Houseplants-A Forgotten Design Element?

It's ironic that despite the movement in green design, plants are often absent in much of the interiors I've been seeing in shelter magazines lately. Plants can help purify the air and bring a wonderful design element into a room, but sadly, they are often absent, ignored or an afterthought in the design process. Plants can soften the edges of a room and bring in a much needed color and textural element. I'm really loving the idea of citrus, succulent, bonsai, palms and dish gardens-revisited and restyled to be current and fresh. I recently found myself guilty of overlooking this important design element in my own living room. In fact, I think "overlooked" is a bit of an understatement. Let's face it, life is busy, and I rarely have time to play around with accessories in this room, but I've been making more of an attempt lately to update. It suddenly dawned on me one day that my two - 12 year old scraggly, sad ficus trees stationed on either side of my fireplace, having witnessed so much family life, were fighting with the rest of the room and overtaking it. (This pic circa 2005-guitar hero playing relatives keeping the trees company)In the middle of slowly adding some mid-century touches and color to my otherwise Deco-ish room, the ficus trees and their thinning branches seemed to be shouting “hello 1990's”.......as they had since, well, the 1990's. Overwhelmed by the thought of uprooting them and finding a new, loving owner (I couldn't bare to toss them in the gardening bin) they continued to dominate the room for a time. They were survivors in our move from San Jose to Oakland after all. I finally decided to replace them with ferns. I don't know where this idea came from but it was also accompanied by a fear of 1970's ferns...... and having lived through that decade, I was determined to avoid that! Retro touches are great but some things (like macrame) are meant to stay in the past.

Along with Ficus trees, ferns are especially wonderful at air purification and even help remove harmful chemicals such as paint VOC's from the room environment.
Searching far and wide around the local stores, I ran into a few large ferns that I deemed too“70's” The lacy ferns that fit the bill with their delicate, rounder leaves.....were not tall enough for the 18 inch pots I wanted to keep. I finally found some larger ones at a gardening center in Walnut Creek and bought their entire stock of 6 Adiantum ferns. The ignored ficus's found a loving new owner on Craigslist and hopefully my new ferns have the room pointed in the right direction......forward!

Other inspiring ideas for plants:

Love this!

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I would like to see this idea using kumquat trees as well!

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Even a great new pot can revive the look of a plant

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An inspired cactus garden:

Succulent Garden ideas courtesy of Apartment Therapy

Jean-Marie Massaud Missed Tree Flower Pot-This unique vase is nearly 4 feet tall!

From the Houston Garden Show: Mini biospheres in a container garden