Hartley Magazine

All the latest news, hints, tips and advice from our experts

Indoor container gardening tips

With the winter having put paid to most gardeners' outdoor activities, it may be time to start thinking about what you can grow inside.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press recently provided some advice on indoor container gardening.

It spoke to Garden Gallery owner Linda Geinosky, who gave her tips on creating an indoor oasis of plants in the house or greenhouse.

She explained that having plants in the home can remove up to 87 per cent of indoor pollutants, with spider plant, ficus and a number of dracaena varieties all useful for air purification purposes.

It is important to know how much light each species requires in order to flourish and make sure it has access to it by placing it near a window.

Where natural sunlight is not available, fluorescent lighting can help encourage growth, Ms Geinosky noted.

The expert explained that growing plants helps satisfy a basic human desire to connect with nature.

"It makes us feel good to cultivate and tend a garden, and being able to tend a garden in a container means that it's accessible to everyone, even for those who don't have a yard or have physical limitations that make gardening on a larger scale impossible," she said.

In other news, the Times Standard recently suggested that those gardeners who have not experienced the first frost yet should use the remainder of autumn to assess their lawn quality.