My house is very dark inside in from mid autumn until early spring and I have trouble keeping plants that need bright light healthy during the winter months. Luckily the back of my house faces South and at least for half of each day there is a lot of light in the kitchen and one of the upstairs bedrooms. Guess where all of my tropical light loving plants go during the cool months? Yep, their crowded into the kitchen and one bedroom.

Now, most of those plants are ones that I keep outdoors during the summer – two Jasmine bushes, my passion flower vine, the amaryllis and a few others.

As for the rest of my house, well the west side is attached to the neighbors home so we don’t get any light from that side, the East side of the house has the driveway, and our other neighbors house is about 10 feet away – so very little light comes in through those windows. That leaves the large bay window at the front of the house. This faces North so we get most of our light at the front of the house in the afternoon but we don’t get much light at all.

Sounds kind of dark and depressing doesn’t it?

I’m sure many of you live in homes that are too dark during the winter months for many of the popular house plants that are sold in nurseries. Unless your house is very bright you’ll likely have trouble with most tropical plants.

Plants that I’ve found that seem to work well and even thrive in my low light rooms are:

• Chinese Evergreen (Aglaonema) – I have two of these and they are doing well
• Lucky bamboo
• Boston Fern (Nephrolepsis exaltata)
• Heart leafed Philodendron (Philodendron scandens var. oxycardium)
• Mother-In-Law’s Tongue, Snake Plant (Sansevieria trifasciata)

Does anyone else want to add to this list? I’m looking for plants that do well in low to medium light conditions. Help me add to this and we’ll have a great list to help others who have dark homes.