This Week In Houseplants 19.01.2025

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to get better at plant styling so I’m scouring the internet for ‘real’ examples - i.e. people’s actual homes - that would fit in with my lifestyle.

This broadly boils down to having my plants in spots that I can reach without having to move anything or use a ladder. I need to be able to water my plants in situ (I already have three hanging plants and that is PLENTY) because if I can’t they’ll inevitably perish. I’m bad enough at remembering to water my plants so any barriers to watering must be incredibly low. Are inside irrigation systems a thing? They should be.

I’ve found a couple of recent examples of plant styling inspiration that I really like.

This first one comes with a content warning because the homeowner has a thing for doll’s heads. It’s mentioned in the article, but not, I feel, enough. BUT I love her plant styling - like how she has a lot of plants grouped together but then the rest of the house just has a few dotted about. I also LOVE the mural of the Monstera adansonii on the door.

This house is 100% NOT my vibe (excluding the living room and the cat, which are both glorious) but I still love and appreciate it.

Check out the house here

Next up we have an absolute banger from Cup of Jo. I love CoJ because they find the people first and then are like ‘give us a house tour, I bet it’s cool af’ rather than finding a nice house and reaching out to the owner.

I mean, I’m sure the subjects tidy up before the photographer comes round but they seem more…lived in. They usually haven’t just renovated or hired a designer (which is often the case on other home tours).

I also love to see the plants non-plant influencers choose. Pothos and dracaena and even plant like watermelon peperomia which are such awesome plants but are now apparently deeply uncool. Plants that have been chosen because their owners liked them always look better than ones that have been chosen becasue they’re fashionable.

(Also, the plants tend to be pretty common so they’ve actually been bred to be houseplants and therefore tend to look healthier.)

Check out Camille’s home here

Storytime/Increasing the temperature as a lazy plant hack

My plants are currently looking awful because I’ve been neglecting them (shocking I know) BUT we had some work done of the house in autumn and it’s really helped.

Our house is a single skin 1950s ex-council house and it is COLD.

We needed to replace the radiator in our bedroom (which is huge because the previous owners knocked two bedroom into one) so we took the opportunity to add a second layer of insulated plasterboard (I believe this is the same as drywall in the US, but don’t quote me on that) and fill the void with insulation.

The previous owners had tried to warm up the room by adding a MAHOOSIVE single panel radiator (it’s 2m wide).

When we first noticed that the radiator needed replacing (there was a rust patch) we bought a replacement radiator (equally enormous but a double panel so it’d be way more efficient).

We were having our bathroom redone (taken down to the studs as it had been leaked and was, not to put too fine a point on it, fucked) so we asked the plumber to swap the radiators over.

As it turns out, the thin exterior wall wouldn’t have supported the new radiator’s weight, so we had to wait until they put up the second skin. Luckily the bathroom was done in April and they did the bedroom in October so we just turned the radiator off over the summer.

ANYWAY

We were away when they were doing the work and the plumber kept texting insisting the radiator was too big and the room would be too hot.

He wasn’t wrong. The room is toasty. And we only run the heating for an hour in the morning and a hour in the evening. I can’t sleep in a hot room so it goes off at 6pm.

The plants absolutely love it.

I’m sat here typing in a T-SHIRT and it’s -1°C outside.

It’s glorious. I can dry clothes in TWO HOURS with the dehumidifier running. What a life.

The rest of the house is freezing (except the bathroom because we also had a second wall and insulation put in there) but the bedroom is roasty toasty.

Despite a bit of casual neglect, thrips and the lack of light that accompanies British winter, the plants are doing pretty well! They’re growing nicely! Sure, it’s not as good as summer growth but the warm temperatures and 60% humidity suits them right to the ground.

I do have a *slight* issue where the Scindapsus pictus is layering itself in the African Violet pot - I think it looks cool but it’s gonna make moving it a bit of a chore in future.

She seems happy enough so I’ll leave her until she’s so firmly embedding in there I have to cut her to get her out at which point I’ll kick myself for not simply redirecting her when I first noticed.

A question/observation re Maidenhair Ferns

Anyone else’s maidenhair fern drops all its fronds in winter?

Mine dies right back the soil. Fair enough, some plants go dormant for winter, but it then immediately starts to grow again. In November it looks like I kept a pot of dirt on my coffee table for *reasons* and now look:

Ignore the cages. I have a rabbit that wishes to dig a hole to Australia under the TV cabinet. Alas, she has a cruel owner that only allows her to dig holes in her own pen AND SHE DOESN’T WANT TO DIG THEM IN THERE.

She loves that crease in the carpet more than her own (disabled) child (stage left).

Should we do a very cliched goals section? Yeah, why not.

Goals for 2025

1. Become a millionaire (my plan is to take over Pinterest with plant styling images and save it from AI schill, and for that I need to:)

2. Buy more cool plants - I’m fancying getting into Schismatoglottis but don’t expect to read about them because MAN that’s a hard word to spell.

Pretty cool though.

3. Get into styling plants. I’m NOT a decor person. I love reading about home decor but I’m terrible at executing it. 2025 is the year I stop thinking that it’s a talent that have/don’t have and realising that it’s a skill you can learn.

4. Cure thrips. Can you imagine? I don’t want to exterminate them, because they probably serve an important function BUT what I could find something that they’ll be attracted to and then I could taken them outside?? I suppose I’ll just have to start holding up various items and seeing what they’ll move to. They like blue, as evidenced by those blue sticky traps (that only work on the stupid ones) so I’m thinking some kind of blue chlorophyll?

5. Giving up alcohol - not entirely, because I want wine on my birthday BUT I’ve been given the opportunity to work on a vegan website and I need to find time to a) work on my own stuff - articles, this newsletter, Pinterest, ending thrips and my plants b) work on the vegan website and c) study for my accounting exams. Oh, and work in an accountants full time. I can’t afford to be hungover. It zaps every ounce of creativity and motivation I possess. We’re only 19 days into 2025 and I’m sleeping an hour more per night. Awesome.

The aim to work my bum off in 2025 so I can retire in 2026. Is this likely? No. I have no money and a house that needs renovating (it’s currently perfectly liveable, but hasn’t been updated since the 70s). But a girl’s gotta dream.

So what are your plans for 2025? Plant-related or otherwise, I’m nosy.