Plants can sometimes be an interior design afterthought at work and at home. Maybe they seem a bit like hard work, with their different appetites for water and sun. Or maybe we’re put off, having ruined a few in the past – we can’t live with the guilt of buying another just to see it wither.

We’ve been looking at some of the recent trends in using plants in interior design and the evidence around the benefits of having them in our indoor spaces. Having plants around the home and office is good for us mentally and physically. Taking care of them can lead to increases in wellbeing and they filter the air we breathe, taking the edge off the city in which pollution levels are often well above the accepted limits. It seems the time and effort in taking care of them is well worth it.

That said, it can be hard to know where to start. With limited time and space, which plants should we buy? Where should they go? In this short blog we’ll give you some ideas to get started…

Sounds simple and obvious, but we all too often rely on our company to provide our foliage for us. This often falls short of the mark, often sparse and sometimes artificial, and it doesn’t provide us with an incentive to care for them ourselves.

Now studies from Norway have shown that having plants around the workspace can increase productivity – so you might even be able to petition your boss to fund a trip to the garden centre. They found that workers at desks featuring greenery showed an improvement in attention span. This is because being around natural things helps restore our brain in a similar way to sleep. What’s more, having your own plant places the onus on you to care for it, something that can help with mindfulness on a day-to-day basis.

These are some of the easiest plants to care for and all omit comparatively high levels of oxygen, meaning they help clean the air of any room they’re in. From a design perspective each offers a different aesthetic; ferns with their dense textured vegetation, lilies with their graceful white flower and dark green leaves and spider plants providing an angular, untamed look. Incorporating these into your home is a great way of using nature to regain control of the quality of the air you and your family breathe the most.

A terrarium is a mini-garden grown inside a glass container; think jar, vase, lightbulb or specially designed sphere. They are beautiful pieces that combine design and green in a novel way and can be an intriguing centrepiece for tables and sides (just watch out kids don’t get their hands on them!). They range in price and there are cool, bespoke makers in London offering something different to what can be found online. You can even go on a day’s workshop and make your own!