Indoor gardening tips for the plant assassins among us

By Leigh Kamping-Carder | January 30, 2015 - 12:59PM

A perpetual plant killer, I gave up on raising anything green in my apartment long ago. But it turns out, it may have been my apartment itself--and not my lack of gardening skills--to blame for all those plant deaths.

I know that different plants need varying amounts of water, but I’d never seriously considered the role of light and humidity before. For a handy primer on how to assess both, check out this post on Design*Sponge, which also covers examples of plants that work for different levels of each, like ferns, bamboo or spider plants (low light) or myrtles and fig trees (high light).

You can buy a light meter for about $16 on Amazon or measure the light with a digital camera. (A quick tip: in winter, just about any room has low light, which is suitable for growing ferns, bamboo or spider plants.) Be sure to choose the right size of pot for your plants, and don’t be afraid to move them around. Or enlist the help of fish.

A garden for even the most space-challenged apartment

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