Houseplants Leaning To One Side? Rotate Them The Next Time You Water

Houseplants get bald spots, too. If your greenery is placed next to a bright window, you may have noticed it start to grow toward the light over time, leaving little patches of exposed soil behind. This can make plants look lopsided, sparse, and a little sad.

Plants orient themselves toward sunlight thanks to a neat process called phototropism. Phototropism is dictated by auxin, a hormone that tells plant cells to grow toward the light. Auxin is often described as the captain of a plant's ship, as it gives the orders and steers the direction of growth. When a plant is outdoors and surrounded by 360-degrees of sunlight during the day, its auxin levels are evenly distributed and it can grow straight up toward the sky.

Leaning plants tend to be exhausted plants since it takes a lot of energy for them to keep growing in this wonky direction. That's why it's important to rotate your houseplants every once in a while to make sure that their auxin is nice and spread out.

"When you're rotating it, you're basically making sure that every section of the plant is getting exposure to sunlight—and that's how you maintain a really beautiful canopy," Bullene explains. She recommends adding rotations to your regular plant maintenance. "Any time I water my plant, I just give it a little quarter-turn. It's part of my normal routine."