If you have been thinking about gardening, this is your sign to start. Starting small gets you better results, but do not give up when things do not work out. There is no such thing as „no green thumb.” You may not have experience and knowledge (yet!), but it takes time to acquire those skills. I have been gardening since I was five. It has been almost four decades of gardening and I am still learning. I make mistakes, plus nature surprises me all the time.
So if you only have one window with light… great! Start there. Having plants indoors helps with airflow, changes the energy of the room, and most importantly puts you in a better mood. Choose simple plants like pothos (epipremnum aureum), peace lily (spathiphyllum), snake plants( dracaena trifasciata); those are easy and very forgiving. Can you kill them? Sure, but it will take either a lot of effort or the lack of it. Pothos will grow easily in water; take cuttings of it and stick them in a vase, but do not put any leaves in the water, just the stem. Having leaves in the water causes them to rot, which contaminates the water with bacteria and fungus. That is why cut flowers last longer if leaves are removed from stems that are submerged in water. You can also have pothos in soil, since it is a very easy plant to start with and requires very little light.
Peace lily will give you pretty cup shaped white flowers. Once they finish blooming, cut them off so that the plant focuses on new leaves and flowers. The plant also likes water, so if you see the leaves droop, water it. This plant is great for people that tend to overwater plants.
Snake plant is a cool plant with its long strong leaves. It gives you varieties of white, yellow, or light color green stripes to choose from. Most common snake plants are tall and make great corner plants since they like shade. I like them in a corner of the hallway or next to a piece of furniture. They are a bit hard to transplant because they are top heavy with roots on the top of the soil, so use rocks to anchor them.
If you are thinking about growing something that you can eat, start with small herbs. Plants like parsley and basil are great for that. Parsley eventually will bloom and you will need to get a new plant, but you can easily grow it on a window sill. There is a caterpillar that loves eating parsley, but even after being eaten the plant comes back even stronger than before. So let nature do its thing, it is part of the process. Basil can be a challenging plant, so try the Pesto Perpetuo variety, it has white stripes (variegated), and it is much tougher.
Another edible plant that is easy to grow are green onions. And when I say it is easy, it is very easy. When you buy green onions in a store, cut an inch of the bottom, where the roots are. Stick that into the soil (roots down!), and within days you will see new leaves popping. You can have them growing on a window sill. Then you pick the larger leaves on the sides as you need, without removing the whole plant with roots.
Lettuce is also an easy plant indoors to grow, but it requires light. If you are wondering what could be the perfect gift for yourself as a blossoming gardener, the hydroponic growing system with LED lights might just be the thing. The system is a box for plants with a light above them. It is small, taking little over a foot of space on a counter. However, in just that limited container you can have lettuce, basil, cilantro, parsley, and spinach in one place. To harvest, you only pick the leaves and let the plant keep on growing. Eventually you will need to replace the plants, but most systems come with soil like coco coir, fertilizer, and seeds.
What is helpful when starting to garden is to look for people just like you that are beginners. Join a garden group online or in person; there are plenty of great garden groups on Facebook, and we even have one in Culver City called Culver City Garden Group. However, there are other groups that focus on specific plants or types of gardening in Southern California. Plus there is a garden group that meets in person every first Tuesday of the month at 7pm in Veterans Park in the Garden Room. Another tip would be to keep reading this column, but maybe I’m biased!
Don’t be scared to ask questions, there is absolutely no judgement. If you have a garden with plants you don’t know much about, post pictures in garden groups and ask for identification, or use apps to identify plants and read about them. The most important thing is that you start and accept that sometimes gardening can not go the way you planned it to. But I can tell you, nothing compares to eating something that you’ve grown or seeing your own flower bloom. There is something truly magical about watching a seedling, cutting, or plant grow. Especially if that plant has been giving you a hard time, the feeling when it finally does well is fantastic and incredibly motivating.
So go out there and just start — Happy Gardening!
Joanna Kotwis has been a gardener since she was five years old, growing up surrounded by gardeners at her home in Poland. Plants were always part of her life. Both her mom and her aunt taught me how to love anything green. After living in California for over two decades, she has learned about our unique plant zone. “My love for gardening took me on a path of becoming a garden teacher and later landscape designer. I honestly believe that there are no bad gardeners; we just need knowledge and patience to help things thrive.”
