5 Gorgeous Kitchen Plants to Spruce Up Your Space

If you haven’t integrated any plants into your kitchen decor yet, you are seriously missing out! There’s just something so blissful about starting your day off with a fresh pot of coffee in a sunny kitchen full of lush, green houseplants. They bring a sense of energy and vitality into the space, and everything feels a little brighter. 

If that wasn’t reason enough to add houseplants to your kitchen decor, these green machines have powerful air-purifying properties. So, if some forgotten fridge leftovers leave the room smelling less than fresh, your houseplants will help filter out the funk and churn out pure, clean oxygen. Check out some of these trendy houseplants for pots and hanging baskets to breathe some new life into your kitchen space.  

Pothos

There are endless reasons to love pothos! They’re low-maintenance, fast-growing, and super-easy to propagate from cuttings. Pothos has a gorgeous trailing habit, with cascading vines that spill down the sides of its container, making it perfect for hanging baskets or shelves. If you’ve got any floating shelves or a bar cart holding your cups or plates, try adding in a pothos or two into the display!  

There are a variety of pothos cultivars with different colorings, like the solid green Green Queen, the yellow striped (or ‘variegated’) Golden Pothos, or the swirly white Snow Queen. To keep its leaves looking bright and healthy, try not to place this houseplant in super bright, direct sunlight. Indirect light a few feet away from the window, or even low light, will be more comfortable for your pothos. Water regularly, but let the soil dry out between watering. 

Calatheas

This mysterious houseplant is practically in a constant state of slow motion, with leaves that shift around, lifting up and down as the day progresses. On top of being awesome dancers, calatheas have some seriously impressive color patterns. The undersides of their leaves are typically a rich red color, while the tops of their leaves come in all sorts of stunning motifs that look as though they were hand-painted. 

Calatheas are tropical, so they’re used to more humid conditions. This makes them perfect for sitting in close vicinity to the stove because boiling water will release plenty of moisture for their leaves to soak up. Try to keep them away from any cold drafts by the window or the freezer, and put them somewhere with bright, indirect sunlight.

Spider Plant

This shaggy houseplant has skinny blades of leaves that are typically either solid green or variegated with white. Once mature, it extends long, skinny stems that produce “pups”—baby plants that can be placed in a new pot of soil! The spider plant is one of the best air purifiers around; Nasa actually puts them on their space shuttles to prevent the air from getting stale.

While a mature spider plant would look awesome in a hanging basket or on the edge of a countertop island, the little pups make great tiny houseplants for placing on windowsills, shelves, tables, and wherever else you can squeeze one in. They prefer bright, indirect sunlight, but will still thrive in lower light conditions, so you can get creative with where you place them throughout the room! 

Haworthia

Haworthia succulents are the perfect, compact size to fit in containers the size of teacups and bowls. So, considering your kitchen is already full of teacups and bowls, you shouldn’t have much trouble finding a suitable spot to place your haworthia! Their pointy, upright leaves have such a cool texture, with little white spikes forming distinct stripes or spots along every green blade.

Water your haworthia thoroughly but infrequently, and make sure no water collects in the bottom of the container or within its rosette of foliage. A pot with holes in the bottom will release any built-up water, and a loose potting medium formulated for succulents will ensure good drainage. Place it in bright, indirect light, and in the winter, scale back to watering it every six weeks.   

Hoyas

While some young hoyas, like Hoya kerrii, look like a single, heart-shaped succulent leaf (adorable, we know), mature hoyas develop pretty clusters of pink and white star-shaped flowers and long, curling vines of fleshy green leaves. You can let them trail downward, or you can train the vines to grow up a small trellis placed in the plant’s container. 

Hoyas are actually a whole family of different succulents, so there’s a bunch of varieties with different shapes and variegated leaf colors. They also tend to have different preferences in terms of light levels, so depending on which kind you choose, you might want to speak with one of the experts at our shop to confirm what conditions will work best. Try to avoid cutting the extra-long vines, because the flowers sprout on the ends! Instead, twist them around a structure of some kind, and get creative with how you position them. 

Start building up your kitchen houseplant collection by browsing our catalog! You’ll be amazed at how much a little bit of greenery can add to your home’s atmosphere.