Make the heart of your home a greener and happier place, with kitchen plants that’ll thrive there.
We’ve spent a lot more time in our kitchens in 2020: cooking at home more, using them as makeshift office space and spending a lot more time at home with the people we live with. It’s made our kitchens feel more like a living space than ever before, so it’s not surprising that more and more people are looking to bring a little greenery into their kitchen. We’ve put together some kitchen plant ideas to help you start your own kitchen garden, focusing on plants that thrive in typical kitchen conditions.
Kitchen plant herbs
A kitchen window sill is a natural location for a herb garden. As well as catching a delicious waft of scent every time you stroll past, it ensures that you have your favourite herbs at hand while cooking, saving you a fortune on the small packets from the supermarket. Most herbs are fairly easy to grow from seed, but garden centres also sell more established plants and pre-planted selections. We recommend getting started with perennial herbs, such as rosemary, oregano, thyme, chives and mint if you’re not sure what to grow in the kitchen.
If you’re keen on adding natural fragrances to your kitchen, potted varieties of lavender can thrive indoors as well.
Kitchen plants – What to grow
Spider plants (Chlorophytum Comosum) have gained much of their popularity by being some of the easiest to care for and most adaptable plants you’ll find. They’re ideal indoor plants for the kitchen and will happily trail down from the tops of cupboards and off shelves. They thrive in bright light but will happily plod along in shadier conditions as well. Spider plants need occasional watering and pruning, and in return, they’ll purify the air and remove odours.
The instantly recognisable long spiky leaves of the aloe vera plant are also very at home in the kitchen. It’s garnered the nickname ‘the plant of immortality’ due to its resistance. It’s also known for its healing properties, so it can be handy for soothing burns in the kitchen as well.
If you’ve been holding off adding plants to your kitchen as you’re not naturally green-fingered, consider starting with a snake plant (Dracaena Trifasciata). These plants thrive on just being left alone, not needing very much water or light. Their striking tall foliage makes them ideal kitchen plants for low light.
If you’re looking for something fun, how about a venus flytrap? As their name suggests, these plants lure flies and other winged insects into their waiting jaws for a snack. Venus flytraps thrive in soil with good drainage and need direct sunlight. You also need to resist the urge to keep poking their snapping leaves, so they’re best kept out of the reach of children!
Indoor plants
If you’d like more advice on how to bring plants into your kitchen, your local garden centre can point you in the right direction. We love Preston Bissett Nurseries for all our indoor plants. There are numerous ways to incorporate greenery into the design of your new kitchen and if you’re looking to make some changes, we can help. The Willow Kitchens showroom in Buckingham is currently closed in line with national COVID-19 guidelines, but our kitchen designers are still available via email, telephone and video calling.