About – Indoor Gardening

Indoor Gardening is an informational resource about creating and maintaining a garden inside the home. The guides explain how to plan a growing space, how to judge the light in a room, how to choose containers that drain without marking the floor, how to set up a shelf or a windowsill, and how to keep a group of plants in good order through the year.

An indoor garden, as the term is used here, is a planned growing area and not a scatter of pots: a place with usable light, containers that drain, a suitable potting medium, a tidy way to water, and plants chosen to fit all of that. The site is about the space and the setup first, and about individual plants second.

What the site covers

Indoor Gardening Basics: what an indoor garden involves, how to plan one room by room, where to put it, the supplies worth having, and common beginner mistakes.
Indoor Plants: using foliage and flowering plants in a garden, and whether to start with young plants, cuttings or seeds.
Indoor Garden Light: surveying the natural light in a home, what each window direction offers, grow light basics, and rotating pots for even growth.
Watering & Care: a watering routine for many pots, grouping plants by their needs, humidity, a maintenance checklist, and cleaning the growing area.
Indoor Containers: choosing pots by size and material, drainage and saucers, potting media, and repotting indoors without the mess.
Indoor Growing Ideas: plant shelves, windowsill gardens, display ideas, and dish gardens and terrariums.
Small-Space Indoor Gardens: where plants can fit in a small apartment, vertical setups, and what to do when the garden is full.
Seasonal Indoor Gardening: adjusting the garden as the light changes through the year, and preparing it before a vacation.

If you are new to growing plants inside, begin with Indoor Gardening for Beginners, then read How to Plan an Indoor Garden, How to Assess Natural Light in Your Home and Watering an Indoor Garden. Every guide is listed on the Tutorials page.

What this site is, and what it is not

Indoor Gardening is general information for people who grow plants at home. It is not written by horticulturists, botanists, professional gardeners, designers or electricians, and it claims no professional credentials of any kind.

Nothing on the site is a substitute for advice from a local extension service or a qualified professional who can see your home. That applies in particular to anything fixed to a wall or a ceiling, to the weight a shelf or a floor can carry, and to electrical equipment such as grow lights.

How the guides are written

Each guide explains how to assess the space and observe the plants, and then how to decide what to do. That is the approach throughout the site, because the same plant behaves differently in different homes, and the same spot changes with the time of day and the season.

No universal schedules. The guides give no fixed watering calendar, no universal number of hours under a light and no fertilizer timetable. What a plant needs varies with the plant, the light, the temperature, the season, the potting medium and the container, so the guides describe what to check and what to look for.
Grow lights follow the manufacturer. Guidance about grow lights stays general. Distance, daily duration and safe use depend on the fixture, so the guides defer to the fixture manufacturer’s instructions and do not suggest modifying any equipment.
Tools and products by type, not brand. A guide may mention a long-spout watering can, a general-purpose indoor potting mix or a plug-in timer, but it does not name or recommend brands.
Illustrations, not photos. The images are original illustrations of general ideas. They are not photographs of real rooms, and they are not meant for identifying a particular plant.

What you can rely on

We do not publish invented reviews, ratings, statistics or testimonials.
Sizes, distances and times in the guides are starting points. A guide that suggests a pot “one size up” also expects you to adjust for the plant and the place.
No guide promises that a plant will survive, flower or grow in a particular way.
Where a shelf, a wall fixing or a hanging planter comes up, the guide points you to the manufacturer’s load rating and instructions and states no weight limits of its own.
Where a fertilizer or another plant-care product comes up, the guide points you to the product label and gives no doses of its own.

Corrections and suggestions

If a step is unclear, a statement looks wrong or a link is broken, please tell us through the Contact page. Mention the name of the guide and the section so the problem can be found quickly. Corrections are always welcome.