Kamili Bell Hill, author of "Happy Plants, Happy You: A Plant-Care & Self-Care Guide for the Modern Houseplant Parent," explains what you can do to make your houseplants thrive.

<div class="block">Get your hands dirty and become a proud plant parent. Kamili Bell Hill, author of &quot;Happy Plants, Happy You: A Plant-Care &amp; Self-Care Guide for the Modern Houseplant Parent,&quot; explains what you can do to make your houseplants thrive.</div>

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Tips to Become the Perfect Plant Parent (Hint: Put Down the Watering Can!)

Camilla, you just published this book, Happy Plants. Happy You. So, what's the connection between being happy and our plants? Everything, the plants are the glue. They got me off of the highway to burn out and I just was on a hamster wheel and when I discovered the Joy of plants, they helped me pause and when I'm checking in with them, I'm checking in with myself and it just is a whole new world that plants have opened up to me. What would you say are some of the benefits of gardening and playing with plants, bringing in nature and spending time in nature. It lowers our blood pressure, it reduces anxiety, it lowers stress and it really helps you kind of focus and unplug in this very fast paced technologically driven world that we live in. Now, I call it an analog hobby. You know, like how many leisurely things that we do nowadays that don't involve a screen and electricity. And so this is a nice way to really spend quality time with yourself and really check in with yourself with plants. All right. So what are some activities we can do special indoors since it's getting too cold to go out. Well, some of the things that you can do because you're gonna wanna spend time with your plants. That's where you get the benefits. Right. And everybody thinks, oh, I'll water my plants. It's so easy to over water. So you wanna put a pause on that and find other ways. So, of course, repotting is one. And you have a mixture here. I have a mixture here. Yes. this is, this is like the gold, this is the gold standard. This is a chunky airy mix that's gonna keep your plants alive. And that's another benefit of uh being with plants when you have your hands in dirt. There's an actual bacteria called MYOB Bakay. I practiced that word. OK? And that helps boost serotonin. And when you buy that potting mix from the big box store, you wanna add a couple of things and that's what we have over here. So this is the general potting mix. Go ahead and dump that in. That's the general and this is a nice orchid bark and that's gonna give you the aeration. And th this is the magical ingredient, Peli that's both going to give you drainage and moisture. I don't know how it pulls off that hat trick, but it does and we play with it and then you play with it right. You just get your hands in there, get dirty, like don't be afraid and real quick, you have two more activities. What is this? So, this is misty now, it won't raise the room humidity, but it's a nice way to spend time with your plants without over watering them. So, go ahead and give that baby a little. Yeah, that's nice. Right. To talk or not to talk to the plant, the talk because they love that CO2. Good, good job. All right. And the last one we have here, the last one. So this is a very underrated activity, cleaning your leaves. When you clean the plant's leaves, you get rid of that dust that blocks their cells. Their stoma it's called. And that's how they photosynthesize and you can clean the leaves with a nice cotton glove. I like to add, add a little magic sauce and that's gonna be the neem oil. That's this. And what does neem oil do? So neem oil is your everything. It's your golden wonder drug, right? It both shines the leaves. Oh, that's a new sprayer. It shines the leaves and it also beats pesticide. It is a added pesticide. Then we clean after that. Yes. You spray a little on and you give your leaf a little white and it's gonna give it a nice healthy sheen. Not an artificial like plasticky look but beautiful. So if you wanna have a happier outlook on life, play with plants.