21 Houseplants that Bloom Indoors: Best of Growing Joy Replay

Growing Joy with Plants - Wellness Rooted in Nature, Houseplants, Gardening and Plant Care

Maria Failla- Happy Plant Lady and Author of Growing Joy: The Plant Lover's Guide to Cultivating Happiness

Education, How To, Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Home & Garden, Leisure

4.8 • 883 Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Houseplants are celebrated for their amazing foliage, but I think we overlook another amazing ability, a specific subcategory our favorite indoor plants have — the ability to bloom! Some people say we are intrinsically connected to flowers because, way back when, they signified fruit.

Personally, I just think they are joyful as hell with their bright colors, and let's be frank, we all need a little more joy and color in our lives. To give us a better grasp of this beautiful subcategory, I've invited back Lisa of The Houseplant Guru to talk about the must-knows of houseplants that bloom and how reconnecting with this group of plants can help us reconnect to generations we might never know.

In this episode, we learn:

[01:13] Maria’s garden updates
[04:15] Introducing Lisa, a beloved Growing Joy guest
[06:38] African violets and their underrated beauty
[08:27] What are the differences in plant care between foliage houseplants and blooming houseplants?
[13:25] How long should grow lights stay on for flowering houseplants?
[14:13] How does photoperiod affect the bloom cycle of a plant?
[15:42] Can you put orchids under grow lights?
[16:59] Do blooming houseplants need fertilizer?
[20:24] What to do when your orchids don’t bloom
[25:10] How to get orchids to re-bloom
[26:26] Maria and Lisa share their thoughts about collecting plants and moving homes
[29:51] Best blooming houseplants for beginners
[30:59] Why do you need to turn your holiday cactus all year round?
[31:53] What is the trick for beautiful and healthy African violets?
[33:36] Best blooming houseplants for beginners (continued)
[36:17] Best blooming houseplants for intermediates
[38:38] Are Gerbera daisies appropriate houseplants?
[39:37] How to make blooms last longer
[40:37] Should you fertilize your plant while it is in bloom?
[41:04] Lisa’s favorite blooming houseplants
[41:44] Where to get Lisa’s latest book!
[43:27] Maria’s personal story on how blooming plants connected generations of their family
[48:17] Closing remarks

Mentioned in our conversation:

GJ Episode 133: How To Manage Deer, Squirrels, Chipmunks, Moles, Voles And Other Animals In Your Garden With Brie The Plant Lady
GJ Episode 30: Orchid 101 With Chris
GJ Episode 84 : African Violets 101 With Lisa
Order Lisa’s book “Bloom: The secrets of growing flowering houseplants year-round”

Do you think blooming houseplants are too tricky?

Check out the full show notes and blog for easy-care options that bloom beautifully!

Follow Lisa:

Follow Maria and Growing Joy:

Order my book: Growing Joy: The Plant Lover's Guide to Cultivating Happiness (and Plants) by Maria Failla, Illustrated by Samantha Leung

Join the Bloom and Grow Garden Party Community Platform & App AKA the plantiest and kindest corner of the internet! Get your FREE 2-week trial here!

Take the Plant Parent Personality Quiz (Get the perfect plants, projects and educational resources for YOUR Lifestyle)

Support Bloom and Grow Radio by becoming a Plant Friend on Patreon!

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Houseplants are often celebrated for their amazing foliage, but I think we tend to overlook
0:04.5	another amazing aspect of keeping plants indoors, their ability to bloom.
0:09.4	Everyone loves having flowers either in gardens or in vases, but plant friend, there are a ton
0:14.7	of houseplants, 21 to be exact, that we discussed today, that can be brought indoors and happily
0:20.4	blossom for you year-round in your home.
0:22.9	So this week's Best of Growing Joy episode replay is celebrating the bloom. I've brought back an old
0:29.2	episode from 2022 with Lisa from the house plant guru to talk all about everything you need to know
0:35.5	about house plans that bloom indoors and how to successfully get them to bloom indoors and which ones are the best bang for your book,
0:42.6	bloom-wise. How many bees can we put in this intro?
0:45.2	Speaking of bees, Lisa actually wrote an entire book on this subject of blooming houseplants called bloom
0:50.9	that you can get after you listen to this episode. So without further ado,
0:54.9	a best of Growing Joy replay from 2022 all about blooming houseplants with Lisa, the houseman
1:00.5	guru.
1:05.3	Welcome to the Growing Joy with Plants podcast, where we not only learn how to care for plants successfully, but how to simply and affordably use our plant babies to cultivate more joy in our lives by doing so. I'm Maria, former plant killer turned happy plant lady, author of Growing Joy, The Plant Lover's Guide to Cultivating Happiness, speaker, podcaster, and most importantly, your new
1:28.1	best plant friend. On growing joy with plants, you'll find conversations about house plant care,
1:32.9	gardening tutorials, and wellness through the lens of plants.
1:36.4	Plant care is self-care on growing joy.
1:49.6	You have a whole book now dedicated to how to grow blooming plants indoors.
1:57.8	So thank you for creating this book to teach us all how to enjoy that joy of, you know, growing flowers outdoors, but inside.
2:02.5	Thank you. I love flowers. Right now in my house, I have Phalanopsis orchids blooming. I have Hoyas that smells so good at night. And I just noticed yesterday,
2:07.7	yesterday when I was watering, because it's like 100 degrees in Michigan today, I have six blooms
2:12.1	on my epithelum, my queen of the night. She just bloomed. And now she's blooming again. I'm so excited when I try to get a time lapse of it this time. I talk about a special experience I had with my Queen of the Night in the final chapter of my book. She's never bloomed for me. I mean, she's small. She's a little division, but I'm waiting for that moment of her blooming for me. I had it for years before it bloomed.
	...

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