Gardens
Greenery-
yallery
Ursula Buchan
Those who have been paying strict attention may wonder why it is that the phrase 'house plant' has never once fea- tured in this column. That may seem rather surprising. After all, a quarter of all households in this country have more than ten house plants (a fact curiously omitted from the 1988, edition of Social Trends, published by HMSO at £21.00); the most convinced non-gardener will have a rubber plant and adolescent avocado tree in the hall even if the garden out the back is a wilderness.
The reason I hesitate to write about house plants is that I grow the 'foliage' tropical kinds rather badly and with almost no enthusiasm; nor do I think myself alone in this. House plants do not require enor- mous skill or even that indefinable quality (so precious to gushy women) known as `green fingers'. But the prosperity of the sub-tropical and tropical species does de- pend partly on where you live. All I can offer them is a dark, draughty cottage when most need reasonable light and are as sensitive to draughts as elderly female relations, showing their annoyance even more eloquently than Aunt Agatha by dropping their leaves.
I have sometimes wondered whether moving house might not be the solution, albeit rather a drastic one, but there are many people who live in light, draughtless, modern houses who have little more suc- cess in the long term than I do. This is because 'foliage' house plants also like constant temperatures and high humidity — just the conditions least likely to obtain in houses where the central heating is turned off for more hours than it is on and the occupants have no wish to live in a cloud of steam.
Although house plants do not like houses, the same cannot be said of house- plant pests, particularly aphids, whitefly, mealy bug and scale, which come down like the entire Assyrian army the moment a house plant is imported, or which, as likely, are brought in with it. Spraying with an insecticide to remove them usually does as much to take the polish off the furniture.
Even if I could give 'foliage' house plants the conditions they want I wonder how much I would bother. Many find their way into our homes because they will survive, more or less, despite adverse conditions and not because of any marked inherent qualities. In the end what are Monstera or Ficus for? Their unrelieved glossy green- ness gets one down after a while, the John Innes No. 3 in the pots soon smells rancid if overwatered (which is easily done) and they never flower. Those few which do, like anthuriums, have such unappealing flowers (known in the trade as spathes) that one rather wishes they had not made the effort. I have grown a Howea palm for eight years; I feed and water it punctilious- ly but I cannot remember when I last thought how nice it was. Am I not growing these plants more for form's sake, or to fit the cache-pots given as wedding presents (which, incidentally, their 'terracotta' plas- tic containers rarely do), rather than in eager anticipation of continuous pleasure?
House plants come from as great a variety of backgrounds as members of the Labour Party and they mix no more happily together. There is, currently, a vogue for bowls of assorted foliage house plants to be given as Christmas presents, but these last only as long as the holiday before disunity becomes apparent. Quite soon one plant becomes dominant and crowds out its fellows.
The subject of bowls brings me to my greatest objection to foliage house plants: the fact that they encourage the introduc- tion of every kind of worthless tat from white plastic ridged bowls to macrame plant-holders with tassels.
Of course, it would be quite wrong of me to tar all house plants with the same condemnatory brush. Provided one can find somewhere for them to go when not in flower, many flowering house plants more than earn their keep. Cyclamen, Strepto- carpus, the old cottage favourite Campa- nula isophylla, are all content to live on a windowsill in an unheated passage. Gera- niums, or rather zonal pelargoniums, can be shut away in a cold spare room for the winter and scarcely watered and, if cut down to stumps in the spring, will come back invigorated and refreshed from the experience. Being Mediterranean plants, the last thing they need is high humidity. All these can spend the summer outside. I certainly feel that the shifting about which is necessary is preferable to leaving great squat lumps of dust-gathering greenery about the house for years and years.
People like myself who are naturally outdoor gardeners have turned to dried flowers as an alternative for room decora- tion. The immortelles' such as Helichry- sum, Statice and Helipterum, together with ornamental grasses, Achillea and hyd- rangeas, can be grown in the garden, dried, and arranged in (pretty) bowls and bas- kets. Not only do the hungriest greenfly leave them alone but they positively dislike high humidity and, what is more, the darker the room in which they are placed, the better they retain their colours. Thank goodness, I do not need to move house after all.
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