Pet-Friendly Plants for Small Apartments
A small apartment with a cat or a dog adds two challenges to keeping plants: there is not much room, and there is a curious animal living in the room there is. We hear from a lot of apartment dwellers who have given up on plants because of one or the other. Here is how we would approach it.
Start with plants that are safe
In a large house, you can keep a toxic plant in a room the pets never visit. In a small apartment, there is rarely such a room, and a cat can reach almost anywhere. So the simplest approach is to choose plants that are listed as non-toxic to cats and dogs in the first place. We have covered the basics in our list of pet-friendly plants, and the short version is that there are fewer safe choices than you might hope, but enough pet-safe plants to fill a small home.
Even with safe plants, non-toxic does not mean edible. A pet that chews a lot of any plant may be sick, so it still makes sense to place plants where they are not too tempting, and to call your vet if a pet seems unwell after eating one.
Three plants we recommend
For a small apartment, we like plants that give a lot of greenery for their footprint and do not mind ordinary indoor conditions.
A parlor palm is the easiest place to start. It grows slowly into a soft clump of fronds, stays a manageable size for years, and copes with the less-than-bright corners that apartments often have. It is one of the few palms that tolerate low light well.
A calathea brings color and pattern, with striped and painted leaves that fold up at night. It needs steady moisture and some humidity, so it is happiest in a bright bathroom or kitchen, which in a small apartment can be the most useful plant space you have.
A Boston fern adds a lush, trailing look and does best hanging, which keeps it off precious floor and shelf space and out of reach of most pets.
If you want more choices, browse our pet-safe collection, which brings these plants together with notes on care.
Use the vertical space
In a small home, the floor is the most crowded space you have, and it is also where dogs and young cats do most of their exploring. Going up solves both problems.
- Hanging planters, hung from ceiling hooks near a window, use space nothing else is using.
- Wall shelves above furniture keep plants out of a dog's reach, though not always out of a determined cat's.
- A narrow plant stand with several tiers fits into a corner and holds several plants in the footprint of one.
- Window shelves, fitted across the frame, put plants right in the best light in the apartment.
Make plants less interesting
Most pets lose interest in plants once the novelty wears off. You can speed that up.
- Give cats their own pot of cat grass. It often draws attention away from your other plants.
- Cover the soil with a layer of large, smooth pebbles. It stops digging, and it stops cats treating a big pot as a litter tray.
- Pick up fallen leaves promptly. A leaf on the floor is a toy; a leaf on a plant is just a leaf.
- Give a new plant a few supervised days. Curiosity peaks early.
Light in a small apartment
Small apartments often have only one or two windows, so light is usually the real limit on how many plants you can keep. Put the plants that need the most light closest to the glass, and fill shadier spots with tolerant plants such as the parlor palm. If light is very limited, a small grow light on a shelf can double the space you can use.
Start with one
If you are new to plants or new to sharing them with pets, start with a single parlor palm. Watch how your pet reacts and how the plant settles in. Once both are happy, you will have a much better feel for what your space and your animals can handle, and adding a second and third plant will be easy.