Are your indoor plants really green?

Live plants in our homes and offices are a great way to convey a green image and with modern methods of planting and maintenance they can also truly be "Green".
On the contrary poorly planted and outdated maintenance practices can yield unhealthy and poor looking plants that convey anything but green. Fortunately there are new techniques and products that help you keep your plants and your surroundings green even if your thumb isn't.
Lets start at the roots with the soil. Most soil is sphagnum based. Sphagnum peat is harvested from ancient bogs and is a fast depleting resource. Most of the bogs in Europe are disappearing faster than the rain forest and sphagnum is mostly used for horticultural purposes
like potting soil.
A recognized alternative is COCO PEAT. A by-product of the coconut industry coco peat is basically a recycled product that has better physical properties (holds more moisture, is pH neutral, has natural disease resistance) than sphagnum and best of all plants love it. We've been using a coco peat blend for years with all our our plants with great success.
I'll have to come back and do a whole article on green alternative planting media.
Next is planting and care methods.
Plants haven't changed much since the ancient hanging gardens of Babylon but the ways of watering and caring for container plants has entered the modern world.
In the past when we watered a plant, we poured an undetermined amount of water over the top of the pot and watched the water run out the bottom resulting in a mess (sometimes even creating a hazard), wasted water, and wasted time. Often the outcome, unhealthy or dead plants, hardly a "GREEN" practice. Today we use contained watering systems and measured amounts of water to eliminate run off and extend watering intervals. Saving water, time and money. These systems sometimes called sub irrigation have been mainly used by professional interior plantscapers for years but are now becoming more available to the general public. This practice also keeps the top soil dry eliminating mold and fungus that can sometimes grow on the surface of traditionally watered plants.
Some professional companies can now also tap into reclaimed water sources for use on the interior container plants.
Whether your thinking of adding plants to your "Green Building" or just want an easier way to grow a lush container garden know that there are greener alternatives to what we are presently accustomed to.