Houseplants

Live Houseplants, Grown for Indoor Life

Our indoor assortment is deliberately narrow. We grow the plants that hold up in a real house rather than the full wall of a garden center: ferns, aroids and a handful of statement foliage plants, potted and shipped rooted rather than bare. If you are starting a collection, or you have one shelf that needs something green and alive on it, everything below is a plant we actually grow.

What We Grow

• Indoor Ferns: the largest group here and the one we know best, from the classic Boston Fern to the glossy Bird’s Nest, the mounted Staghorn, the furry-footed Rabbit’s Foot and the metallic Blue Oil Fern.
• Pothos: Jade, Neon, Marble Queen, N’Joy and Hawaiian, the most forgiving trailing plants we sell.
• Alocasia: seven potted forms including ‘Polly’, the velvet ‘Frydek’, the textured ‘Silver Dragon’ and the cupped ‘Tiny Dancers’.
• Philodendron: Brasil trails and variegates, while Green Congo and Rojo Congo stay upright and shrubby.
• Trailing & Vining: the twelve above that spill from a shelf or climb a pole, gathered in one place.
• Monstera: the fenestrated Swiss Cheese Plant, the small-leaved Swiss Cheese Vine, and the variegated Super Golden.
• Rubber Plants: Burgundy, Ruby and Tineke, three forms of Ficus elastica with very different coloring.
• Spider Plants: Variegated and Curly, both of which throw plantlets you can pot up and give away.
• One of a kind: Anthurium Clarinervium, Begonia Rex ‘Geometry’, Syngonium Milk Confetti, the Goeppertia Rattlesnake Plant, Hedgehog Aloe and Asparagus Sprengeri Fern.

Houseplant Care Basics

Light

Bright indirect light suits nearly everything on this page: an east window, or a few feet back from a south or west window behind a sheer curtain. Pothos and Philodendron tolerate a dim corner better than the rest, though growth thins out. The variegated plants need the most light of any group here, because the white and cream parts of a leaf carry no chlorophyll. Direct midday sun through glass scorches almost all of them.

Water

Push a finger an inch into the soil before you reach for the watering can. Aroids like Pothos, Philodendron, Monstera and Alocasia want the top inch or two dry, then a thorough soak that drains from the bottom. Soft-frond ferns such as Boston and Bird’s Nest prefer the top inch to stay barely damp. The epiphytic ferns, meaning Staghorn, Blue Star, Rabbit’s Foot, Kangaroo Paw and E.T., store water in their rhizomes and rot if the mix stays wet, so they want the top two inches dry first. Nothing here should sit in a full saucer.

Humidity

Once the furnace comes on, dry air does more damage to this assortment than any watering mistake. Brown, crispy leaf edges and frond tips are the signature. Group plants together, use a pebble tray, or run a humidifier through the heating season, and keep pots away from vents and drafty doorways.

Pots, soil and feeding

Use a free-draining potting mix and a pot with drainage holes, every time. Step up one pot size at a time and only when roots are circling, since an oversized pot holds water the plant cannot use. Feed lightly through spring and summer and stop through the dark months, when growth slows and unused fertilizer builds up as salts in the soil.

Where to Start

If this is your first houseplant, start with a Pothos or a Spider Plant. Both recover from neglect, root easily from cuttings, and tell you clearly when something is wrong. If you want the look of a fern, Bird’s Nest Fern is the most forgiving one we grow. Save the Alocasia and the variegated Monstera until you have a feel for how quickly your house dries a pot out.

A Note on Pets

Many of the most popular houseplants are aroids, and aroids are not pet safe. Pothos, Philodendron, Monstera, Alocasia, Anthurium and Syngonium all contain calcium oxalate crystals that irritate a pet’s mouth and throat. We flag the plants confirmed non-toxic on their product pages and gather them in Pet Safe Plants, so check there first if you share the house with a cat that chews.