Filling your home with living greenery is not a new thing to those of us who have been loving, growing, nurturing and selling indoor plants since we can remember. Your locally owned garden centre has always had a dedicated area well stocked with indoor plants, pots and plant care products as well as passionate plant people who can tell you which plant to put where for it to thrive.

What is new is that plants inside the home have now become a real passion for many, almost an obsession for some and an ever increasing trending topic on social media as more and more of us realise that plants can genuinely make us happy. In days gone by we would purchase a plant and put it on our desk or in our bathroom, now we are using hashtags and words like #plantstyling #plantinspo, #junglevibes and #plantscaping whilst keeping a #houseplantjournal and calling ourselves #plantparents.

Whether we are trying to “keep up with the Kardashians”, we simply love plants or we have just realised the numerous health and wellbeing benefits of having plants inside the home, what we should know is that statistics quoted by the Australian Government Department of Environment and Energy has found that we spend on average 90% of our time inside the house . That is a lot of time inside! This is quite an alarming statistic for many reasons but more so when you consider the concentrations of some pollutants inside our homes, building and work spaces are up to 10 times higher than the typical outdoor concentration. The USEPA in fact quoted in 1993 that indoor air pollution is amongst the top five environmental risks to public health and experts suggest that in 2019 it is potentially even higher .