How to place more indoor plants on the windowsill?

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The need for a qualitative expansion of the area where indoor plants can be displayed sooner or later faces every grower. Replenishing collections with new products and “trendy” plants, forcing bulbs for the holidays, increasing the number of plants after their separation increase your collection from year to year. And if with the cultures located inside the interior, the trouble is less, then on the windowsill it is very difficult to find a new place. The area of these brightest places in the house is more than limited. To find a way to place more plants on the windowsills, you need to rationally approach their placement and look for the opportunity to bring collections to new levels.

Despite the wide assortment of indoor plants that feel great in partial shade and shadow, many indoor stars belong to light-loving indoor cultures. And only window sills remain the main place for such plants in many houses and apartments - the only places where without artificial illumination you can satisfy the requirements of blooming and decorative-leafy non-shade-tolerant stars. If the windows face north, west and east, then the distance from the windowsill is undesirable due to a sharp decrease in light intensity for most plants. And with the onset of winter, window sills become the only option for almost all cultures, because the reduction in the amount of light needs to be compensated for by shifting to more illuminated places, even for partial shade fans.

For those who have a moderate number of cultures in the collection, and on the windowsill there are only a few containers with spectacular sun-worshiping stars, which is much easier than for owners of extensive collections. But if you already do not have enough space for new experiments or acquired stars, do not despair: there are great ways to increase the nominal area of the windowsill. They are suitable for those who have the problem of having a place with suitable lighting constantly, and those who have such difficulties only periodically - for example, in the growing season of seedlings, when permanent room dwellers are forced to move to make room for its crops.

The options for placing additional plants are almost always associated with finding a way to use vertical space, placing plants at the upper levels. The streamlining of the placement method also makes room for several new plants. Let's get to know more closely the 5 best ways to increase the useful area of a window sill.

Method 1. Racks and shelves

This option is well known to everyone who grows seedlings: in order to place more peaked plants on modest window sills, temporary shelves are often built for them - a rack of 2 to 3 shelves on which you can place the plants. Shelves and racks, in fact, duplicate the windowsill itself and add a few more horizontal planes.

It is not at all necessary that the shelves are equal in length to the windowsill itself. You can place a small rack in the corner of the window, adding a few more shelves of 2-3 plants each. And if the shelves are made of glass or acrylic instead of wooden, then the negative effect (shading) will be minimal. The construction of a simple rack can be done even by those who are little familiar with the solar business. Moreover, today in the furniture hardware stores you can find a huge number of supports, blanks, fasteners and decorative materials that will allow you to assemble a shelf like a designer.

Shelves and racks of various sizes are more suitable for placing not too massive and high crops - for example, a collection of cacti or senpoli.

Method 2. Stands and flowerpots on the legs

The second option does not require any special tricks and skills. Today on sale you can find the most diverse in size and style of coasters for indoor plants. Along with "tripods" and large complexes for 5-7 crops, there are original compact stands for one plant. And the choice of flowerpots on the legs, with an additional base, elongated shape, double tanks allows you to search for options that allow you to raise plants higher and reduce the space they occupy on the windowsill to your taste and budget.

It is necessary to place flowerpots on stands or change habitual flowerpots to raised ones when too ragged, lush, massive crown of a plant takes up too much space on the windowsill and significantly exceeds the volume of the container itself. Plants with large leaves or cascades of shoots descending to the windowsill thanks to the stand will not interfere with neighbors placed tightly to them. And the place that their greens used to occupy on the windowsill will be freed up for other cultures.

Corner vertical

Strictly speaking, this is one of the variations of shelves for plants, but because of a completely different nature and a much less shading effect, it should be considered separately. Today, there is a large selection of so-called vertical shelves on which you can put up to 12 plants. These are collapsible structures, which consist of steel sections mounted on top of one another and fasteners for plants. In complete assembly, such a vertical shelf-rack occupies the space between the floor and the ceiling (the height is very easily adjusted). But if you use part of the structure and remove some sections, then it can be placed in the corner between the surface of the window sill and the upper slope of the window. Elegant vertical support does not take much light, but allows you to place plants in a fairly large amount. On the windowsill itself, it takes only the place of one flowerpot.

A vertical stand for the entire height of the window is perfect for the kitchen: you can place on it not only a lot of beautifully flowering accents, but also pots of greens, which in another version will occupy the entire window sill. This is a kind of vertical garden that can be used for a mini garden.

Hanging baskets

Ampel culture is a great way to reduce the load on the windowsill itself. Several reliable mounts and elegant hanging baskets will allow you to remove part of your favorites from the windowsill and raise them to a new level. A large selection of styles of flowerpots themselves will allow you to best emphasize the style of the interior. Hanging shoots or simply lush bushes with elongated and curved leaves - the plants that can be grown in ampels are very different. But they always look special: romantic and elegant. It is better not to overdo it with ampoules: the maximum number of hanging baskets is 3, of medium size. But even one plant that was removed from the windowsill will free up a considerable area.

Zigzag placement

This is the simplest and most obvious, but by no means less effective way to increase the area of the windowsill. The rational placement of containers and exposing crops in such a way as to use every free centimeter is not an easy task and requires constant trials (and errors).

Placing plants strictly in rows or, freely, most of the place is left empty. If you place the plants more strictly, but shift them in relation to each other so that the plants in the next row are located between the pots of the previous row, a kind of checkerboard or zigzag, you can place much more crops. Each row at the same time as if captures half of the previous one. In order for this placement option to work, you need to carefully select plants: in one row should be located crops with lush bushes, in the next - more elongated and less voluminous. The size of the pots also matters. Larger plants are best placed in the first row closest to the glass, smaller ones in the extreme. But finding a balance is far from easy. After all, all plants are special, you need to consider not only their size, but also preferences for lighting and other features. You won’t create a densely placed collection in a day: you may have to swap plants several times, alternate, rearrange until the perfect balance is found.

Evaluate all the pros and cons

Before you begin the action, evaluate all the "pros" and "cons" of decisions. If the advantages of increasing the number of plants on the windowsill are obvious, then the disadvantages are sometimes noticeable only after some time. And they concern not so much the plants themselves as their owners.

The increase in the number of indoor plants on the windowsill is associated with three negative factors:

1. The amount of light that enters the room is reduced. Not only plants placed at the window and in the interior will suffer from this, but also the atmosphere, the opportunity to do creativity or work, your feelings. Reducing the light in the room affects you and me no less than hanging dense heavy curtains. And before deciding to take such a step, think about how it will affect you.

2. The accumulation of a large number of plants on the windowsill suppresses space. The room narrows, becomes visually smaller, there are illusions of a lower ceiling, massive furniture more "presses" on the environment, the harmony of perception is violated. And the more plants, the higher they rise, the greater the effect of “squeezing” the space is created.

3. Placing a large number of plants in a small area causes air circulation to be disturbed, the risk of spreading diseases and pests increases, the collection will have to be monitored more carefully, dust from leaves should be washed more often, and additional measures to increase air humidity should be taken. The lighting that the plants will receive will not be as uniform as when placed more freely; some parts of the crown may even be in the shadow of a neighbor, and if the plant is very demanding of light, this option will not suit him.