Tightwad top ten: indoor flowering plants

If you spend an average of $20 a week on fresh flowers, that could add up to more than $1,040 a year! Buying flowering indoor plants will help to stretch your flower budget and provide you with lots of variety throughout the year. Tightwad has compiled a list of potential picks for indoor flowering plants for your indoor botanical paradise.

10. African violets: These have the potential to remind you of afternoons at your grandma's, but African violets are compact and free flowering. With careful watering, high humidity and bright (not direct) sunlight, they could bloom up to several times a year.

9. Hibicus: This tropical is available in single and double forms and in many colours. It requires warmth, lots of light and humidity.

8. Bromeliads: Sometimes called urn plants, bromeliads have flowers that rise from the centre of a water-collecting cup in tall, colourful bracts.

7. Christmas cactus: Technically a subtropical forest cacti with drooping red or pink flowers which can bloom twice a year; known as the lipstick plant.

6. Amaryllis: One of the prettiest bulb blooms, the amaryllis bears large, deeply coloured flowers on tall stalks. They typically flower from late December until early summer. At the end of their growth cycle, bulbs can be removed from the soil, stored in a cool, dry place for at least six weeks, and then replanted and brought to bloom again.

5. Peace lily: These tropicals like filtered light, warmth and humidity; with the right conditions flowers will appear in the late summer and last for up to six weeks.

4. Flowering maple: A bushy plant with hardy blossoms.

3. Begonia: Easy to care for plant that is hardy, undemanding and free flowering.

2. Kalanchoe: A hardy succulent that blooms with clusters of small, upright flowers.

1. Orchid: Definitely one of the most architectural plants in terms of appearance, orchids are the largest plant group in the world (who knew?). There tend to be about five varieties commercially available for the home grower. Despite their reputation for difficulty, a careful grower should be able to bring their orchids back into bloom. Whether you can coax a second bloom or not, orchids can have staying power of three months or even longer. Sounds like a pretty good investment!