Tips for Decorating Your House with Plants

Furnituregraphy - Today I'm going to give you five tips on how to best style your plants and pots. 

 So, my first tip covers pot choice.  I like to get handmade ceramics.  I pick them up from markets or online. They're gorgeous. The textures and the colours work well in this space,  but they can be expensive.  

So what I like to do is get one or two pieces for space and then complement them with the cheaper terracotta options.  Now, the ones that you tend to buy generally will be spotless.  When you put a plant directly into it, you'll start to see the terracotta patina, and you'll start to get these really nice colours through it.  

Sometimes when I find the perfect plant, I'll pot it directly into the pot but if I'm not too sure just yet,  what I like to do is keep it in its plastic pot and then just slide it right in.  And also, remember, when you're styling with plants and pots at home,  you don't have to keep it to plants and pots.  

You can use little keepsakes like old jars, and you can put some water in and put your cuttings in to propagate.  And, again, tillandsias as well.  So, air plants— these guys are super easy to care for.  Just mist them once or twice a week and you can place them just like this in space.  

So, tip number two focuses on grouping plants.  So, we've got two large, broadleaf plants here —  the peace lily with the large green leaves and we have the monstera — still broad leaves but a lighter green.  

These complement each other well, and they form a good base around a taller plant,  such as the focus above me here.  If we come up here, we take a look, it's got the charming long slender leaf, and that seems to contrast well against the sizeable broadleaf species such as the peace lily and the monstera.  

Another tip for when styling with plants,  especially if you're putting plants into a tight space such as this, is using plants with different growing habits.  

Use something that's going to cascade at the front,  such as peperomia,  and match it with something like this monstera at the back that's just going to give it a bit of height.  If you're looking to make a bold statement in your house,  underplanting a large tree, such as fiddle leaf,  is a great way of doing so.  

Today I've just got this philodendron xanadus.  And what I want to do — I'll keep them in the pots' cos it will fit in there nicely —  and all you have to do is just position them around the base of the plant and that way it hides the ground, it hides the soil,  and then whenever you want to water these guys, you can take them out,  water them, let them dry and then put them back in.  

You want a plant that has a nice dense head on it,  such as the philodendron xanadu,  or you could use a peace lily, or you could use a devil's ivy.  And you instantly get that kind of outdoorsy lush garden vibe.  

For this next tip, I'm going to show you how to make a quick and easy plant shelf at home. I've got these light-weight concrete blocks,  which you can pick up at any big building supply shop,  and what I've done to them is I've sanded them back,  added a pavement sealer to them and then stacked them up accordingly,  and then put some wood on it to create these shelves.  

What you can also do is you can stack them up as we have here,  just as a freestanding plant stand.  Or you can stack them up next to your bed and have a lovely little bedside table. It's very versatile, and you can cut it easily as well.  Just use a regular saw, and you can cut it down to any shape or size that you want.  

For this next tip, we're gonna focus on the darker corners of the house.  This bathroom gets no natural light.  And the general rule of thumb is:  if you can't read a book in a room that has no artificial light in it then your plants are probably not going to survive.

So, what I like to do, I want to get multiples of each of my plants.  This guy I'll keep in for about a week and then once that week's up. I'll switch him out for the other one.  When the leaves of your plant start to go limp, that's when you know it needs to be taken back out.  By adding mirrors to space, or having whiter walls, you'll be able to reflect more light into that space.

Adding cactuses or succulents to a darker corner might seem counter-intuitive, but they fare quite well in a darker area in terms of looking vibrant for longer.  I often get asked how to make the leaves of my plants larger,  such as this devil’s ivy.  

These climbing plants in the wild like to grow up host trees so what you want to do is try and recreate that at home by using a totem pole.  When the plant gets a chance to attach itself to a totem pole such as this,  it will feel more secure and will therefore produce larger leaves.  

Thanks so much for reading my post.  If you have any styling tips yourself,   please leave a comment. God Bless You. 

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