16 July 2025

Potted histories

When lives are in flux, house plants are a source of constancy and calm.

Photo by Gerry Brakus

A friend asked me the other day where I would recommend for buying house plants. There was a time when I was known for this sort of thing. They’d litter up my Instagram feed; I’d write whole features about the rise of the Monstera deliciosa or why Ficus elastica was a better shout than the rather more fashionable Ficus lyrata. I interviewed several people about how to keep the notorious “string-of-pearls” succulent (Senecio rowleyanus) alive after killing two of them, then vowed never to bother again. But these days that knowledge has been pushed out by other things. I suggested she hit either New Covent Garden Flower Market, or Columbia Road.

It was a timely inquiry. This morning, a friendly stranger arrived on my doorstep with a friend and a wheelie bin and took my 6ft-tall fiddle leaf fig (Ficus lyrata) away with them. Christopher Figgins, as we knew the plant, moved in shortly after we did, five years ago. He had witnessed many a board game and an after-dinner chat, several parties, some blazing rows, and the adventures of a baby who became a toddler who likes to water him more than he needs. When we went on honeymoon for three weeks we returned to find him newly in leaf. The friend who was house sitting said she had fed him chocolate biscuits.

We loved Figgins, and that is why we had to let him go. We’re about to move into an absolute wreck and become renovation bores. There’s another baby on the way. Figgins developed scale and fell into a non-existent watering pattern. He needs a re-pot. He needs his leaves polishing. And so off into the wheelie bin he went.

I’ve always maintained that it is better to pass a plant on than watch it slowly disintegrate under your care (or lack thereof). Before the first baby turned up I palmed a load of house plants off on my mother, who has better light and puts them in the bath when she goes on holiday. It’s nice to see them flourishing when I visit. My house plant collection, once plentiful, now consists of: several desiccated money trees that will survive the apocalypse; a blue star fern that somehow just keeps on living and Donna, the incredible spider plant that a colleague gave me before she went on mat leave, days before lockdown. Both plant and human have since sprung babies, and I’ve repotted some of them (the leafy ones, I mean). Life moves on.

I find the exchange of house plants particularly interesting because, more than any other element of gardening, they attract sensational headlines and fanatical consumer behaviour. In recent years, stories in the press have included “Poachers target South Africa’s succulent treasure chest” and “Millennials are obsessed with house plants because they can’t afford kids”, but it’s a phenomenon that goes much further back in history. In 1976, the Canadian synthesizer pioneer Mort Garson made an entire album for plants to listen to (Mother Earth’s Plantasia, which has enjoyed a recent resurgence). In the 17th century the aristocracy went wild for growing pineapple plants, and, later on, young Victorians welcomed house plants in an era of mass upheaval, unstable urban housing and concerns about decreasing air quality in the home. Sound familiar?

Christopher Figgins’s retirement to a more restful home (or rather, a more devoted one: he will now live with two toddlers rather than one) is more to do with my life circumstances changing than a great societal shift. There are still plenty of millennial and Gen-Z plant fanatics out there, pockets of whom are spending considerable sums for particularly beautiful specimens – or even plant-consultant services to choose and care for them. But hoarding dozens in one curated plant corner is somewhat sniffed at in an era when conscious consumption is key.

I have not ruled out acquiring new house plants – a few months ago I bought a charming variegated oak leaf geranium from the tiny courtyard garden of Dennis Severs’ House in east London. But I won’t be importing any human-sized fig trees soon. And nor will I have to: it transpires that Christopher hasn’t gone very far at all. His new custodians live around the corner from the home we’re moving in to. I’ve already been invited to visit once he’s settled in.