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One of the easiest, most enjoyable ways to add a spark of life to the inside of your home is to put in a few houseplants.

If you love plants and gardening though, try putting several in each room of your home.

You may be amazed at the wonderful feeling of comfort, serenity, and pleasure you feel from surrounding yourself with lush vegetation inside your home.

Most houseplants are quite easy to grow and care for, if you take care of them well. They’ll not only provide you with a source of natural beauty in your home, but they’ll help keep the air cleaner in your house too!

Houseplants: Discouraged & Struggling

Some people are a bit discouraged with houseplants though… they never seem to get them to grow or thrive very well in their homes.

After struggling with several indoor plants, some people simply decide their house isn’t designed with the right elements. The elements needed for growing plants inside or maybe they personally don’t have a green thumb, so they just give up on the idea.

Usually though, the problems with indoor houseplants is caused by repotting plants improperly – poor potting practices, poor watering practices, or poor feeding and other care.

With a little bit of knowledge though, almost anyone can successfully grow beautiful plants indoors.

Indoor House Plants: The Soil Drainage Difference

First though, you need to realize that indoor houseplants don’t have the same natural advantage with soil drainage as outside plants do.

When a plant sits in a pot which contains all extra water, the roots can rot and the plant can become sick from sitting in too much water. So one of the most important steps to taking care of indoor houseplants successfully, is to make sure the plants have a way to drain excess water.

Creating drainage for your plants is easy though – consider using self watering planters. The best way is to be sure your plants are in a container which has holes in the bottom. These holes allow extra water to seep out onto a drainage plate.

If you don’t have holes in the bottom of your planters though, then you’ll need to put several inches of rocks into the bottom of the pot instead. These rocks will act as a drainage area for the excess water, so the plants roots are not becoming soggy each time you water it.

Houseplant Soil Different

The next thing you need to know is that houseplants require a different type of soil than outdoor plants do. You can usually buy indoor plant soil at your local garden center, though, and you should use this for your houseplants instead of dirt taken from outside.

House Plants Roots Need Room

And last but not least: Make sure the pot you’re trying to grow your plant in is not too small for it.

Some indoor plants which you buy at the store are too crowded, so they must be transplanted to a larger container once you’ve brought them home. There are some types of plants such as ferns, which prefer to be crowded, but generally the more room your plants have to grow, the healthier and prettier they’ll be.