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Nurturing a few green plants indoors helps soften the tenure of winter. I knew that tree leaves help purify outdoor pollutants from air during the summer, but I hadn’t thought of houseplants having the same role inside my house.

That is, until I read a column written by Master Gardener Jeanette Klugherz in the Dover-Eyota Eagle. She mentioned studies done during the space program that had shown some plants cleanse indoor air.

I liked this idea and realized I already had a few purifiers growing inside my house. Because my indoor houseplant growing project has been expanding in the last two years I needed a reason to convince my husband it wasn’t just another of my messy projects.

To be truthful, I have not been the best of indoor gardeners as one prerequisite for me are plants needing watering only once per week. During the week when I am busy with work, meetings and other evening pursuits, I’d prefer not needing to water plants.

Saturday mornings are my plant watering time. While it’s sunny and I can clearly see my plants, I fill jugs of water from an outdoor, un-softened water spigot for this project and douse the dry parched soil in the pots.

I’ve found some plants surviving my watering conditions including rosette-form sansevieria, spider plant, a tall, tall candelabra euphorbia, pothos, and a large hibiscus.

Some of the plants in my house are leftovers from my kids’ 4-H projects. They specialized in cacti and succulent gardens. When my son started selling plants at our local (Eyota) farmers market, we started propagating indoor plants.

By this I mean, we have divided sansevieria rosettes, made cuttings from our jade plant and stuffed Swedish ivy into vases filled with water.

That’s one of the reasons my south and west facing windows in my dining room are filled with greenery. Remembering the indoor plant propagating I once engaged in back in the late 1970s, I have searched out new mother plants including a variegated peperomia. I’ve had an identification reference on my bookshelf called the “Exotic Plant Manual” by Alfred Byrd Graf since taking an indoor plant material class at the U of M years ago.

My son brought home a bamboo plant from a wedding he attended—each guest had their name attached to cuttings in a tiny rock-filled cup. By this spring, it will have reached a size when I will feel comfortable repeating the process of putting cuttings in watery gravel.

To answer the question of what indoor plants are best for filtering indoor air, I Googled the topic and found fifteen top choices from the Mother Nature Network. Some like the azalea, Gerber daisy and chrysanthemum surprised me, as these are plants generally given at funerals, but end up in homes. Normally, they are not long-lived indoors, however.

Others of those mentioned are already in my house including red-edged dracaena, spider plant, sansevieria (sometimes called mother-in-law’s tongue), pothos and peace lily.

Some I have grown at other points in my life, choices like heartleaf philodendron, palm, Chinese evergreen and aloe. Included on the air-cleaning list is weeping fig (ficus), a tree-like plant you might see growing in large public buildings. Another, that I once grew, was English ivy. Since it is very susceptible to spider mite, I probably won’t be choosing it again.

Growing plants indoors has some pitfalls, and one of those is spider mites. (Tiny spiders chew the undersides of leaves and discolor or stunt them.) Because I moved a number of plants indoors last winter, I found by spring I had a problem with those pests—they even attacked the rubber plant that had been a gift from one of my parents’ funerals.

I was more careful this fall in my indoor plant choices and tried using a systemic fertilizer/insecticide to control the problem, along with spraying leaves with insecticidal soap. The dry conditions indoors seems to also be a place where spider mites prosper. Misting plants with a water spray bottle is one way of discouraging them, if one prefers not following a chemical pathway.

My main goal through the winter is keeping them alive by giving my plants as much light as possible and not over watering. As the days lengthen, I will start taking cuttings or dividing plants to propagate new ones. Succulents like the peperomia or jade plant can be cut in sections, then dried a few days allowing callus to form before inserting small branches into damp sandy soil or peat moss to encourage root formation.

My rosette sansevierias just naturally like to propagate themselves by sending out new rosettes. These can be divided by cutting them apart into several plants and then repotting. In fact, there is a family story about this plant.

Mine started from a plant my mother once had. It had followed her to the nursing home, where my sister repotted a pot-bound plant into about a half dozen plants. I got one or two of those, and have since divided and re-divided it over and over again. I have a chorus of them along my living room windowsill. They are a plant that’s very tolerant of low light conditions.

Want a house with cleaner air this winter—invite in a green windowsill guest.