I don't have much in the way of houseplants. Just a couple of jade plants, an aloe, a butterfly amarylis and an African violet. I didn't buy any of them or I wouldn't have even those. And all of them spend more than half the year on my screened porch. I have a few more things that live outside in the summer and spend the winter in the garage.
Dana

lots and lots, though since we've done the greenhouse/plastic'd porch many spend the winter out there happier now. inside this year i have split leaf philo, some misc philos, syngoniums, mostruosa deliciosa, some cybister & a butterfly amaryllis, sansevarias, ponytail plants, couple palms, several draceanas, a huge norfolk island pine, moses in a boat, a rubber plant, ferns and some cycads and mixed cacti/succulent pots i bring in for the winter. most of it except the norfolk island pine spend the summer outside. only reason it doesn't is because it's so big and grows so much out side if i took it out 1 more time it wouldn't fit in the house. it's about 7.5' now.

i started with houseplants as a preteen and my mom always had some, and could never completely get rid of them. there are lots that became too much hassle and i gave away, traded or killed via negligence. probably most of the ones i keep inside would be happier on the porch but there isn't enough room, and i like having green & oxygenators in the house. the stuff i found did better out on the porch that i used to bring in were begonias, night blooming cereus and other epis, misc orchids, abutilons, asparagus ferns, some of my other ferns, hibiscus, banana, passionflower, aristolochia, meyer's lemon, aloe, and more. i'd say about 1/2 of my porch space is what i consider houseplants, and about 1/2 tropicals for outdoors and/or starts of stuff. before we did the porch thing our house was crowded with plants in the winter- like an indoor jungle. now there's around 2 or 3 plants in each room.

Tammy I bet your porch looks like a tropical wonderland.

Lots here - in short, my answer to 'decorating' is If There's a Blank Spot, Put a Plant in it - works for me! Have a number of hangers on chains from ceiling hooks, some table plants and a few floor size. Mostly ordinary types - schleffera, philodendren, pothos, arrowhead, spiders and the like, but all look great and when they fail to do so, they go outdoors in the summer to the side yard 'hospital' where they stay until they recover - or I freeze them as I did to a few this fall :o(.

My unheated sunroom has hosted a duet of spider hangers for years which, until this year when I failed to recognize a potentially frigid night neglecting to activate the timed ceramic heater and frosted a couple, have survived well w/little attention. The frosted ones are recovering. A couple of large outdoor potted plants (Norfolk Pine for one) have overwintered well for years in same sunroom.

I also have a collection of clear glass bottles of rooted cuttings - some of which are going on 10 years of age and still happy in their bottle worlds.

I water infrequently, but deeply each time. Hangers go in the kitchen sink for thorough soak thrus, except for the largest which are in the dripless/reservoir planters - those are watered in place w/no mess. I rarely feed them anything. I've tried and failed w/African Violets - would like some flowering plants, but have none at this time. Years ago I had a cyclamen in apparently the perfect place - it bloomed constantly for years ..... gotta try another one of those one of these days.

Most of mine are low light lovers that also get moved outdoors for the summer (Sansevieria, Clivia, Begonias, etc) and then there are the window shelves filled with flats of seedlings and cuttings. Houseplants,,, yeah, I gotz a few of dem' It takes me 2 hours to water everything inside the house.

I use to have more than I do now. Have given several to swaps or to Dtp over the years. Except for a peace lily they all go out in the summer. It use to look like a very over crowded jumbled jungle in my house. The kids groaned and moaned every winter because they knew their windows and floor space were prime plant space. I have gotten rid of a lot of them because they just did not do well with my indoor lighting. Fav plants get the hanging plant lights my dh rigged up. Frankie the draceana which I got from the first Raleigh Swap is huge and gets a special place, along with the mostruosa deliciosa and a split leaf philodendron. My other light has african violets, adenium, philodendron and anything that looks like it needs some TLC. Amazingly everything is looking good right now. The back sliding doors get the new things until I figure out where they need to go, but a few do have a permanent winter home there. I have an orchid, pink syngonium, rhipsalis and the more exotic type philos there. Epies use to hang in the bathroom or under the house but now they and everything else tropical has thankfully gone to the greenhouse! I'm still so impressed with how well the Schefflera's have done out in the gh. I have about given them away numerous times. Even had them packed in a box to go to a swap one time and I just couldn't do it, lol... so glad!!

I am like you alicia ... anything in the house gets killed one way or another. I have finally given up on christmas cactus too because the cats like to chew on them.

root- that's funny, 'cause my kids rooms are prime area for my plants, too. i think they are so happy that the bulk goes in the porch now! and the bonus is they have to lug much less stuff up the stairs (i always used them as slave labor). they do like certain plants and i try to let them have what they want in their rooms but have to make sure they water, because to them watering 1x ea 6 weeks is enough! they both like the asparagus fern, but they each almost killed it 2 winters running, so now it resides on the porch. i like encouraging them to want plants, but gave the extra negligence-tolerant ones to them this year. or the ones i don't care if they almost kill. lol

thanks alicia- it is pretty in a jungly sorta way, but not all the stuff's nice pots and kinda messy, so it's half & half. right now there's still some dead looking stuff from the freeze, that i can't get to or don't want to mess with so it's not as pretty as normal, but whatcha gonna do. i enjoy it- and the birds love to go out there when it gets to 70 around noon. only morning sun so the afternoon cools down fast. they have their own perch away from anything poisonous. i have a glider and eat lunch there frequently.

my trick for watering stuff is when we clean the fish tanks i run that water directly into washed out milk jugs and set 1 or 2 jugs beside/behind each cluster of plants. when i'm out of water i know it's time to clean the tanks again. the plants get pre-fertilized water- it's about the only fertilizer i mess with in the house.

I've always thought it ironic that someone as obsessive as I am in the garden can still kill plants in the home. Nice to know I'm not alone. Though to be honest I will say that my plants outside only get babied for a short length of time til they are on their own. The problem inside is clearly that when I slack off mother nature cannot help out... And I DO slack off. But I just bought more houseplants, thinking that I would enjoy them in the winter when I can't do as much outside. Wish me luck, or really them luck. -Ais.

Tam, I use the fish tank water on indoor plants too and haul a bucket to the gh now and then, but hadn't thought of actually storing them out there. Clever!

We sunk a half barrel in the gh and the plan is to use it for water plants I have that need protection in the winter. All it has in it right now are a couple water hyacinths. What I've found myself doing is using that to water my tropicals/houseplants and such out there. Both of our critters (cat and dog) think it's a big water dish installed for their convenience. They like to come in and check things out or just hang out, do their part ya know... and that's thirsty work I reckon. It was very low the other day maybe 3 or 4 inches and Tasha the beagle who is over 15 now and not as steady as she once was, wanted her drink. In trying to do that fell in. I wasn't there but dh said you'd have though she fell in the ocean for all the splashing and carrying on. When she came in she came straight to me and had such a hang dog look...like Mom look what happened to me!! I guess you could call that her embarrassing gardening moment, lol.

Ais, slacking off is one of my problems with the indoor stuff too. Especially when there was so much of it and as winter progressed they start looking rattty. Couldn't wait for spring to get it out of the house and the mess cleaned up from all the dropped leaves!! I can't stand for a plant indoors or out to 'just' survive, they've got to thrive! Hard to do in the low light and dry air indoors in winter.

I used to love houseplants before I had outside dirt to play in. Now I am so over with them. I gave all my orchids to my new DIL who has a large collection (we both won on that). I am storing tropicals in my sun room for my DD until spring comes and she can put them back on her porch, but I won't do that again. I have two Christmas Cacti that I will keep forever, and a half dozen indoor succulents that will go to my grade-school age grandson when his room is finished being built. Other than that I am bringing the rest of the collection to the plant swap this spring.

Nancy the nancedar

I used to kill houseplants - I had a whole selection of stories on the subject. The last couple of years houseplants have survived and thrived and their number has grown. Of course, I have mostly the easy ones and it will probably stay that way. Almost all of them go out on the deck once danger of freezing is past.

I have several colors of the tried and true Christmas Cactus - my first surviving and thriving houseplant. I have a violet, several large poinsettas, the purple four leafed plant that looks like clover, numerous members of the begonia family (some of them as cuttings from plants I used on the deck this past summer), a bay tree.

DH is building "window ladders" to house them for the winter. I can take them down in the summer if I chose. Gets the plants off the floors in front of the windows (except for the big poinsettas and the bay tree) and helps protect them from a cat that likes to prune.

I don't feel the same way about house plants as I do my garden, but I think this whole indoor thing is here to stay. As the cactus and violet come into bloom I can move them to my table to brighten up the room - something in bloom almost all winter is hard to beat. The indoor green helps ward off the winter blahs. Its a great way to save tender container plants from season to season when you find one you are particuarly fond of.

This is the window ladder I saw in a catalogue and DH built - with improvements - like sealed shelves.

Here is a link that might be useful: Window ladders

hmmm- maybe 'cause i'm on a mac or using a strange browser, but i can't see the pix on that page. sounds like a neat idea though. pete made me a metal 4 shelved pyramid kinda thing that i actually inverted and tied to the window so the biggest shelf was on top, and i used that for quite a while til the bulk went on the porch.

i have to confess, i killed all of my african violets slowly a few years back (it's that whole slacking off /getting too busy thing), but we were in hd tonight and they had some really pretty ones cheap and i couldn't resist after all this talk and bought 3 (deep purple single w/white edge, pretty dark raspberry top fading to lighter color on the lower petals and a white that had ruffled purple edges). and a pretty white edged red primrose. they were just the ticket to brighten the bathroom on a gloomy winter day! hopefully these will fare better than my past violets- they aren't my luckiest faring plants in past history. so, you all are my confessional. :)

I'm such a sap for any kind of plant - indoor or out. When I was first married, houseplants were all I had to ease my garden fever. I had to leave several 15+ year old plants with my sister when we moved here, including a palm tree I had grown from a tiny 4" plant, a lemon tree grown from seed and 2 very lovely hibiscus.
Upon arrival here in SC, though, I found a very neglected Boston Fern in a hanging pot at my new house. I actually thought it was a dead Boston Fern, but closer inspection revealed one or two tiny green fronds at the edge of the browned mass. I tore the green part off, potted it up and it now sits happily and thriving near my kitchen sink.
I'm forever trying to convince my husband that this plant or that plant at some local retailer "needs me to save it from certain death". I shudder at the way these places too often neglect the inventory.
I've been slowly rebuilding my indoor collection which now includes Crotons, Christmas Cactuses, African Violet, Dancing Ladies Orchid, Norfolk Island Pine (it was this past season's Christmas tree), Pothos, a variegated Banana, a beautiful, striped Draceana, and various other plants and cactuses.