Seasonal Cycles, Sharing Indoor Gardening Inspiration and Why I Grow Houseplants
Every time I went into the kitchen this week, I visited spring.
My baby* Hoya lacunosa is blooming on a shelf above the sink.
In her book, The Essence of Paradise, Tovah Martin describes the scent as “carnations spiked with cinnamon.” I wish you could smell it. That little cluster of flowers is only about an inch across and yet it fills the room. Not in an overpowering way. No, it begs me to lean my nose close and breathe in deep.
As a gardener living in Wisconsin, my life is dictated by the drama of the changing seasons. And as an artist inspired by nature and my gardens, these seasonal cycles are even more apparent.
Because my garden sleeps at this time of year, the cycle of the seasons has already shifted my attention to my houseplants. This shows up in my art and here on my blog. I’ve written about houseplants many times over the years, about how I find solace in my indoor garden, about how my houseplants directly inspire my art.
I sometimes fantasize about how lovely it would be to walk out into my garden in January and be surrounded by flowers instead of snow.
Reading Christie Purifoy’s A Home in Bloom, I stumbled upon the chapter “The Necessity of Winter.” “Trying to grow a garden in a place without winter was, for me, like trying to parent a toddler who refuses to take an afternoon nap,” she writes.
Despite my fantasies, perhaps she’s right, everything needs cycles of rest and rejuvenation — the garden and the gardener. This year I’m making a point not to fight it. To slow down and enjoy this period of rest. It’s made a big difference in how I feel.
But I can’t live without my plants. And I’m grateful to be able to surround myself with them, in different ways, no matter the season.
There’s comfort in these cycles. Each year I look forward to the first tomato to ripen. And I also look forward to spotting the first buds on my Thanksgiving cactus.
So many of us can trace our gardening histories to friends or family.
These personal connections between people and plants and plants and people thrill me. They remind me that we’re all connected. To the earth and to each other.
My mom is a big gardener. She’s always filled her homes with houseplants. I fell in love with plants because of her.
As a child I grew houseplants in my bedroom. I pored over my mom’s gardening books and dreamed of my own home, filled with plants. When I went away to college, one of the first things I added to my dorm room was a houseplant. I filled every apartment I’ve ever lived in with plants. When Matthias and I bought our first home, although I was most excited about having a backyard where I could dig in the dirt, I was also delighted that our house had a sunroom and plenty of room for houseplants.
Throughout my development as a gardener, I continued to turn to books.
I devoured every houseplant book I could find at the public library and I began collecting my own library of gardening books, too. In the beginning, many were about houseplants** and they fanned the flames of my plant obsession, inspiring me to fill my spaces with even more greenery and flowers.
Books are another form of connection between people.
I love beautiful photos of plant-filled spaces, but I also delight in personal stories of the authors’ relationships with plants.
“On a north-facing windowsill beside my desk, half-hidden among the African violets, sits a Neapolitan cyclamen, a cloud of pink, violet-sized blossoms rising above it as they have each autumn for the last decade. It’s a very special plant to me because I started it from seed more than ten years ago, one I obtained in a seed-distribution program from the Royal Horticultural Society of London. It’s an old and dependable friend and, like other friends, has been my companion through days of joy and triumph, of tragedy and grief.
It’s that way with houseplants. Beyond their present beauty lie the deeper realms of love and memory. If you’re an indoor gardener I’m sure you have at least one plant, given to you in love or inherited from a friend or relative, whose very sight evokes pleasant recollections. I understand these emotions well because I have plants that my mother once cherished and each time I see them she comes alive again in my mind, full of laughter and the love of family and flowers.”
from the Introduction of Crockett’s Indoor Garden by James Underwood Crockett
Each of my plants has its own story.
The spathiphyllum I rescued from the fire escape over 20 years ago. The pilea cutting sent through the mail by a friend. The begonia grown from a leaf I stole from a public greenhouse. The rubber plant found abandoned on the edge of a cornfield. Even the somewhat boring story of buying a jade plant at the grocery store becomes richer with time — a history shared over more than 25 years.
Perhaps only a true plant nerd would appreciate these stories and connections. Maybe you’re one of those people thrilled by the idea of growing a plant from cuttings you found in the trash.
(I liberated pieces of night-blooming cereus from a trash can where I used to work. The plant is now growing on the top shelf in my studio).
Maybe you love sharing plant babies with your friends and family, passing on the joy of connecting with nature in such an ordinary way.
If that’s the case, you’ll probably agree with me when I say that I can’t imagine not living with plants.
This week I counted my houseplants: 82. 21 in my studio.
I’m always happy to add more houseplants to my space and am delighted in the recent surge of houseplant popularity.
Elvin McDonald writes in his introduction to The New Houseplant,
“While I wrote best-selling books on houseplants in the 1960s and 1970s, this one starts off from where we are today, at the outset of what could be the greatest craze yet for houseplants and indoor gardens. The first one, over a century ago, was fed by the increasing availability of better quality glass, central heating, and running water, not to mention such inventions as the steam engine, typewriter, telephone, and telegraph that speeded communications and facilitated as never before the dissemination of exotics.”
This was published in 1993. How interesting to think of the cycles of trends in the world of houseplants.***
In truth, trends don’t matter. Living with and caring for plants is good for us. It always has been and it always will be.
Tending houseplants brings me joy. Helps root me in the present. Plants give life to my home and they keep me company. Although there’s a bit of a debate as to whether growing plants inside helps to clean the air or not, there’s no question that they have a positive impact when they share our space.
Although this week was wet and dreary, each time I smelled the hoya blooming in the kitchen my mood lightened. Isn’t that reason enough to garden indoors?
I’d love to hear about your relationships with plants.
Do you grow houseplants? Who were your biggest plant influences? Which of your plants’ stories is most special to you? Do you have a favorite gardening book or one that was the biggest influence on you?
More houseplant and gardening inspiration:
Tovah Martin chats with Margaret Roach about growing begonias.
Want to make a terrarium? Tovah Martin shows you how here (she also wrote a book about them).
Lots of information on growing houseplants from the Royal Horticultural Society.
Two of the plants in my studio are citrus, a little lemon and a little lime. Here’s an article about growing them in cold climates.
A fun look at iconic houseplant trends through the decades from Architectural Digest.
Houseplants boomed in popularity during the pandemic thanks in part to social media.
Although it’s tempting, I haven’t allowed myself to fall into the rabbit hole of houseplants on YouTube (I might not ever come out!). My first stop would be Summer Rayne Oakes’ channel.
I didn’t realize that Elvin McDonald is still alive. Here’s an interesting article about his gardening life.
In case you didn’t figure it out, Tovah Martin is one of my favorite garden writers. I love getting glimpses of her garden and her home (her recent books are all illustrated with her photos taken in her home and garden). Here’s a fun article about her garden.
*I call it a baby because it was grown from cuttings of my older plant. I have more hoya cuttings rooting in water in the same window. Last year I shared a video about growing fiddle leaf figs from water-rooted cuttings. Any day now I’m going to cut back the larger fiddle leaf fig baby in my studio and root yet another baby plant. Maybe I’ll document that process in another video.
**So many new books have been published on the subject of houseplants and although I do have a few, I still enjoy the books in my vintage stack of houseplant books. James Crockett’s book is the oldest in my collection (published in 1978). It was one that I pored over as a child from my mom’s collection. I was delighted to find my own copy as an adult. The rest in this stack were published between 1991-2001.
A Growing Gardener by Abbie Zabar
Essence of Paradise: Fragrant Plants for Indoor Gardens by Tovah Martin
Well-Clad Windowsills: Houseplants for Four Exposures by Tovah Martin
Gardenhouse: Bringing the Outdoors In by Bonnie Trust Dahan
Crockett’s Indoor Garden by James Underwood Crockett
Indoor Gardens: Fresh Ideas for Growing Beautiful Plants Indoors by Eleanor Lewis
Gardening in Your Apartment: Creating an Interior Oasis by Gilly Love
The New Houseplant: Bringing the Garden Indoors by Elvin McDonald
Houseplant Style: Creative Ideas for Decorating Your Home by Susan Condor
Living with Plants by George Carter
***Tovah Martin’s book Once Upon a Windowsill is a fascinating look at the early history of houseplants.