Gardening: Houseplants can help with winter doldrums

Houseplants can lift our spirits, give us hope for spring and add fresh oxygen to our enclosed homes and offices.

Houseplant sales are always highest during this season when we are “cooped up” inside so much more. Not only do houseplants add color, life, beauty and interest to our home, but numerous studies by NASA and others prove their value in cleaning our air of pollutants while producing the fresh oxygen we mammals require.

Plants and humans as well as other animals were designed to function or work together.

Plants need the carbon dioxide we give off and that can poison us when levels are too high, and we need the clean, fresh oxygen that plants produce whether outside or inside.

That oxygen is important outside for our whole biosphere, but it may be even more important inside the closed up spaces of our homes, offices and even spaceships.

All plants have this natural ability to filter our air, cleaning up carbon dioxide and other pollutants, but studies show some plants are especially effective like chlorophytum or airplane plant, members of the Dracaena family, and spathphyllum or peace plant.

There are hundreds, probably thousands of different plants that can grow well inside. Their success will vary depending on your light levels, the temperature you maintain, air drafts, humidity levels and your watering habits.

The early plants grown inside by our grandparents were ficus or rubber plants, philodendron ivy, golden pothos ivy, Boston fern. They also grew out plants from sweet potatoes or avocado pits in the kitchen or bathroom window.