10 indoor plants to keep your home green all year long

If you want to go big, the red-edged dracaena is a colorful shrub that grows up to 15 feet tall. True to its name, this plant's leaves are bordered in red, so it gives a nice splash of color to a room, and as a bonus, it helps filter the air. The dracaena is relatively easy to take care of — it just requires moderate light and should be watered a couple of times a week.

The azalea, or Rhododendron simsii, is a shrub that blooms with long-lasting flowers in the spring. Azaleas bloom with lovely flowers, usually pinkish or purple, though there are also yellowish-white varieties. They require indirect sunlight, and it's best to keep their soil evenly moist.

Succulents are low-maintenance and they look amazing. Most succulents are great indoor plants, and we recommend looking at the options and finding one that works best for you. The succulent above is the Crassula "gollum", a whimsical-looking plant also sometimes called trumpet jade (for obvious reasons). Succulents are best kept in full or partial sun, and need to be watered regularly from spring till autumn, then rarely during winter months.

The name alone is reason to consider having a peace lily in your home. This large white flower really does emanate a sense of serenity as it stands surrounded by large, deep green leaves. It's also another air-cleaning plant, according to NASA. To care for this flower, keep its soil moist at all times, keep it in indirect sunlight, and fertilize infrequently. If no flowers are appearing, try putting the plant in a low-light room for a while.

If you want a truly low-maintenance houseplant, why not try one that doesn't need any soil or a pot? Air plants hang out just about wherever you want to put them, and they only require occasional misting and indirect sunlight. The only thing to make sure if is that your plant has lots of air circulation. We've seen air plants kept everywhere from inside seashells to hung on walls, so get creative with your placement.

Opuntia/prickly pear cacti are cute, broad-padded cacti covered in what look like polka dots. There are hundreds of varieties of Opuntia, which are called everything from "bunny ear cacti" to "road kill cacti" because of their distinctive flat pads. They also grow fruits and can be eaten (just make sure you remove the spines.) As a desert plant, Opuntia require lots of sun and fairly infrequent watering, but care requirements vary from species to species, so make sure you research your own plant carefully.

Not only does the staghorn fern really resemble the antlers of a stag, but it's typically kept mounted on the wall like a more animal-friendly hunting trophy. These plants require low to medium light and should be watered about once a week during hot weather, and less frequently during winter, allowing soil to dry between waterings. If you care for your fern properly, it will even produce "pups," which can be cut away and used to start a new plant.

This incredibly cute plant is technically another succulent, but we're listing it separately because unlike most succulents, it's also an excellent, vine-like hanging plant. The string of pearls grows well in bright sunlight, and like most succulents, it's quite hardy. One warning though: this plant can be toxic to pets, so keep it where your furry friends can't get to it.

Bonsai trees are more expensive than most houseplants, and they require delicate care, but we're including one here because bonsais are just amazingly cool. "Bonsai" actually refers to the art form of growing and grooming these plants, not the plants themselves. Bonsai plants aren't genetically dwarfed, but merely cultivated to grow in tiny pots. Basically, they're regular trees, miniaturized. Some bonsai trees are very difficult to care for, but the ficus bonsai is relatively hardy. It needs lots of light water, and regular fertilization in the summer. It also needs to be pruned regularly. Still, take good care of a ficus bonsai, and it will outlive you.

The snake plant isn't as sinister as it sounds. In fact, it's a quite lovely houseplant with curving, sword-shaped leaves, and best of all, it's extremely easy to take care of. This extremely tolerant plant can weather periods of low light and low watering, though for best results, you should put them in indirect sunlight and water whenever the soil dries out. For your small efforts, you'll be rewarded with a large, healthy, green plant that can grow up to four feet tall.