Why Your Plants Keep Dying: Best Plants for Dorms and How To Keep Them Alive
Rachel O’Connor ‘26
Photo by Rachel O’Connor ‘26
If you’ve been at Sarah Lawrence for long then you’ve likely experienced the phenomenon of dorm air. The stale air in slc’s dorms causes everything from congestion to stuffy noses to dry skin. The bathrooms, which in my experience don’t always have the best ventilation, become breeding grounds for moldy shower curtains. What you may not know is that there’s a plant for that. Hell there’s a plant for almost anything. The only problem is actually keeping that plant alive. So listen up and let me tell you my best tips for keeping my plants alive and what I think are the best plants to keep in a college dorm room.
Top Five Plants For College Dorms
Peace Lilies
Peace Lilies are nicknamed the “clean-all” because they literally clean all. They purify the air around them and are put in bathrooms because they kill mold. They don’t need much sunlight so if you stick them in your bathroom window you’re golden. You can get them from Lowes or Home Depot or any other garden store for around $15-20. While there isn’t an accessible Lowes or Home Depot near campus if you don’t have a car or can’t uber, you can get them from Amazon (though I’ve personally never tried this and I’m not sure what condition it’d arrive in). Be warned though that Peace Lilies are poisonous to cats! Make sure you water your Peace Lilies every week, but during Winter you can push it to every other week or even monthly.
Pothos
While Peace Lilies get the number one spot because they fight mold, Pothos are my personal favorite. Pothos are also associated with purifying the air, though not as much as Peace Lilies, but more importantly they love neglect. Pothos plants should technically be watered about every two weeks and should be put close to a window if they can be, but they’ll adapt to almost any treatment. Full transparency, I water my Pothos every month at best if I remember and have him set up almost six feet from my window, but he loves it. Timothy, my beloved Pothos, has been going on almost four years strong. Pothos, like Peace Lilies, are poisonous, but not just to cats. They are poisonous to everything, but as long as you aren’t adding your Pothos into your salads for some zest, you’ll be fine.
Snake Plants
Snake Plants are another plant that are nearly impossible to kill. In my experience they don’t grow very much so you don’t get the satisfaction of feeling like a great plant parent, but they probably won’t die on you. They like bright, but indirect, light so sticking them on your dresser or your desk is fine. They also don’t need to be watered very often, just when you look at it and notice the soil is looking pretty dry. They have less personality then Peace Lilies and Pothos, but they’ll be a consistent friend to you as long as you remember to kick it some water every once in a while and you can usually find them in grocery stores. (There’s also an opportunity for fun snake themed names, unless you’re my ex-boyfriend who named mine Snake. He wasn’t ever allowed to name another plant.)
Succulents
Listen, I know there are some succulent enthusiasts out there who probably think they should’ve been number one. However, I think they’re lame and boring and if I’d been ranking them on personality they wouldn’t have made the list. That said, they are objectively good dorm plants. Most succulents you water every two weeks, but they don’t really care if you push that. During the winter, you can water them once a month. They like to be in your windowsill and get direct sunlight. They’re really the kind of plant that you just forget about for the most part and then once in a while go “oh yeah I should probably do something about that”. Last year, there were a couple different succulent planting activities that happened in BWCC and a lot of grocery stores will sell them, so they’re easy to acquire. If I was forced to pick a favorite succulent, I would say Aloe Vera because you can snip off a leaf once in a while to use the gunk inside to help your sunburns.
Spider Plants
I love Spider Plants. They’re so fun and have so much personality. They do tend to take up a lot of space because of how much the leaves extend, but they just make your space so homey. They need to be watered once a week and prefer bright, but indirect, sunlight like Snake Plants. The only downside (that can actually be viewed as an upside) is they have this fun tendency to multiply. Now I know what you’re thinking, that’s awesome you basically get bonus plants and I agree. However, when you’re in a dorm room and don’t have access to all the pots and soil you need to plant the babies, it becomes a bigger hassle than it's worth. But, if you’re someone who is fine either killing your Spider Plant babies or you’re willing to go out and get pots for them then Spider Plants are super fun to have around.
Keeping your plants alive:
Now that you know the top five best plants to have in your dorm, let me give you some rapid fire tips to keep them alive. First, be careful about buying your plants from grocery stores. Trader Joes is usually a good place to get them, and there is a Trader Joe's shuttle once a week, but the same can’t be said for ACME and Stop n’ Shop. Sometimes buying your plants from them is fine and they’ll thrive, but oftentimes the plants you pick up from grocery stores like that weren’t being taken care of properly and die pretty quickly. I would advise that you buy plants that have DRY soil if you’re going to get them from grocery stores. I know this sounds counterintuitive because dry soil would make you think they aren’t being watered properly, but if the soil is wet it can often mean there’s root rot going on beneath the surface which is going to kill your plant pretty quickly. I would also take the interior plastic pot that the plant is planted in out of the main decorative pot when you get home and check to make sure there isn’t any standing water in there. If there is, dump it, or your plant might get root rot.
On that note, try to put your plants in pots that have drainage holes on the bottom. If your pot is plastic and has no hole then it’s pretty easy to poke holes in the bottom and set the pot on a paper plate or a paper towel. If your pot has no drainage holes and is ceramic or some other material that will break if you put holes in it, then I would make sure you drain your plant after watering. What I mean by that is take the interior plastic part that actually holds the plant out of the decorative pot when you water it and set it on a paper towel or plate after you water it. If you leave it there to drain the excess water for a couple hours then put it back in the decorative pot, then you can feel pretty confident that your plants are safe from root rot. If the plant you are thinking of buying has a pot with no drainage holes and doesn’t have a plastic interior plant sleeve, then I wouldn’t buy that plant.
My next big tip is for watering your plants. This trick works for like 90% of plants in my experience (not succulents though). Stick your plant under the faucet and turn the faucet on low. Keep the plant under the faucet until water starts dripping out through the drainage holes (or out of the bottom of the plastic interior sleeve). When water starts dripping out the bottom, that’s how you know you’ve watered your plant enough and you can turn off the water.
My last two tips are easy fertilizer alternatives that are basically free. Sometimes your plant just needs a pick me up, or you just want to feel like a successful parent by giving your plants a treat. The first free fertilizer alternative is banana peel water. All you have to do is take your banana peel after you’ve eaten it and stick it in a jar or a tupperware with water. Leave the banana peel in the water for two days then throw it out. Then use that water to water your plants and it’ll give them all sorts of nutrients. They have bananas in Barb and Bates so your options to get your hands on banana peels is limitless. The second alternative is sprinkling dried eggshells on your plants. If you have a kitchen and are someone who eats eggs, then save your eggshells. Rinse them out then lay them on a paper towel to dry for a couple hours. Then just crush them up and save them in a jar or a ziploc. Whenever you want to give your plants a pick me up, do a light sprinkling of your crushed egg shells on your plants and they’ll love it.
There are also apps like Greg and PlantGuru that I recommend for anyone who is worried they’ll forget to water their plants because they’ll send you reminders. PlantGuru will even diagnose your plant if it’s looking a little rough and all you have to do is take a pic.
Tips From GROW:
I reached out to one of Sarah Lawrence’s clubs, Green Rights Organization for the World, to find out their best plant care tips. One of their co-chairs Frances Kenney ‘24 gave me the following tips to share:
Air plants and succulents are not as easy to care for as you think, so don’t take it hard if you lose one–once the rot sets in at the base, there’s nothing you can really do (this is generally the result of overwatering).
You can always add more water, but you can’t take back overwatering! Shoutout to my [Frances’s] mom for that advice!
We have a lot of radiators right under windows, which can make it hard to balance direct sunlight and not frying your plants. A footstool, macrame hanger, or similar rig can do wonders for your plants’ vantage point. This is also ideal so that your plant’s leaves have space to fan out rather than smushing against the window glass.
If you live in a dorm with an outdoor space, most sun-loving plants can happily live outside as long as you take them in once it gets cold.
The dorms here are generally dry and overheated, which is great if you’re a cactus! They are also very hardy, I [Frances] have six that have been with me from the start of college.
If your dorm is overheated and you need to open a window, make sure it isn’t too cold for your plant to stay close to the window, otherwise scooch it back a bit.
Prune leafy plants of yellowing leaves so that they aren’t wasting energy.
A lot of plant care is very reactive–if a plant seems unhappy with the water or sunlight that it’s receiving, you have time to work it out.
If a plant dies, it is very important that you dispose of it in a used plastic bag and then put it in the garbage to avoid the spread of invasive species. THIS IS ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT OF LUCKY BAMBOO AND MINT PLANTS.
Huge shoutout to Frances for providing these tips and Warren Green gardeners meet every Sunday at 4:00 this semester if you have any urgent questions. Take it from someone who has nurtured (and killed) a lot of plants. I’ve figured out what works and what’s easy. I think plants are such a lovely way to decorate your dorm and they have so many benefits for you from fighting mold to purifying the air. I hope one of my tips helps your plants thrive!