If you’ve always wanted a garden, now is the time to make it happen. But how, you ask? You don’t have the backyard or the space for a garden. You might not have the money. Don’t let these excuses hold you back from your dream. Here are five tips for you to finally have the indoor garden you want.

 Location

The first thing you need to decide is where you want to put your garden. If you don’t have a lot of extra space, this can be a big decision. Ideally, the balcony would be the choice for a garden, but most apartments don’t have balconies, so you’ll have to find somewhere else.

Windowsills are probably the next best spot for a garden. The window provides plenty of sunlight, so your garden won’t be in need of any light, and since most windowsills are out of the way, you won’t be losing any of your limited living space.

Unfortunately, some apartments don’t have many windows, so windowsill gardens aren’t always feasible. In that case, you’ll probably want to go with hanging plants. Having a hanging garden saves floor space, which you can use for storage, extra seating, or space for your nephew to play with your enormous Lego collection.

The last place for a garden would be on a rack—or something similar allowing you to put the plants on different levels on top of each other, so you’re taking up the same amount of floor space, but fitting more into that space.

 Plant Holders

Once you decide where you want to put your garden, you should decide how you want to hold your plants. You can purchase plant holders, but maybe you want your garden to have a more personal touch or be a little more creative. If that’s the case, you could use small storage containers, with covers over the soil and holes for the plants to grow through.

If you’re a crafty person, you might want to make your own plant holders. This won’t be as costly as you might think. Although you can go to hardware stores to purchase wood, you can also use timber salvage locations. Then, all you have to do is build the holders.

 Type of Plants for  your Indoor Garden

Pick the right plants for your space. There are many different types of plants you can have in your garden, but not all are good choices for every living space. Some plants require lots of natural light, and if your apartment doesn’t have many windows, those plants won’t grow well. Other plants are large and need a lot of space to spread out.

By choosing what types of plants you want, you’ll cut the decision-making process down. Some of the choices you’ll want to make are between light conditions (sunny vs. low-light), size (large vs. small), and watering conditions (lots of water vs. very little).

You might also want to figure out what toxins are often in your apartment. All sorts of household items have chemicals in them. Cleaning products have formaldehyde in them, and paint carries all sorts of noxious substances, like benzene, xylene, and toluene. All plants are great at ridding the air of contaminants, but some are better at targeting certain chemicals than others. For example, aloe is really good at cleansing the air of formaldehyde, but the peace lily focuses more on acetone and ammonia, and spider plants remove carbon monoxide.

Arrangements

The next thing you’ll want to do is figure out how to arrange your plants. You need to set up your garden so that you don’t have some plants blocking others. You also want plants that require more water to be easily accessible.

Make a list of the plants you’ve chosen for your garden and the characteristics of each one. Is it short or tall? Large or small? Does it require lots of water or very little? Then take that list and appropriately place the plants in your garden.

Care

The last step is to create a schedule to care for the plants in your garden. This will predominantly be a watering schedule, since that’s most of the care for plants. It’s likely that some of your plants will require more frequent watering than others. Since you don’t want to over-water some plants and underwater others, you’ll want to set up a schedule to maintain your garden’s optimal health.

It’s time to stop putting off building your garden simply because you don’t have a lot of space. With some planning, you can have that garden you’ve always wanted.

Author:

Eloise Hamilton studied business and law in college, and she practically grew up under the hood of classic cars. While those three topics are her main focus in writing, she occasionally writes about other topics she enjoys too, like home improvement, gardening, and technology, which she keeps up-to-date on by frequenting sites like Bear Slashing.