It’s that time of spring semester again. You and your roommates spent countless hours decorating your dorm or apartment in the fall, but now the décor is just getting old. So how do you bring new life into your apartment? Well, you can go with the literal solution — spruce up the place with some new plants.
Valley talked to Keppy Arnoldson of Green Thumb Services and Brian Kinney, owner of Barn at Lemont, to find out how and why college students should incorporate plants into their homes, even during the cold, dark winter months.
“There’s a lot you can do with house plants to beautify your home and office,” says Arnoldson.
For college students, Arnoldson recommends dracaenas and peace lilies.
For bigger areas, Arnoldson recommends a floor plant from the dracaena family. Dracaenas are excellent low-light plants and one of the only plants that flowers indoors. If you decide to include this plant in your home design, don’t forget to water it. “Dracaenas are called the tattle-tale plant because if you don’t give it enough water it gets droopy and if you give it too much water it gets the brown tips, so it kind of tells you what it needs,” says Arnoldson.
Peace lilies are another example of a plant that will flower indoors. The peace lily has beautiful, elegant flowers and is perfect for anyone that loves keeping fresh flowers around but hates how fast they die.
Kinney says that the most recent trend in plants is air plants. “They’re super easy to take care of you just keep them in a humid environment and give them a spray every once and awhile,” says Kinney.
Not only are air plants insanely easy to take care of, but they are easy to access as well. They can be shipped directly to your house via Amazon.
Kinney also recommends creating your own terrarium to liven up living space. Terrariums are a collection of plants in a glass container that are perfect decorations for a coffee or side table. The plants usually used for this type of ensemble include mosses, lichens, and ferns.
Plants not only add an air of life to your place, but they also cleanse your breathing air that you live in.
“With proper care, they’re actually going to cleanse the air,” says Arnoldson. “I think it’s nice from a design standpoint to integrate into the furniture and the décor in your home.”
This spring, add some foliage to your digs for some unique decoration and an inexpensive air purifier.
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