Healthy House Plants: A Complete Guide to Gardening Indoors (FutureLearn)

This course from BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine will provide you with tips and advice on how to grow plants indoors. You’ll learn how to make the most of space, repeat outdoor growing triumphs inside, and travel the world through exploring exotic plants.
Indoor gardening tips for every type of houseplant

This indoor gardening course covers different types of house plants and their differing needs. These might include cacti, orchids, palms, bulbs, and more.

You’ll learn what sorts of indoor plants can thrive in different environments maximising available light and space. You’ll discover how to care for house plants, including watering and nutrition, and how to look out for pests and disease.
Explore the origins of house plants to improve the quality and health of your plants

As well as learning how to care for your indoor plants, you’ll explore from where different house plants originate. This will help you understand how to care for them, by building a healthy, familiar environment. You’ll also learn about the history of house plants, and the role they’ve played in society.

Finally, you’ll explore the all-important question of what to do when you go on holiday – and how to give your house plants one, too.

Syllabus

Week 1: What will you grow?

Week 2: Growing conditions and the indoor environment

Week 3: Caring for your house plants

Week 4: Making more plants and problem solving

Learning on this course

You can take this self-guided course and learn at your own pace. On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

- Identify different types of house plants from their appearance

- Consider the origins of plants when making an informed selection of what to grow in a particular rooms indoors

- Assess the indoor environment of particular rooms according to aspect, light and moisture levels and temperature to use appropriate methods of houseplant care

- Understand how growing conditions change and adapt your care regimes through the seasons

- Apply suitable watering techniques and assess the moisture requirements of plants

- Regularly monitor your plants to assess plant health and growth, diagnosing symptoms that may indicate poor techniques, or the presence of pests and disease

- Apply your newly acquired knowledge and skills to grow more unusual plants or transfer your techniques to outdoor growing

Who is the course for?

Anyone who wants to learn how to care for houseplants can benefit from this course. Perhaps you want to enliven an indoor space. You may have downsized to a home without a garden. Or maybe you just want more plants in your life.