Liven up your indoor space with easygoing plants
The first thing you should know about houseplants is that it probably isn’t your fault when they don’t thrive. According to Alyssa McClary, co-owner of Penumbra Plant and Gift Shops, which has shops in Concord and Goffstown, it’s not so much a matter of keeping plants alive as it is a matter of choosing the right plant to begin with. Most of us tackle houseplants backward, she said. We see a plant that looks interesting to us, then take it home and try to keep it alive, instead of picking a plant based on the conditions it will be living in.
“There’s so many people who just assume that they have a black thumb,” McClary said. “And it’s because someone said to them, ‘Oh, here’s X plant. It’s so easy!’ And then it isn’t.”
McClary used spider plants as an example.
“Some people will tell you that spider plants are the easiest plants alive,” she said. “I murder them. They hate my guts. No matter what I do, they always die. And I’m like, no, if you ask me if a spider plant is easy, I would tell you it’s the worst plant.” In point of fact, though, the conditions in her house just don’t suit spider plants.
“The three things that I always ask people when they come in are, what’s the light like where you’re going to put it? How much attention do you want to pay to it? Like, you know, do you need to be getting in there every day? Do you want to set it and forget it? And then do you have pets or anything that’s going to chew on it? My one fear is that I’m going to accidentally have someone gift a plant to someone who ends up killing their cat. If we find out anything is toxic, we usually don’t carry it anymore because it just stresses me out too much.”
Plant stores in this story
Convalis Plant Service (978-873-6015, liveconvalis.com) is like a concierge service for houseplants. In addition to holding plant workshops and designing living and working spaces around plants, Melanie Rose will treat plants in clients’ homes, repotting, pruning and providing general care for them.
The House By the Side of the Road (70 Gibbons Highway, Wilton, 654-9888, housebyshop.com) sells a huge variety of indoor and outdoor plants in a giant series of greenhouses. It stocks many, many types of pots, and probably has the largest choice of houseplants in the area. (There is also a pond with a fountain, koi fish and very pampered turtles.)
Lushes Leaves by Lulu (55 Lake St, 3-3A, Nashua, 300-8533, lushesleavesbylulu.com) specializes in indoor houseplants of all kinds and plant accessories, as well as consultation to choose the best plants for a given space, and workshops to take care of them.
Penumbra Plants and Gifts (10 N. State St., Concord, 731-9469; 24c Main St., Goffstown; penumbra.shop) has two locations. In addition to selling plants and plant accessories, the shops hold houseplant-themed workshops and will even pot your new plant for you.
The Terracotta Room (1361 Elm St., Manchester, 518-8779, theterracottaroom.com) sells plants, pots and plant accessories as well as providing new-age plant match-making services.
Finding the right plant
Melanie Rose runs Convalis Plant Service and provides a host of houseplant-related services, including consulting with business owners and homeowners to help them choose plants that will thrive in particular spaces. She said that when you’re choosing a new plant you have to look at things from the plant’s perspective: “You have to know what each plant needs as far as sun and water. It’s just really easy to just assume from what we’ve been told, to water our plants once a week. Everyone kind of gets attached to that idea. And that’s just so outdated and so not true, because every plant is different and every spot in your home is different. Nothing’s cookie cutter.”
Alyssa McClary agrees. “So often, people think that they need to have incredibly high, beating-down sun for plants,” McClary said. “But honestly, we specialize in indoor plants and so all of our stuff is mostly tropical and it’s used to being in a rainforest under a canopy of trees and never getting direct sun on it.”
For Nicole Rocha, co-owner of The Terracotta Room in downtown Manchester, there’s also an intuitive aspect to choosing and living with a plant.
“What I’ve noticed over time,” Rocha said, “is that a plant will actually choose you, if you give it a chance. So a lot of times most people have sort of scanned our plant area a little bit before they ask that question. And then I’ll usually ask them, well, was there one that spoke to you? … I would say nine out of 10 times, whoever I’m speaking to says, ‘Oh, well, actually I was looking at this plant.’ It’s kind of funny how that works out so much of the time.”
So which plants do well in which situations?
Sue Dubois is in charge of plant care in the plant greenhouses at the House By the Side of the Road in Wilton. She said the most popular plants are popular for a reason.
“Pothos and philodendrons and related plants are a lot of the most common and popular plants,” Suvoia said. “Most people have something like this in their house. They tend to be pretty easy to take care of for people who just like to have a plant sit there and, if they forget to water them, they don’t really mind that so much.”
Pothos are especially forgiving, Dubois said. “They’ll do generally pretty well in a moderate to bright light situation, but typically, fluorescent and office-type lights will be good enough for them. They like a little bit of neglect, absolutely.”
Pothos are vining plants, sometimes with variegated (multi-colored) leaves. If you’ve been at your bank or your dentist’s office and seen a vine winding its way over several rooms, it was probably a pothos. You don’t have to let a pothos vine go crazy, Dubois said; if you clip it at the length you want, the plant will get started growing a new one. It’s pretty easygoing that way. “They do like some natural sun, so if there’s windows, that’s good,” she said. “But lower light is typically fine for them, which makes them easy to care for, and they don’t mind the dry air in an office.”
What’s a good indoor plant for someone who wants something visually interesting?
“That’s It’s a very personal decision,” Dubois said, “but I think succulents look super interesting.” Succulents are drought-resistant plants like cactuses and aloes. “Some people like plants that have a lot of that thick, lush foliage and looks more jungle-like, but to some people it’s just too much and they want something that has a more, like, funky shape,” she said. “They’re all a little unique, so every single one of them is going to grow differently.” On top of that, succulent plants are especially well-suited for forgetful plant owners, she pointed out — most of them thrive on not being watered. “It kind of depends on the cactus,” she said, “but they like to go totally bone-dry so they’re good for people who ignore their plants or don’t want to have to do a whole lot to take care of it.”
While Dubois is obviously very good with plants, she is also extremely busy, she said, so she has a variety of plants in her own home, not just exotic ones.
“I have a few pothos and philodendrons,” she said, “but they grow large, so I also have a lot of the different cactus and succulents that remain smaller, because I don’t have a ton of space for all the plants that I would love to have. And I’ve started getting more interested in having hoyas, which are, you can think of them like a tropical succulent. They like plenty of light, but they like to dry out in between. Those come in a lot of different leaf shapes and colors and varieties. They will drape down, they will also climb up, and they have really funky flowers that are like a cluster of little stars and they smell really interesting. There are some that smell a little bit like hot chocolate.”
Alyssa McClary is also a big fan of low-maintenance plants.
“One of my favorite [plants] to recommend to people is snake plants,” McClary said. “Their fancy name is dracaena. Some people refer to them as mother-in-law’s tongue. And they’re tall, and green, sometimes green and white or green and yellow, and they can … survive in anything. You can put them in full sun, you could have them in a windowless basement. They don’t need to be watered very often. They can thrive on neglect. And, according to NASA, they’re the best air purifiers. They pull formaldehyde out of the air. They stay nice and upright. If you need like a tall plant that isn’t going to cost you a ton or need a lot of energy or time, those are a fantastic option.”
Very forgiving, hard-to-kill plants
According to Tiffany Smith, owner of Lushes Leaves by Lulu (55 Lake St, 3-3A, Nashua, 300-8533, lushesleavesbylulu.com), these are the five houseplants that are the hardest to kill:
Snake Plant (Dracaena trifasciata) – “I feel like these are one of the hardest plants to kill. They don’t require a lot of light, they don’t require a lot of water, so you really don’t have to watch them closely.”
Pothos (Epipremnum aureum) – “These are a great office plant. You can have them in your bathroom. They do well in, I feel like, any type of environment, low light, high light. I just feel like they thrive anywhere.”
ZZ Plant (Zamioculcas zamiifolia) – “This is another indoor house plant that I feel can tolerate any type of climate. They have waxy, smooth, glossy leaves. They are native to East Africa. They require low light. Their water is stored in their roots.”
Peace Lily (Spathiphyllum spp.) – “These also have glossy, green leaves. They give out these elegant white flowers. They’re great office plants. I feel like they’re easy to maintain. They do get a little dramatic at times, but that’s only because they’re a little thirsty and they need some water; then they perk right back up.”
Rubber Tree (Ficus elastica) – “These are very cool looking; they’re very tall. They don’t require a lot of light, and they’re really hard to kill.”
Finding the right pot
For many people a given houseplant is only half the story. The pot a plant is in communicates a lot about you, your tastes and your relationship with your plant. Your monstera (another easy-to-take-care-of plant with holes in its leaves) will be just as happy growing in a yogurt container with a couple of holes poked in the bottom as it will be in a solid brass antique spittoon. It really only cares about two things: size and drainage.
A lot of beginning plant people jump the gun and use too big a pot, Melanie Rose said.
“That is also another very common mistake because they want a huge plant,” Rose said. “So they put a 4-inch plant in a 10-inch pot and it actually slows that growth down.” You only want to go up by an inch or two when you change pots, she said.
Sue Dubois said that some plants are OK with going into a much bigger pot, but that it still pays to be conservative with the size of a pot.
“If you’re starting with a really teeny, tiny plant that has a very small, fine, delicate root system,” Dubois said, “and if it’s in a 2-inch pot, you’d go to like a 3-inch one. But if you have, say, a monstera that’s in an 8-inch pot and its roots are busting out everywhere, that’s a plant that will take advantage of a little bit more space. So you could go to a 10-inch, but you might be able to go to a 12-inch pot because they’re fast growers and have pretty intensive root systems that grow quickly, so they’ll take advantage of that extra space rather than succumb to root rot.”
In terms of the pot itself, Dubois is a big fan of unglazed terra cotta. “It has good moisture-wicking,” she said. “The soil will dry generally fairly evenly throughout the pot rather than starting from the top down, which can sometimes be difficult. Glazed pots that just have a drainage hole at the bottom can be misleading. It might be dry on top, but it might still be really wet on the bottom — you get a lot more even drying with the terracotta. So it’s a little bit easier to manage your plants sometimes by going with the terracotta. And terracotta always just looks really nice, and they age differently. Every pot will end up looking different in the end because of the way the mineral salts will leach out through it.”
Alyssa McCary said she’s been selling a lot of clear plastic pots recently. “People love them because you can see all the roots,” she said. Some people like growing their houseplants in media like perlite, with no soil at all. “So you can really keep an eye on the roots with those clear pots, which is kind of cool.”
One interesting potting hack is to drill a drainage hole in the bottom of a dollar store bowl or a thrift shop vase. This requires the use of a masonry drill bit that fits into a regular electric drill.
According to Karen Henderson, owner of Ace Hardware in Goffstown, although drilling through glass or ceramic takes longer than plastic or wood, the process is the same.
“It just fits in a regular drill,” Henderson said, “and allows a controlled way to put a hole into a circular hole into a piece of ceramic, tile, glass, any of those things. You just have to be careful that you’re not putting too much pressure on it at a time, so you don’t crack it or make a much bigger hole than you’re looking for.”
Sue Dubois said there is an easy work-around for people who are intimidated by the idea of using a drill: “If you pick out a pot that has no drainage hole, and you aren’t willing to try to drill one, just keep the plant inside its nursery pot and set it inside the fancier pot as a decorative saucer.” The important thing, she said, is that the plant has some drainage. “Most plants are not going to want to sit in a puddle of water. Drainage is important because the roots do need air as well.”
Water
“Overwatering is a problem because drowning is the fastest way to kill your plant,” Melanie Rose said. Most plants don’t like to have their roots soaking in water. “It goes right into root rot and it’s very hard for your plant to heal from that; it’s just sitting and suffocating the roots. So sometimes it’s fine to just let your plant sit and wait for it to dry out. A lot of times during the fall and winter season, it’s best to just remove all that soil and give it fresh, dry soil to give it a break. I like to say right about this time of the year to water most houseplants about once every three weeks or so. Of course that depends on the plant and the location.”
Do you name your plants?
Alyssa McClary: “Oh, definitely. Whenever little kids come in and they get a plant, I’m always like, ‘You’ve got to name it.’ And they’re like, ‘Really?’ The more that you talk to the plant, name the plant, whatever extra kind of care you give to your plant, I like to think that the plants feel it. Sometimes I do name my plants human names. I played roller derby for 12 years and I like those kind of like roller derby names; pun names are right in my wheelhouse.”
Nicole Rocha: “I think it’s important. It would be like if we didn’t have names and we were walking around nameless. A plant likes a name, too. And a plant likes to be talked to as well, even though it can’t talk back. I think all the things that we crave as humans — water, food — plants do, too.”
Melanie Rose: To each his own. When I first started getting my own houseplants, I did start to name them all. But then you lose track or you feel extra sad if you lose one. So now I just give them funny little names like my Fiddle Leaf Fig. It’s just Figgy. I just keep it simple.”
Bugs
At some point most of us encounter swarms of tiny flies that have taken up residence in one of our plants.
“Those are fungus gnats,” Melanie Rose explained. “They aren’t fun to deal with, because most people don’t know they’re just living in the soil.” She said the flies actually have no interest in your plant — they feed on fungus that develops in the soil if it is too damp. “So when you spray things like neem oil on your plant, it doesn’t touch or affect those guys.”
“And the wetter it is, the faster they populate in the soil and fly to your other plants, which is not good,” she noted. “So the first, usually, defense I like to say is let all your plants go as dry as you can without killing them. Let them wilt just a little bit. And that just makes it harder for them to reproduce into dry soil. And then the next thing you want to do to treat them is horticultural diatomaceous earth. And it’s just kind of made of crushed seashells, basically, into like a fine powder that you kind of coat the top of your plant and soil with. Those yellow sticky cards really don’t do a whole lot. They just kind of catch them and kind of help you identify what plants are infested.”
New plant from old plant
Some plants — usually ones with well-developed stems — will grow from cuttings. What this means is that if you cut a piece of stem or vine from a plant and leave it in water or soil, small nodules at the base of each leaf stem will branch out into new roots. Once the roots have grown sufficiently, the cutting can be planted to grow a whole new plant.
“Every plant can be a little bit different,” Melanie Rose said. “With most plants that are really easy to propagate — like pothos and philodendron — you can throw it right into water and propagate it that way. And then after just a few weeks typically you’ll see some roots on those guys and then they’re free to go back into small pots.”
“The thing I love about pothos is that they’re so easy to propagate,” Alyssa McClary said. “You can just snip off the parts that start to get long. You look for a node, you cut it above it, you throw it in some water, and you just kind of let it be until, ‘Oh, look! it’s got a bunch of roots!’ I tell people all the time, if you own one of these, no one you know should ever need to buy one. You can just be propagating them all the time, and giving them out as Christmas gifts.”
Poinsettias
Every year during the holidays, most homes end up with a poinsettia. People get them as gifts or pick one up on their way out of the grocery store, and the brightly colored foliage can really cheer up a room. But by February most of them are dead and on the curb, waiting to be taken away with the trash.
Melanie Rose said poinsettias are fairly straightforward to take care of, as long as you remember that they are tropical plants.
“The first thing is a lot of people don’t think to wrap their plants when they’re either bringing them somewhere or buying them from the store,” Rose said. “Just a few seconds of that cold air can really damage the plant and start you off on the wrong foot. I can’t tell you how many times I see people run out of, you know, Home Depot with a palm tree in the 20-degree wind. And I’m like, ‘That thing will be dead by the time they get it home.’”
“The real tricky thing with poinsettias is water,” Rose continued. “They are very prone to overwatering and root rot. It really only takes about two times to overwater it before it starts to kill the roots. But it does need to dry out a little bit. So I like to tell people, get in a good habit of checking on your poinsettia every three days for water. And when that top 2 inches of soil is dry, it’s OK to water.” She said not to believe the plant hack of throwing a few ice cubes into the pot each day.
“No plant wants ice water,” she said.
