it and try that too.
Dracaena Janet Craig...I killed that thing within a few months... I have NO IDEA what I did wrong...if it grows indoors it's dead at my house. Gonna try again at our new house though, we have a lot more light.
Joining the maidenhair killer ranks. In fact I've killed a variety of ferns and mosses, in and out of terrariums. I love the soft, feathery look of them but the second I bring them into my house they start to die.
On another note, it's important to remember that many plants (including ivy and pothos) are poisonous to cats.
For all the questions on the GE bulbs, the answer is easy, they're called the Daylight bulbs. If you can't find those look for something that has a 6500K spectrum, which you can find in tube florescents as well. That's the closest you can get to natural sunlight. They're good for aquariums too!
Just curious: This article suggests that mint can be grown in a bog, but the link to mint say's it needs to be grown near full sunshine... what's the true story here?
I had some luck with a money tree in my office last year. I do think it was too dry for it though.
Er, mint isn't a great low-light plant. It does best in full sun or at least partial shade. Without enough light it will get leggy and anemic-looking. Just how much sun/shade it should get depends on your zone, of course; eg if you live in LA it'll likely need more shade than sun.
Also, "survive the dark" is very different in meaning from 'low-light,' or 'indirect light'. Many plants will thrive in indirect light (low or bright) and even low light (another commenter gave a good list of some), but none will survive dark.
I'm trying to save my peace lily and majesty palm (which I hear now is really hard to grow).
IKEA was flogging majesty palms a few years back. They're not an ideal houseplant. They tend to grow really, really quickly when given conditions they like, which means they can rapidly outgrow the home. When given conditions they don't like, they die just as quickly!
I purchased a couple for my patio when I lived in Orange County. They like indirect light, although they can take some sun, don't like frost, eat a ton of palm food and are happiest when they're kept on the verge of rotting. They can't tolerate swampy soil for long, but their natural habitat is growing along streams in tropical forests (I think they might be from Indonesia originally - someplace in S.E. Asia, anyhow), so they like their soil pretty much constantly wet, but with clean fresh water. Keeping them wet without the soil turning all swampy proved to be a challenge, especially when they were smaller. They can save up water for the occasional drought, but after more than a couple of days dry in hot weather they'll start to die back.
If you keep 'em happy though they'll grow like weeds. Mine doubled in size in about a year, and they seem to grow even faster as they get bigger. They'd probably be great to plant in wet spots of the yard in frost-free locales.
I would love a post on indoor houseplants. Maybe there was, but I overlooked it? Anyways, my apartment only has two windows. I have 3 plants sitting in one window which are doing wonderfully -- Fern, Spider plant, and a Prayer Plant. My Croton... all of its leaves fell off and I have NO idea what the heck I did wrong?! I was never a plant person until my coworker gave me a one of her Spider plant babies. It's a pretty plant and spruces up my bland workspace. I knew I had to buy one for my house, so I did!
Maidenhairs are a pain to keep alive. My best try so far is keeping one in a bottle terrarium and only watering occasionally. It seems to like the humidity, which is good because otherwise my cat would get at it and eat it.
I know there's a way to estimate lumens or footcandles or whatever with the light meter in your camera (the info you need would be in the metadata if you have any digicam) but I don't have the information on me at the moment. It's helpful when determining what you can keep alive because it isn't as subjective as "low light". There are some good definitions on what that ACTUALLY means and then you can look it up and know for sure that you won't kill the plant. Do keep in mind that light intensity drops off pretty fast the further you get from a window, too.
I have great luck with Boston ferns, one in my north facing office window and the other in my privacy-filmed east facing bedroom window. The Squirrel foot and Mother ferns and the prayer plant are happy about 7 feet away from a south facing window. My orchids, Japanese maple (don't try this at home, folks, I wouldn't be if it hadn't been a gift) and ginger seem to be pretty happy right on the south facing windowsill and the Fuchsia did pretty well there, too. The lemon tree was Not Happy, although it did bloom. The Majesty Palm up and died although I suspect that was a water problem, not a light problem. Turns out they're awful indoor plants anyway *Sadness.*
There's also a ficus in my north facing office. It's been here for ages, possibly even decades. My coworker dumps a glass of water on it once a week and it seems thrilled. My peace lily seems happy with similar treatment. Not bad for a rescued-from-a-restaurant centerpiece.
We actually have a Sequoia (yes, the giant redwood tree) that does well no matter where we put it or how we water it. My husband kept begging for a bonsai but I didn't want to spend the $80 they cost because I knew he'd neglect and kill it. So I was at Yosemite one Christmas and the $10 Sequoia seedlings said they made great bonsai. It's been going like gangbusters ever since, in the kitchen, in my shower, on the bathroom counter... Of course, two years later, "Someone" has yet to start pruning/training it.
My sister also has some very bad luck with plants. She puts plants in the most improbable places because they look good and then is surprised when they die. I tried to suggest a particular plant for a particular spot but she just gave up and decorated with branches.
I instead, like to play with the plants, the pots, the location, the form... everything. When I lived in Austria, I had a large green house but it was comletely impractical - too hot in the summer (and no way to open it fully) and too cold in the winter! Anyway... here is something I wrote..
plants as art
http://lapsushumanus.blogspot.com/2007/05/plants-as-art.html
The plant on the baroque column came with us to Italy and three yers later, despite kids tearing off the leaves and wht not, is about 8 feet tall!
I would also love to see more posts on house plants. I am interested plants that are good for allergy sufferers.
Obviously, any flowering plants are bad news due to the pollen. But, I keep hearing that the current moss trend may also be bad for people who struggle with allergies because they basically shoot mold spores into the air. Is this true?
Also, we all know mold can grow in the dirt of house plants. Is there any way to combat this without killing the plants?
Thanks in advance to anyone who knows...
I can usually keep most plants alive including orchids, but I have killed maidenhair fern while living in the northeast and when I lived in the northwest where you'd think they'd thrive. Any tips out there? Or should I just visit them while hiking?