Houseplants in Shade on a Windowsill: Ivy and Pothos

An ivy plant and a pothos plant, on a mostly-shaded windowsill, with a sunny view of a tree out the window

Oct 17th, 2011, by Alex Zorach

This photo shows two of my houseplants, an ivy plant named Girard, and a Pothos plant named Geraldine, on my windowsill.

The lighting in this photo makes for a markedly less visually-appealing composition than in the photo of the other windowsill in the same room. However, the composition of this photo is deliberate: I wished to honestly capture the fact that this windowsill receives considerably less light than the other one. Because of this, I placed two shade-tolerant plants, the ivy, and the pothos, here, rather than on the other windowsill.

These two houseplants have been thriving...each of them has lost exactly one leaf since I purchased them about three months ago, and they have both grown numerous leaves. The pothos has grown more yellow-colored variegation on its leaves, which suggests to me that it has more than ample light levels for its needs. You can see an earlier picture of the ivy to see how much it has grown.