10 Indoor Plants for Outdoor Balcony Gardens
You may have an awning, tall building next door, trees or some other object that blocks sun from hitting your balcony. It’s unfortunate, but many apartment and condo dwellers have to adapt to growing plants on dark balconies. If you have a dark balcony space, your container plant choices are limited, but you still can have a balcony garden. The trick for shady or dark balconies is to use indoor plants outdoors. Create a lush balcony container garden consisting of indoor plants.
When keeping indoor plants outdoors, choose plants wisely. Some indoor plants are kept indoors because they need special care, such as extra humidity or warm temperatures. The container plants that will probably do best in a dark balcony garden are the low-light indoor plants. Low-light indoor plants generally will thrive indoors next to a bright southern-facing window or even in an office underneath fluorescent lights. Unless you live in an area that a specific container plant will thrive in, you will most likely want to use low-light indoor plants in your garden. Here are 10 easy indoor plants perfect for shady or dark balcony gardens:
10 Shade Plants for Balcony Gardens
1. Pothos
2. Philodendron
3. Peace lily
4. Dracaena varieties (i.e., ‘Janet Craig’ or Dracaena deremensis)
5. Snake plant
6. English ivy
7. Spider plant
8. Arrowhead plant
9. Rubber tree plant
10. Ferns (i.e., Boston fern)
Remember that many low-light indoor plants will need extra care in the winter. Depending on your hardiness zone, you may need to bring plants indoors and keep them under grow lights when the weather is too cold. If you do live in a colder climate, you may want to only keep a few plant containers outdoors and set aside some space indoors for where you will overwinter the plants in the winter.
