Bring the daisies indoors! If you’re hoping for a bit of sunshine in your life, and in your indoor spaces, a compass plant is the perfect addition for a sunny office or living room window.
You can manage its height, prune it at will, and watch your home or office become a living wild garden.
With just a few tips and tricks, the Silphium laciniatum can thrive as decor indoors.
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A Compass Plant Is Good for Homes and Offices
Though it is typically a wild prairie sunflower, the compass plant can grow in pots inside and will be happy at 3 feet in a smaller pot but will grow up to 10 feet tall if given enough room to spread out.
With bright yellow flowers that sprout along tall stalks alongside slender, hairy leaves, this cousin to the daisy loves a hot, dry environment.
They even serve medicinal purposes as the hard sap of the plant has been chewed like gum by indigenous cultures for thousands of years. It has been used as a diuretic and emetic, an expectorant, and antispasmodic, and a stimulant.
It will also attract bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, so if you leave a window open, watch out!
The compass plant is a hardy plant, often called pilotweed because of how quickly it grows and how hard it is to kill, so you if you are still cultivating your green thumb, this plant is a great place to start.
Are Compass Plants Good for the Feng Shui Flow of a Room?
The compass plant is not only a rich, abundant plant in a fortuitous color – yellow – but it is also medicinal and food for animals and humans, so the silphium provides excellent feng shui flow.
Furthermore, because the plant is so hardy and grows so tall, it is a symbol of strength and longevity.
Yellow symbolizes strength, nourishment, and fire from the sun, so if you are looking for a highly positive plant in your home, the compass plant is it.
To learn more about establishing feng shui and flow in your home or office, check out the master class article on how to use feng shui.
Are Compass Plants Easy to Grow and Maintain?
Compass plants are extremely easy to grow and maintain as long as you can provide them with enough sun.
How Do Compass Plants Grow?
The biggest issue with growing a compass plant is providing enough soil for the compass plant to grow and thrive to at least its bare minimum height of 3 feet.
What Kind of Soil Does a Compass Plant Need?
The compass plant wants a well-draining soil that does not get overly wet. Remember, it is a desert and prairie plant. But you will need to plant it in a large enough pot for its long roots to spread out. They can reach 10 feet in length!
How Much Light Does a Compass Plant Need?
Place your compass plant in a window that gets a lot of sunlight, so think about a big window with hours of exposure.
How Much Water Does a Compass Plant Need?
Outdoors, you could allow the natural season rain to water this plant and be fine. It is extremely drought tolerant.
Indoors, you will just need to water the plant once its soil gets fully dried out.
For more information on this topic, check out this article on watering mistakes you’re making that are killing your plants for more tips.
Other Conditions that Are Important to a Compass Plant
In terms of humidity, place the compass plant in a hot, dry area in your home or office. A bathroom or kitchen will be far too humid.
A great spot would be right in front of a western facing window where the sun beats down all day, and the air conditioner is not keeping the room cold.
Compass Plant Decorating Ideas
Pilotweed will take up a lot of space if you let it, and because it is so tall, you can place it in a large corner and kind of just let it have its way with the room. It will add a desert vibe to other daisies and alongside succulents.
You can plant it in an oversized clay pot and watch it turn a room in your home or your office into a wild western space in no time.
A room filled with western or desert art, geometric designs, and other clay pots will also go well with your compass plant.
You could think about including other small pots of greenery to offset the bright yellow flowers, as well.
Do Fake Compass Plants Look Real?
If you’re still worried about killing your compass plant, you can absolutely decide to go artificial with this one.
It may be that you simply don’t have the space or the right climate to keep this hardy plant hot and happy enough. And that’s okay.
You can choose from among the many artificial daisy options; you are not limited to the compass plant alone. Indeed, you can create an entire sunflower theme in a room in your home or office with artificial plants from the aster family, and no one would be the wiser.
For those with a black thumb, fake plants are a great option that will still give you a garden vibe and offer many benefits as well.
And if you’re worried about being off trend, check out my piece on whether artificial plants and flowers are tacky.
Whether you go fake or real, the compass plant is a wonderful addition to any home or office and will bring you years of happy plant vibes.
What do you think? Have you had success, or failure, with a compass plant? Tell me about your experience with the compass plant in the comments.
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