Most people enjoy the pleasure of pleasing plants, and many people prefer working and living among cultivated greenspaces. But is there more to it? Below are seven benefits that science suggests indoor plants might offer.
Indoor gardening is still seeing a spike in popularity, fueled by Instagram’s plant-positive interiors, plant-focused podcasts and online plant subscription services like Lazy Flora and Grounded.
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Indoor plants may help lower stress levels
ResearchTrusted Source published in the Journal of Physiological Anthropology found that plants in your home or in your office can make you feel more relaxed, soothed, and natural.
Specifically, participants were assigned to one of two groups, in which they either (1) engaged in repotting a houseplant, or (2) completed a brief computer task. Researchers measured biological stress factors such as heart rate and blood pressure after each task.
The indoor gardening task, they discovered, reduced participants’ stress response. The computer task, by contrast, triggered an increase in heart rate and blood pressure even though the participants in the study were young men, and most well versed in computer work.
Researchers concluded that working with plants can decrease both physiological and psychological stress.
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Real plants may sharpen your attention
Sorry, but plastic plants are not going to help you pass exams. In a small study of 23 participants, the researchers had students take a seat in a classroom that contained either a fake plant, a real plant, a picture of a plant or no plants at all.
Brain scans of those participants revealed that students who studied with real, live plants in the classroom were more alert and had a greater ability to focus than students in the other three groups.
3. Working with plants can be therapeutic
For individuals experiencing the symptoms of mental illness such as anxiety, indoor gardening can be beneficial.
ResearchersTrusted Source have used horticultural therapy to boost well-being in people with depression, anxiety, dementia, and other ailments.
While the concept of horticultural therapy is centuries old, it has a new expression: Medical clinics in Manchester, England are now “prescribing” potted plants for patients experiencing symptoms of depression or anxiety.
4. Plants may help you recover from illness faster
Just being able to look at plants and flowers might hasten your recovery from an illness, injury or surgery.
A 2002 literature review found that people recovering from various types of surgery required less pain medication and had shorter hospital stays compared with people who weren’t gazing at greenery during their recovery times.
Most research in this area looks at the effect of plants and natural scenery in hospital rather than home settings, however, so it must be noted.
5. Plants may boost your productivity
A bromeliad might just be the best cubicle-mate you ever had.
There have been numerous studies confirming that surrounding yourself with greenery in your workspace enhances both productivity and creativity. One deeply cited study, dating back to 1996, found that students in a campus computer lab worked 12 percent faster and were less stressed when plants were positioned nearby.
In a 2004 studyTrusted Source, researchers at the University of Iowa pitted people against each other in a battle of creative word association. They did better in the presence of a plant in the room.
7. Plants may improve the quality of indoor air
Scientific support for phytoremediation — that’s the word for plants scrubbing contaminants from the air — usually begins with a NASA study conducted in the 1980s.
Researchers then were looking for ways to improve the air quality in a sealed spacecraft, and they concluded that the roots and soil of houseplants reduced airborne volatile organic compounds (VOCs) significantly.
Since those early studies, researchers have both confirmed those findings and called them into questionTrusted Source.
Recent findings suggest that you’d have to shelter a large number of plants to equal the air purifying efficiency of modern biofilters and other technologies.