They’re everywhere. Delicate trails of ivy at your local cafe. Big, trendy Monstera leaves sprouting from pots in share houses. Overlooked palms needing some TLC in the corner of your office.

Millennials stuffing their homes with plants has become the focal point of think pieces, and #urbanjungles are blooming everywhere on Instagram. For your clichéd twentysomething with a bit of extra cash lying around, plant obsession is a thing.

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Now new research from the University of Melbourne and RMIT University has shown how plants can make a room - and the people living inside it - healthier.

The Plant Life Balance research has been released today alongside an augmented reality app to help Australians decide which plants could be most beneficial to them. It found that having five indoor plants in the home can dramatically boost air quality and mental wellbeing.

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“Human beings need to be connected to nature. We evolved in nature, it’s only really in the last 200 years that we’ve become more and more urbanised,” University of Melbourne Researcher Dominique Hes told Hack.

The study looked at 101 published scientific articles in Australia to analyse the benefits of plants.

“Taking those 101 studies and doing regression analysis, we came up with a curve for wellbeing, and a curve for indoor air quality.

“When you are near plants, your brain is actually more relaxed, more in tune more able to think and communicate and use those higher brain powers when it is relaxed.

Connecting us to nature by using indoor and outdoor plants will help our brain be more relaxed and therefore improve our wellbeing.

“Current estimates indicating that urban dwellers spend 90 per cent of their time in indoor environments – resulting in a high level of exposure to indoor contaminant compounds.”

Those compounds, found in carpets, paint and furniture, can have a negative impact on productivity, mood and allergies, the research found.

Dominique says the benefits of having plants in the home could be compared to how sleep quality affects your life.

“It’s not as extreme as the difference between being sleep deprived to having a wonderful night’s sleep; [but having plants around you] gives you the ability to be more alert, more connected, more intuitive, more creative, more able to communicate.

“From the air quality side, even one medium plant in a medium sized room will make a 25 per cent difference in absorbing toxins from the air.”

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What to do if you’re a notorious plant killer

Part of the Plant Life Balance research is the launch of an app with the same name, which allows you to visualise different plants - and the unique benefits they bring - in your space.

Dominique says if you’re after a plant that will do a great job at cleaning the air, but is pretty hard to kill, Mother-in-law’s tongue is a good place to start.

If *that’s* too hard, Dominique told Hack about the biophilia hypothesis.

“Biophilia is the innate need to be connected to nature. It says that all levels of nature has importance - from a picture of a plant, to a plastic pot plant, to a real pot plant, to a view out of the window, to a park, to a garden, to wilderness.

“We get something from each level, and each level is better than the level of before. So a picture of a plant is better than no plant, but a real pot plant trumps a picture of a pot plant.”

So if you can’t keep plants to save your life, even looking at this isn’t a terrible start.