Top Six Picks - My Favorite Houseplants

I grew up surrounded by a love and appreciation of nature. My parents built a house when I was six years old in the middle of the woods in Cape Cod, and my favorite things to do growing up was walk through the trails or read a book in the backyard surrounded by chirping birds and fragrant flowers. My mom plants a huge vegetable garden every summer and cooks with everything she grows, and my dad has perfectly groomed the rest of the property and gardens to a point where my sister had a plaque made dubbing the property “Dougwood Gardens” (a play on my dad’s name and the house’s name, Heartwood). While I’ve always appreciated the lush, clean feel of being surrounded by nature, I’m a city girl. Living in a high-rise means no opportunities for gardens and no birds chirping outside the window. However, I’ve still always been an advocate of bringing nature indoors.

My biggest design tip, when people ask, is to introduce natural elements into the space. Yes, I’m referring to wood and stone, but I also find it so critical to pull in some greenery and life. Not only do plants add a pop of color and texture to a space, they also provide a ton of healthy benefits! Plants are natural air purifiers and help rid your home of toxic chemicals brought in with furniture and finishes, such as formaldehyde and carbon dioxide. Studies show, for every 100SF of space in your home, you should have one houseplant to help clean the air.

Today, I’m bringing you a roundup of the six houseplants we have in our own home. If your worried you don’t have a green thumb, don’t worry! I didn’t either when I started out so most of these are low-maintenance and resilient.

Fiddle Leaf Fig

If you have been on instagram or Pinterest at all in the past three years, you’ve seen your fair share of these beauties. The leaves are so big and bold that I legitimately get excited when I see a new one being born on my plants because just one leaf makes a huge difference in the scale of the plant. I got my first FLF the same week I started DGI. I bought it for $25 at Sprout Home here in Chicago and it was teeny tiny and could fit in a small planter on my coffee table. Along the way, it’s been a visual analogy to me of the growth of our company and it makes me so excited to see how big it’s gotten, AND it actually had a baby (I propagated a smaller sprout that was struggling underneath the larger leaves and it’s quickly growing into an impressive plant itself). What I love most about the Fiddle Leaf Fig, is that it is such a versatile plant. Depending on the look you want, you can groom the plant to fill a space differently. We prune ours sparingly, just enough to give breathing room to the leaves, and it’s taken on a full, bushy aesthetic. However, as your FLF grows, you can trim the bottom leaves and let it grow into a tree rather than a bush. I think ultimately once ours passes a certain height, we’ll groom it into a tree so it doesn’t overwhelm the room, but for now, I love the full effect of all the leaves.

Snake Plant

Please do yourself a favor, and put a Snakeplant in your bedroom. These plants survive in almost all light levels and release a high amount of oxygen at night. This means, while you’re sleeping, your Snakeplant is purifying the air around you helping you get a healthier night’s rest. These plants only need to be watered once a month, making it almost impossible to mess up. I love to put these in large floor planters, as the leaves get pretty tall. As a vertical plant, they don’t sprawl out to the sides much, which makes them great for tight locations or near circulation paths.

Peperomia Marble

I bought this plant on a whim and it has quickly become one of my favorites! Most of our plants are dark green, so I love the bright, yellowy pop that this piece adds to our living room. Another very low-maintenance plant, the Peperomia needs watering about once every two weeks and doesn’t need direct sunlight (ours faces west and has been doing really well). These plants have smaller leaves, so I prefer to keep them smaller in size on either a table or shelf somewhere. I put ours in a rattan planter from CB2 and I love how the color balances out the bright hues in the leaves.

Calathea Rattlesnake

This plant was gifted to me on my birthday last year and it’s been a fun one to watch grow. The leaves are incredibly responsive…every time I water it they perk up within a few hours and start to lay down when it gets close to needing water again. The leaves on this plant almost look like they’ve been painted, it’s incredible. A beautiful two-tone green pattern adds texture to the space on top of the leaves, while the underside is a rich plum color. These are also smaller in scale, so work really well on coffee tables or shelves.

String of Pearls

This is another plant that I bought at Sprout Home for just $5 when it was a tiny little palm-sized succulent. Today, it’s on a raised planter and spills over the edges really delicately. Because these get so long, they’re great for adding height to console tables with raised planters or suspending from the ceiling or wall in hanging planters. These are also incredibly low-maintenance (they’re succulents, so don’t need a ton of watering) however they do require “hair-cuts” every few weeks!

Pothos

The first houseplant I got for us was a Pothos and it’s still one of my must-haves to this day. My picture is pretty pathetic, because I actually took our good one to the office to put on the bookshelf (second photo), and this is a baby that I propagated from it (along with my baby FLF). Similar to the String of Pearls, a Pothos plant will spill its leaves out of a planter but will typically spill to one side, making it a great plan to put in a bookshelf so it hangs in down the front. Pothos also come in a variety of colors and textures, so you can choose one that best fits your palette!

In a lot of states, nurseries are open and many of them are doing curbside pickup, so now is a great time to pick some new plants for your home and freshen up the stale air during this quarantine! If you’re in Chicago, my go-to spots are Sprout Home and Jayson Home which are both doing curbside pickup. If you’re in Boston, my best friend has a new pop-up nursery, Live Spruce, and is delivering! If you don’t live in either of those places, I’ve been impressed with The Sill for orders. Hope this inspires you to add some greenery to your home! Stay sane and stay healthy!

-dgw