Location & Light | Indoor Plants And Balcony Gardens | Gardening Australia

The Great Indoors Part 2 - Location & Light

Craig Miller-Randle shows us how to pick the best light location for indoor plants.
Light is an essential ingredient for your plants, and one way to ensure they are getting the right amount indoors, is to replicate the natural environment of a forest. A forest has different layers and lighting zones, and your home can be also be categorised into three main zones:

01:28 | Direct Light
The kind that streams in through a north-facing window. It’s harsh and bright, so it’s best for plants that are used to exposed conditions like succulent and cacti. Plants that are not suited to direct light can get sunburnt leaves.

02:45 | Indirect Light
Most indoor plants will be happy here, especially those that come from rainforests like monsteras or philodendrons.

03:45 | Low Light
It can be tricky to get this zone right, but careful plant selection makes all the difference. Craig has success with Cast Iron Plant (Aspidistra elatior), Snake Plant (Dracaena trifasciata syn. Sansevieria trifasciata) and Devil’s Ivy (Epipremnum sp.). If a plant is not getting enough light, you might notice the stems getting longer with more space between the leaves as reaches out to find more.

To work out how much light you have, there’s a high tech option such as a light meter, or a simple low tech option - hold your hand up against a leaf and see how much shadow it casts. The sharper the shadow, then the more light that it’s getting.

05:02 | Temperature
This is also very important, and many indoor plants come from warm and humid rainforests. Most important is to keep the temperature consistent and watch out for plants being too close to heaters or cold windows.
If your place is just too cold over winter, you can try Craig’s bubble wrap insulation trick – simply wrap a spare sheet of bubble wrap around a pot like a blanket!

Every house has unique challenges and opportunities. Understanding the basics of what your plants need will go a long way to creating your own indoor jungle.


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