Best Height for Hanging Plants

Hanging basket plants will thrive indoors if they're placed properly in a room. This segment shows how to easily hang your plants at an optimal height for plant growth, and how to increase your enjoyment of the hanging plants.

Produced by the Department of Communications at Kansas State University. For more information, visit our website at: http://www.kansasgreenyards.org

Transcript:
Best Height for Hanging Plants

When we buy a hanging basket plant, it’s growing in a pot with a hanger on it. Most hangers are fourteen inches from the top of the hanger to the top of the pot. After we buy them, we bring them home, and we hang them up on a hook in the ceiling. However, what that does is put the top of the pot fourteen inches below the eight-foot ceiling. So, it’s six foot ten inches off the floor, and it’s above eye level.

But most of us aren’t six foot ten inches tall. Most of us are much shorter. So what that means is that instead of looking down on the pretty part of the plant, we look up at the ugly bottom. So, why would we want to buy a plant and look at the ugly part, rather than the pretty part?

Also, hot air rises. So, the hottest, driest, and darkest place in any home is near the ceiling of any room. Because lights don’t shine up, they shine down from the sun. Therefore, it’s dark, it’s hot, it’s dry, and it’s a terrible environment if you take these plants and hang them from a hook in the ceiling.

A better idea is to get a piece of chain. For example, you can buy a hanging lamp chain that’s approximately fifty cents a foot at the hardware store. Hang that from a hook in the ceiling, and bring the plant down to where the top of the pot, or hanging basket, is below eye level.

Then, we can enjoy its beauty. It will get better light, and it won’t have that hot, dry, dark atmosphere to struggle against in order to grow and look good. So, we need to intelligently place them lower. Or we can have a plant stand that we set them on, and let them drape over the sides of the plant stand. We need to think about the environment indoors. While plants will grow indoors, let’s not put them in the worst place.

This feature story prepared with Alan Stevens, retired Kansas State University Research and Extension State Leader, Horticulture. For more information, visit your local county extension office or visit our website at KansasGreenYards.org.