Indoor greening

Ever since a child I have been fascinated by plants. I would spend time in the garden enchanted how they never care for my impatience. They move that their own time, on a scale beyond our own.

Their diversity truly astounds for those who seek it, and endless shapes, colours, textures that no mind could every conceive. They are life's palette that graduates to every nook and cranny of the biomass.

I have been slowly growing my collection of plants over the years on the Gold Coast. They are most often rescues – the wilting and dying unfortunates on the supermarket discounted, or perhaps a forgotten pot during kerbside clean-up.

Most rewarding is the slowly (painful) process of propagating, where one starts off with but a shoot or a leaf and ends up with a plant.

“Nature is not stingy about life.”

As in interior aesthetic, plants have subtle brilliance of adorning, softening and commanding your attention. The human eye is most able to discern different shades of green than any other colour. It's deeply rooted in our ancestral biology of green being the colour of an oasis, pasture and thus potential food (and water sources).

This effect is called Approach Motivation which explains why our traffic lights and highway signs are green, and "go" buttons share that colour. We find green objects intrinsically appealing (aside from when it comes to humans skin colour thus health).

Green is the colour most likely to reduce anxiety and increase the "fresh" feeling of a room.

I'll be detailing many of the plant species as part of my collection, and some of their interesting aspects in a hope to inspire interior greening.