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Snuggling with Plants

© Renie Burghardt

When the weather outside is frightful, it is nice to snuggle indoors. And my favorite place to snuggle is in my little sunroom/sitting room, which is just off my bedroom. This sunroom used to be a deck in the past, but has been enclosed with lots of windows that look out to the now brown field, pond and leafless trees. And all those windows make the sunroom an ideal place for indoor plants.

In this sitting room, among the plants, I like to cozy up in my favorite easy chair and read my favorite books, or listen to music, or write in my journal, or sometimes even watch television. So let the wind howl and whip the trees, let the rain pound the roof, let the snow turn the world white, I have the indoor nature of my sunroom to keep me content, and snug as a bug.

And if I really want to feel like I'm outdoors, I fetch my little, ring-necked doves, and let them sit on the hibiscus plant, and coo their hearts out. Outdoor atmosphere!

I have often thought about that first woman, (or man!) in the long ago past, who loved plants so much, that she decided to try and grow them indoors. What a lovely trend she started! And we all know that growing plants in pots indoors is now a huge business.

Besides being green, year round, living house plants gives us many benefits. They add beauty to a room, appear to have a calming, spiritual effect on us, and make our homes friendly and inviting. And like their outdoor counterparts, indoor plants make the air in our homes cleaner and safer to breathe.

We have known for a long time that outdoor plants are nature's biological cleaning machines. They purify the air; and revitalize the earth's water supply. However, in the past few years, after much research, scientists have also discovered of how plants function to remove indoor pollutants. Their leaves absorb certain chemicals in the air and transport them to the roots. Plants also pull air down around their roots when moisture is emitted from their leaves during transpiration. Some plants have higher transpiration rates and can move greater amounts of air. So these are the plants that are the better air cleaners. And contrary to earlier beliefs, plants produce healthy, microbial-free moisture, and are never the source of mold and mildew, like humidifiers can be.

Research has shown conclusively that indoor plants improve indoor air quality by reducing chemical vapors emitted by synthetic materials, add microbial-free humidity to dry indoor air, and considerably reduce airborne mold spores and bacteria. In other words, our lovely houseplants work pretty hard to keep us healthy.

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