The need to qualitatively expand the area on which you can display indoor plants sooner or later faces every gardener. Replenishing collections with new and “fashionable” plants, forcing bulbous plants for the holidays, increasing the number of plants after dividing them increase your collection from year to year. And if there is less trouble with crops placed inside the interior, then it is very difficult to find a new place on the windowsill. 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 an opportunity to bring the collections to new levels.
Despite the wide range of indoor plants that feel great in partial shade and shade, many indoor stars belong to light-loving indoor crops. And the main place for placing such plants in many houses and apartments remains only window sills – the only places where without artificial lighting it is possible to satisfy the requirements of flowering and decorative-leafy non-hardy stars. If the windows face north, west and east, then moving away from the window sill 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 crops, because the reduction in the amount of light must be compensated for by moving to more illuminated places, even for fans of partial shade.
Those who have a moderate number of crops in their collection, and only a few containers with spectacular sun-worshipping stars on the windowsill, have it much easier than owners of large collections. But if you no longer have enough space for new experiments or acquired stars, do not despair: there are excellent ways to increase the nominal area of the windowsill. They will suit both those who constantly have a problem with having space with suitable lighting, and those who have such difficulties only periodically – for example, during the seedling growing season, when permanent indoor inhabitants are forced to move to free up space for its crops.
Options for placing additional plants are almost always associated with finding a way to use vertical space, placing plants on upper levels. Rationalizing the placement method also allows you to free up space for several new plants. Let’s take a closer look at the 5 best ways to increase the useful area of the window sill.
Method 1. Racks and shelves
This option is well known to everyone who grows seedlings: in order to place more transplanted plants on modest windowsills, temporary shelves are often built for them – a rack of 2-3 shelves on which plants can be placed. Shelves and racks, in fact, duplicate the windowsill itself and add a few more horizontal planes.
It is not necessary for the shelves to be as long as the window sill itself. You can place a small rack in the corner of the window, adding a few more shelves with 2-3 plants on each. And if the shelves are made of glass or acrylic instead of wood, the negative impact (shading) will be minimal. Even those who are not very familiar with solar work can build a simple rack. Moreover, today in furniture fittings shops you can find a huge number of supports, blanks, fasteners and decorative materials that will allow you to assemble a shelf like a construction set.
Shelves and racks of various sizes are more suitable for placing not too massive and tall crops – for example, a collection of cacti or Saintpaulias.
Method 2. Stands and flowerpots on legs
The second option does not require any special tricks and skills. Today, you can find a variety of stands for indoor plants in both size and style. Along with “tripods” and large complexes for 5-7 crops, there are also original compact stands for one plant. And the choice of flowerpots on legs, with an additional base, elongated shape, double containers allows you to look for options that allow you to raise the plants higher and reduce the area they occupy on the windowsill to your taste and budget.
It is necessary to place flowerpots on stands or replace the usual flowerpots with raised ones when the too spreading, lush, massive crown of the 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 close to them. And the space that was previously occupied on the windowsill by their greenery will be freed up for other crops.
Angular vertical
Strictly speaking, this is one of the variations of plant shelves, but due to its completely different nature and much smaller shading effect, it is worth considering separately. Today, there is a large selection of so-called vertical shelves on sale, on which you can put up to 12 plants. These are collapsible structures that consist of steel sections and plant fasteners installed one on top of the other. When fully assembled, such a vertical shelf-rack occupies the space between the floor and the ceiling (the height is very easy to adjust). But if you use part of the structure and remove some sections, it can be placed in the corner between the surface of the window sill and the upper slope of the window. The elegant vertical support does not take up much light, but allows you to place plants in fairly large quantities. On the window sill itself, it takes up only the space of one flowerpot.
A vertical stand that spans the entire height of the window is perfect for the kitchen: it can accommodate not only many beautifully blooming accents, but also pots of greenery that would otherwise occupy the entire window sill. This is a kind of vertical garden that can be used for a mini-vegetable garden.
Hanging baskets
Ampelous culture is a great way to reduce the load on the windowsill itself. Several reliable fasteners and elegant hanging baskets will allow you to remove some of your favorites from the windowsill and raise them to a new level. And a large selection of styles of the flowerpots themselves will allow you to emphasize the style of the interior as best as possible. Hanging shoots or just lush bushes with elongated and arcuately curving leaves – 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 ampels: the maximum number of hanging baskets is 3, medium size. But even one plant that is removed from the windowsill will free up a lot of space.
Zigzag placement
This is the simplest and most obvious, but no less effective way to increase the area of the window sill. Rational placement of containers and display of crops in such a way as to use every free centimeter is not an easy task and requires constant trials (and errors).
By placing plants strictly in rows or loosely, most of the space is left empty. If you place plants more strictly, but shift them relative to each other so that the plants in the next row are located in the space between the pots of the previous row, a kind of checkerboard or zigzag, you can place many more crops. Each row seems to capture half of the previous one. For this placement option to work, you need to carefully select the plants: in one row there should be crops with lush bushes, in the next – more elongated and less voluminous. The size of the pots also matters. Large plants are best placed in the first row, closest to the glass, smaller ones – in the outermost. But finding a balance is far from easy. After all, all plants are special, you need to consider not only their size, but also their preferences for lighting and other features. You can’t create a tightly placed collection in a day: you may have to change the plants’ places several times, alternate, rearrange, until the ideal balance is found.
Evaluate all the pros and cons
Before you take action, evaluate all the pros and cons of the solutions. 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 will the plants placed by the window and in the interior suffer from this, but also the atmosphere, the ability to be creative or work, your feelings. Reducing the light in the room has a negative impact on us no less than hanging thick, heavy curtains. And before you decide to take such a step, think about how much it will affect you.
2. The accumulation of a large number of plants on the windowsill suppresses the space. The room narrows, becomes visually smaller, illusions of a lower ceiling arise, massive furniture “presses” more strongly on the furnishings, the harmony of perception is disrupted. And the more plants, the higher they rise, the greater the effect of “compression” of space is created.
3. Placing a large number of plants in a small area leads to the disruption of air circulation, an increased risk of spreading diseases and pests, the collection will have to be monitored more carefully, dust from leaves will have to be washed more often, additional measures will have to be taken to increase air humidity. 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 it.
