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Photo Credit: Donna W. Moramarco

My indoor palms add a touch of tropical heat to the garden under the shade of a tall pine.

It’s easy to do: Just find them a shady spot on your deck, or be a bit more creative and integrate them into your outdoor surroundings – much like you use the plants inside your home. Here are a few tips to help you get started:

• Move your potted palm to your outside patio or deck for tropical interest. Use more than one palm, and you’ve got a living screen, giving you privacy from your too-close neighbors. Don’t have a palm? Try the areca palms – they’re easy to find and relatively inexpensive.
• Try sinking pots of existing houseplants into shady shrub or flower borders. (I like to think of them as temporary bursts of interest that you can pull right out of the border and put back into your home at the end of the season.)
• Hang ’em high. Convert plants like pothos, English ivy or lipstick plant into temporary hanging planters. Use macramé hangers, or place pots in hanging baskets for instant effect.
• Consider transplanting your houseplants into garden planters or window boxes. I’ve been adding houseplants to my planters for years. Houseplant foliage makes a wonderful backdrop to flowering annuals, and these “new” plants instantly increase my outdoor collection at no extra cost! At the end of the season, I just dig them right back up and get them ready to move back indoors. Just remember to group plants with the same light and water needs. And don’t forget to bring your houseplants back inside before nighttime temps get too cold – generally right after Labor Day.