Our green corner: A space-saving, DIY, plant rack!

Mid-Century Modern
HDB (BTO)
~1,000 sqft
3 br
Couple Living

Welcome to our green corner! We mainly keep monsteras and pitcher plants. Our ethos for a green corner was: 1. Space-saving 2. Convenient (in terms of access and watering) 3. Safe from thieves (so not outdoors!) The main challenges we faced with keeping plants at home was the lack of sunlight in our home and the sheer number of plants we had (we had to leave behind so many at our parents' place!).
A closer look at one of our monsteras! My husband has many plants so our main goal was to maximise our plant per sq ft ratio. To achieve this, we bought a rack from IKEA. It has a decent distance between each shelf, so the plants have space to grow. We also bought IKEA storage boxes which in turn house many other small plants in their own individual smaller pots (to keep roots as separate as possible). Many plant pots come in circles and we found that it wastes a lot of space. In between the pots, we stuff sphagnum moss so that mosquitos cannot breed and it helps to maximise moisture retained (so less frequent watering is needed!) Although it would definitely be more aesthetic to disperse these plants around our home, the maintenance would be a nightmare. Imagine having to water 20 over plants individually!
In addition, the shelves are a mesh designs, so it was easy for us to cable-tie our LED lights to underneath each shelf. These lights have a timer installed, so we have it switched on from 4pm-12 midnight. It doubles up as a source of light for us at night, so we don't have to switch on our balcony light.
We recently got into keeping fish too! Our quarantine tank (for new fishies) has found a home in our plant rack!
- #fishtank
It helps to think about what the purpose of each space is when renovating. We planned our plant rack in advance, so we knew to install some power points nearby. Really a pat on our own backs for this one, otherwise, it would be very difficult for us to install our LED lights here! As Taylor Swift has sung - if you fail to plan, you plan to fail!
For your safety, please remember to keep your electrical plugs dry! For us, we minimised this risk by putting it on the top of the plant rack where water was unlikely to go. And that's all for our little plant corner! It is certainly not as aesthetically pleasing as it can be, but it is really fuss free to maintain. After the initial set-up, all we have to do is water every week or so. More time to just relax and enjoy looking at them :)