Indoor plants: good for the brain & body

In March 2020 when Covid-19 was kicking off and Victoria and NSW announced they were shutting the border for the first time in 100 years, I drove the 12 hours from inner city Melbourne back to my parents’ property near Scone NSW.

The thought of being confined to a box in the city wasn’t particularly appealing and I was fortunate enough to have somewhere else to go. So, I spent 4 months in NSW with my immediate family surrounded by excessive greenery and lots of space.

Mid way through the year when I came back to Melbourne (1 day before stage 4 lockdown commenced – great timing), I found myself craving that greenery I’d been lucky enough to have during the first Covid-19 wave. The singular peace lily and couple of plastic plants from K-mart were no longer cutting it.

Plants, pots and propagation

I quickly acquired a large number of indoor plants and filled up my space with monsteras, peace lily’s, calatheas, devil’s ivy & succulents. My room effectively became an indoor garden sanctuary that I enjoyed spending time in (a serious improvement from the hotel quarantine comparisons I was making initially). 

I wasn’t the only one. In 2020, according to the ABC (2021), Australians bought more than 2 billion plants, spending approximately $2.6 billion – a $200 million dollar increase from 2019-20 financial year.

Everyone in the residential college where I was living seemingly jumped on the bandwagon too. We held plant potting days and pot painting sessions, with the majority of us students happily and gratefully getting involved. Plants became a welcome distraction mid-lockdown when you could only leave your home for a maximum of 2 hours within a 5kms radius.

They represented something to do, care for and view - all of which provided calming vibes and facilitated that innate connection to nature so many of us were missing when locked inside our houses.

But with lockdown over, do we still need our indoor plant buddies?

As we enter the post Covid-19 era, why do we still seek out indoor plants and is there any evidence they actually benefit our health?

Well as you might have suspected, yes there is.

Indoor plants benefit our physical and mental health in a variety of ways. One of the most obvious reasons we collectively keep and care for indoor plants is they are aesthetically pleasing – simply, they look good! Indoor plants provide an association with the natural world which has a soothing effect on us and successfully facilitates the ingrained desire we have to be connected with nature. For example, studies have shown that just looking at plants can trigger positive reactions in the brain that lead to the release of serotonin – our happy hormone. There are now a number of studies that illustrate how access to elements of nature can lead to decreased levels of depression, anxiety and stress.

So, creating calm and soothing home environments by adding indoor plants is actually a protective factor for our mental health. If we go further, having plants in office spaces has been shown to increase productivity, improve cognition and increase attention capacity. Given we, especially those of us in cities, live in a largely urbanised world and spend around 85% of our time indoors, it’s helpful to create spaces that enhance our mental health (rather than worsen it).

Good for the brain, good for the bod

Not only do these plant friends benefit our mental health, but access to elements of nature can also benefit our physical health. Having plants in our homes can help purify the air, reducing the risk of asthma attacks, especially when living in increasingly polluted cities with poor air quality. There’s even evidence that indicates indoor plants in our homes can help limit bacterial and fungal spread and remove air pollutants.

Exposure and active interaction with indoor plants has also been illustrated to reduce physiological stress by suppressing activity of the sympathetic nervous system through promoting calm feelings like those we experience when immersed in nature. To sum up, facilitating our connection with nature has been shown to improve overall comfort, health and wellbeing.

So next time you’re at the nursery, there’s no need to feel guilty for investing in green buddies. In fact, give yourself a pat on the back – you’re actually doing yourself some good.

A fav nursary of mine (@plantsonmain in Scone NSW)