Decorating your home or office with indoor plants not only creates a beautiful environment but comes with health benefits also. Well-chosen indoor plants and pots add colour, texture and freshness to rooms and interior spaces. Plants create a natural calming effect. As well as their beauty, indoor plants produce clean oxygen for our health, and also have the ability to remove chemical nasties (known as VOCs) such as Benzene, Formaldehyde & Trichloroethylene. These chemicals are found in everyday products such as glues, paints, rubbers, inks and cleaning products.
Below you will find a list of some of the most popular Indoor Plants available at BAAG. Please remember that our Indoor range changes weekly, not everything will be available at all times. For more information on availability and suitability for your space please phone (03) 8850 3030 during business hours and ask for the nursery.
Anthurium / Flamingo Flower – These come in several colours but the most famous is the pillar box red Anthurium. The spathes are long lasting and glossy, almost plastic looking in their perfection. They add a striking exotic element to your indoor arrangement.
Boston Fern – Fits naturally in a modern edgy home & equally well with shabby chic or rustic farmhouse. Is as resilient as it is cheerful. A good ‘first plant’ for indoors.
Calathea, Peacock Plant, Zebra Plant – Gorgeous desk top plants with beautiful leaves. Generally keep to a nice small size, making them perfect for impact, but not too space consuming. Very easy to manage once you get them in the right position. Calathea makoyana are known as Peacock Plants and have beautiful markings on their leaves with purple to burgundy undersides to the leaves. Calathea zebrina has wonderful velvety textured and coloured leaves. Both add subtle colour and texture into your indoor plants.
Cardboard Palm Plant – Not a palm at all, but from the ancient cycad family, this is a wonderful character filled house plant. Low maintenance, fun and architectural. So slow growing and long lived it can be passed down the generations like a family heirloom. You finally get to see who the favourite child is!
Chain of Hearts – Delicate beauty draping over a basket and dripping down in a lovely cascade combined with toughness and the ability to survive most conditions. A very rewarding plant to add to your indoor collection, and a very undemanding one.
China Doll – Lovely glossy mid-green divided lacy leaves give an airy elegant feel to this houseplant. This plant is not for the novice. It does have definite requirements, but if these are met, can grow incredibly quickly and is fairly trouble free.
Ctenanthe – Grown for their striking leaves, different species have different colours, but often they have vivid burgundy/purple undersides and lovely markings on the top side. Can reach up to 1m indoors (taller outside) and add a wonderful splash of colour to an otherwise mostly green array of indoor plants.
Devil’s Ivy – Easy to grow cheerful houseplant with glossy heart-shaped leaves. If you are a novice, this wash and wear, drip dry plant is a good place to start. Very rewarding. Also very simple to take cuttings and propagate more plants. You will feel like an expert in no time! Devil’s Ivy is also well known as an air-cleaning plant, removing formaldehyde from the air (NASA study, 1989).
Dracaena ‘Janet Craig’ – One of the work horses of the great indoors, lush deep green cascading foliage, and super tolerant of almost everything. Increasingly popular (is this possible?) due to its high rating in the 1989 NASA study for removing indoor air pollutants. Can be left to grow as tall as 3m, but generally pruned back to a smaller size. I like it because it just looks fabulous.
Echeveria species – The dense clusters of rosettes of Echeveria spp look enchanting when congested and spilling over the edges of a shallow glazed or terracotta pot. Their habit of producing babies (pups) which peep out from underneath the edge of the rosette gives them their common name. (Hens & Chickens)
Fiddle Leaf Fig – Wonderful large, bold, impact plants. They provide a stunning focal point and give drama and flair to an indoor space.
Forest Lily – Lush and luxuriant looking but deceptively tough, wonderful for those difficult dry shade to semi shade spots. Also makes a truly excellent pot plant for the shady porch or verandah. Summer dormant, the shiny broad green ruffled leaves appear in late summer / early spring followed by flower spikes in winter and spring.
Haworthia – These are a delightful small succulents, undemanding and charming. More than most, succulents really reward the right choice of container. Choose a container that repeats the shape of the succulent, and contrasts or complements the colour, and you end up with the perfect arrangement.
Japanese Aralia / Fatsia – A very useful lush indoor plant. Good for creating a background of green, or when big broad leaves are needed as a contrast to the more common strap shaped leaves or fronds of many indoor plants. Pollution and cold tolerant so a good choice for Melbourne’s inner urban dwellers.
Maidenhair Fern – One of the most delicate and graceful of ferns. It somehow combines cool and ethereal with lush and gorgeous. To see a big beautiful maidenhair is to covet one. They are much easier to grow than you think, without many requirements; but those it does have need to be met. The key is finding the exact right position, if you have that, you are 90% of the way there.
Miltonia Orchids – These gorgeous orchids are one of the easier orchids to grow in Melbourne and plants double in size each year, so you can achieve a large specimen fairly rapidly. They produce copious blooms in summer when most other orchids are not flowering and come in wildly different colours and shapes.
Monstera, Swiss Cheese Plant – The fruit salad or swiss cheese plant is an incredibly hardy plant with amazingly large swiss cheese like leaves. The roots also have the fun habit of growing up the trunk of the plant.
Mother-in-Law’s Tongue, Snake Plant, Bowstring Hemp – There are a few different species from the Sanseviera genus that are great indoor plants. The Sansevieria trifasciata ‘Laurentii’ is banded in yellow, the Sansevieria trifasciata ‘Zeylanica’ has green with silvery grey horizontal stripes, the Sansevieria Hahnii is a short rosette style plants, birds nest type and the Sansevieria ‘Silbersee’ has silver green leaves.
Peace Lily – A much loved indoor plant across the world with easy to maintain lush green foliage and crisp pure white spathe ‘flowers’. There is a lot to love about these hard working house plants.
Peperomia – An endearing desk top plant with beautiful leaves. There are many different peperomias, with a wide variety of leaf colours and forms to choose from. They are generally a compact size, perfect for impact, but not too space consuming. They grow easily under fluorescent lighting – so good for office situations or areas that doesn’t get any direct sunlight
Philodendrons – There are two main types of Philodendrons, the vining ones, often seen tied to a post or fern stake, and the non-vining ones, these have a broad, upright spreading habit. Both are equally popular and much loved for good reason. Exuberant shiny large green leaves in wonderful shapes, easy going and tolerant, a happy addition to any home, public space or office. Larger specimens can be very impressive indeed and add a significant wow factor to a space.
Ponytail – A very slow growing indoor plant that can be kept for decades. Incredibly versatile, looks appropriate in arid to tropical landscapes and in edgy modern homes to lush plant-a-holic homes. Over the years it will gradually transform from a sweet desk top plant to a tall plant with an intriguing swollen base tapering to a slim top sprouting a swirl of long green fronds.
Rubber Plant – The rubber plant is such a well-deserved favourite. Its lovely glossy leaves in various colours glow inside the house and really – it is almost impossible to kill, seems to thrive no matter what.
Silver Lady Fern – The Silver Lady Fern is an extremely attractive rosette fern with a neat but lush look. It immediately conjures up images of rainforests and waterfalls.
String of Pearls – There is something so endearing about this cascading succulent. A waterfall of green pearls cascading for several feet from a hanging basket or a tall pot, what is not to love!
Umbrella Tree – A fairly fast-growing plant, even when grown as an indoor potted plant. Lovely shiny green leaves and when grown in a cluster of two or three has a great impact, giving a vibrant healthy lush look. A native or northern Australia.
Weeping Fig – The weeping fig is an incredibly popular plant that is regularly seen as topiaried balls on sticks, full trees, trees with plaited stems, bonsaied, variegated forms, mid green and dark green. They are very versatile and can be formal or informal. They looks great as a stand-alone plant or in a group.
Zanzibar Gem, ZZ Plant – Also known as the Eternity Plant in a nod to its indestructible character. This is up there with Aspidistra for the way it embraces neglect. Indeed the ZZ plant thrives on neglect, as overwatering is its death knell. Keep it warm and dry and it will thrive, the attractive dark green shiny waxy leaves on the wand like stems will delight you for years to come.
Zygocactus – Highly decorative cactus grown for their fabulous silky flowers in all the shades of the cream, pink, orange, purple and red colour spectrum. Very showy.
Important note about plant availability. There are hundreds of factsheets on our website provided for your information. Not all plants will be available at all times throughout the year. To confirm availability please call (03) 8850 3030 and ask for the nursery. |