The Best Indoor Plants for the Smallest of Spaces

A lush, green home filled to the brim with plants sounds dreamy. But #plantgoals get much harder when there’s barely enough room for you and your clothes, let alone a decorative plant. Get all the benefits by dialing it back a bit and populating a few strategic spots with some leafy green goodness.

Here are your best shots for a plants that don’t require a huge footprint:

These distinctive-looking variegated plants look amazing when hung up, which makes them a great choice for small spaces. These tolerant plants are easy to grow and propagate, and look great even without a 70s style macramé holder. Still popular after years, they are also non-toxic — a solid and safe way to add visual interest to a room.

These voluminous plants are interior classics for a reason, earning their decades of popularity by being one of the easiest ferns to care for and maintain. Keep your fern hanging in a steamy bathroom and watch it thrive. It’s one of your best bets for a jungalow vibe at home.

These small space superstars can live pretty much anywhere — from glass terrariums to teacups to vertical wall gardens. Despite their diminutive size, their strange and/or interesting looks make them a great style choice for apartments. They pack a punch in tiny package.

Jade plants are cheery little succulents, fun to look at and easy to grow, which makes them a great plant for beginner growers. They love sunny windowsills, even in small spaces. There are ton of varieties that all look quite different from each other. Fun fact: two of those varieties are named Gollum and Hobbit, after — you guessed it — characters from the Lord of the Rings series.

If you’re running short on surfaces to place a plant, but want the foliage and air-cleaning benefits that our green friends provide, consider a staghorn fern. Antler-like fronds shoot out of these funky ferns. When mounted on wooden plaques, they make the most of any vertical space. Plus they double as dramatic and sculptural wall art.

Having an aloe vera plant around (and using it, should the need arise), can make even the most modern and high-tech of us feel like herbalist apothecaries. Some varieties of this pointy succulent can grow three feet high, but the aloe vera works great in small, sunny indoor spaces.

This fast-growing climber is relatively easy to care for, and looks great either hanging or dangling its vines from a shelf. It can even be trained to grow up a topiary! With their trailing stems and green leaves, you can stick these plants high on a shelf and largely out of the way.

These plants start as a small cluster of leaves but then explode into dazzlingly long vines of verdant green. And they’re pretty easy to care for. It’s no surprise that they are also called devil’s vine or devil’s ivy — because they are almost impossible to kill. They look particularly great placed high with tendrils cascading over the sides.