Out with the old and in with the new

I am seeing a theme here on the blog lately…updating the house, flowers in the house, now new trees in the house…LOL! I’ve just been on that early Spring cleaning kick I guess. Especially with the double whammy of having nesting instincts along with it. 😉

THIS WAS THE OLD TREE WE HAD IN THE CORNER OF OUR LIVING ROOM:

We have had a few fake trees in our house for years, and we love the look and easy maintenance of them. I strung little lights on them, and it’s really atmospheric at night with those lit. But lately I’ve been reading about how certain houseplants have been found by NASA to not only improve air quality with oxygen, but can actually remove toxins from the air, too. I hate to see the beautiful trees we had already go, but I figured if we’re going for the look of trees in the house, we might as well have real ones that can improve our air quality too. We’ll just have to remember to water them!

THIS WAS THE OLD TREE WE HAD IN THE CORNER OF OUR DINING ROOM:

The new trees we got are a Dracaena fragrans “Massangeana” or “Corn Plant Dracaena” and a Bamboo Palm (or Reed Palm). We put the Corn Plant in the dining room, and the Bamboo Palm in the living room. I did re-string the lights on them. I don’t think they look as good as they did on the fake trees though! The Corn Plant is supposed to get fragrant blossoms…that would be neat! I looked up both of these and they are not toxic for people or pets. That was very important to us! (However, if the Bamboo Palm were to produce fruit, the fruit would be toxic. We will keep an eye on it, but it’s not supposed to bear fruit if it’s not in direct sunlight.)

HERE IS THE DRACAENA FRAGRANS “MASSANGEANA” OR CORN PLANT:

AND HERE IS THE BAMBOO PALM OR REED PALM:

We bought a couple of pretty glazed ceramic pots to put the trees into, and we bought a bag of pond rocks to line the bottoms of the pots with. We also bought plastic saucers to place the ceramic pots on so no water or soil will leak through to our carpet. We decided that instead of transplanting the trees from the nursery pots to the ceramic pots, we would leave them in the pots they came in from Home Depot, and just drop those into the ceramic pots on top of the little stones. It saved a lot of work, and we like that the trees probably won’t grow any taller that way. They’re tall enough for our house as it is!