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When Is a Houseplant Not Just a Houseplant?
Sure, it’s green and it’s pretty, but your indoor plant can also teach a major lesson in mindfulness
By: Rob Walker
Some years ago, I gave my design students an intentionally open-ended assignment: Practice paying attention. One of the most memorable responses to this prompt came from a student named Miguel, who made a planter for a cactus. “By nurturing or caring for something, you pay attention to it,” he explained.
I’ve long credited Miguel with teaching me, through this response, about the crucial connection between care and attention. And this winter, I’ve been thinking again about that connection, in the specific context of the humble houseplant.

Reading the Leaves
Our potted greenery lives on the porch and the patio because, here in New Orleans where my wife and I live, we only get a few hard-freeze nights a year, if that. But on those nights, we haul many of them (there are quite a few) indoors, and the house is lush and earthy. Our care is rewarded. And of course for the many who live in more persistently cold climates, the calculus may be different, but you don’t need an indoor jungle: A simple houseplant or three can offer a dose of domestic nature when the view outside has gone grimly gray.
But (as Miguel suggested) the real payoff isn’t just in the aesthetics, it’s in the caring — the prompt to pay attention over time. To care for even a single houseplant is to engage in rituals of noticing and presence. Regularly, you check in. Does the soil suggest a little water would be in order? Is it getting enough light in this spot, or should you experiment with another? Examine the leaves; take note of growth. And check for hazards! Any suspicious evidence of browning or bug nibbling? Build your own routine, and practice the satisfying art of slow attention, monitoring your plant(s) over time.
You might even keep a notebook or journal of your observations. In fact, this cold winter, consider taking pictures of your current — or any brand new — houseplants, with a plan to revisit them a year from now. See what this teaches you, and celebrate whatever growth and change is revealed. Take new pictures and repeat.
That may sound odd, but it’s just between you and your greenery. And I suspect it is because of such attention rituals that various studies suggest the presence of houseplants lowers stress and anxiety (and even blood pressure). That may be partly due to adding color and life to our spaces, but also by offering a relatively easy hobby that enhances attention and mindfulness through a sense of purpose and routine. Houseplants can even help improve indoor air quality and possibly make you more productive.
How Houseplants Pay Us Back
But there’s no need to get carried away with such scientific claims, because the real benefit goes back to that care connection that Miguel identified. "To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow," Audrey Hepburn is said to have remarked, and the observation holds true even for the owner of, say, a single indoor cactus.
I checked in with Miguel again recently, and while that cactus he started caring for over a decade ago did not survive a move, he sent me a picture of the lovely living room of his new upstate New York house, with at least a dozen houseplants thriving on shelves and practically radiating coziness and life — and a snow-covered backyard visible through glass doors. “After many years of taking care of many of my plants, some that I have had for 10 years plus, I think they are a good measure of how much attention you have not only for them, but for others and yourself,” he wrote to me. In this way, houseplants can be a reminder to pay attention to what we care about, and vice-versa. “They help with providing some stability or an anchor that pulls me back to noticing what I care for,” he continued, “Which many times translates to how I care for myself — or don't.”
This reminded me of something Robin Wall Kimmerer observed in her classic Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. In some Native languages, she wrote, the term for plants can actually be translated as “those who take care of us.” Maybe the real reason a houseplant is a good thing to care for, you’ll gradually discover, is that it cares back.
About the Writer
Rob Walker writes about business, technology, the arts, and other subjects. He is the author of The Art of Noticing, and the newsletter of the same name.