Meeting your plant match

My mother was a plant lady.

Coleus. Sansevieria. Cactus. Pothos. Philodendron. Spider. African violets. Orchids. And a spectacular Christmas cactus. 

Plants could be anywhere in the house, but her big plant space was in the big bay window in the family room, which caught a lot of sun. She had special risers built up at the window's base to hold part of her collection, and all sorts of plants hung from hooks in the window itself, or perched on the sills.

She had a long thin hose that ran from the kitchen out to the family room so that she didn't have to keep coming back to the sink to refill her watering can. 

My mother also had outdoor plants - like bridal wreath and a lilac bush - as well as flowers: tulips, irises, Sweet William...

But indoor gardening was her real thing, and she definitely had a green thumb.

Which I did not inherit. (I did get the unwrinkled skin and the good legs, so there's that.)

I'm not a complete plant killer. Over the years, I've managed to have and hold (i.e., keep alive for a while) the plants you can't kill. Like sansevieria, philodendron, and coleus (my personal favorite). I also manage to keep my Christmas poinsettias alive and kicking until July.

Until my neighbor Brian took over, I "managed" the garden out front of our building, and had good luck with impatiens, which fortunately thrive in the shade and don't require much care. 

A couple of times a month, I get cut flowers at Trader Joe's, usually a bunch of alstroemeria, which are inexpensive and last for a good long time.

But mostly I'm not a plant lady.

Which is not to say that I don't like plants. And which is not to say that I don't have plants. 

Thanks to my sister Kath, who spends half the year in Tucson, I have a couple of money plants. These are exceedingly hearty. Water occasionally, spritz occasionally. They seem to survive my benevolent (or not) neglect. They sit there in front of my never-used fireplace, and look just fine. 

The original plan was that Kath would retrieve the plants on her return to Boston each spring, but that became too much of a PITA for her. So they're mine, with Kath retaining visitation rights.

Originally, there were three money plants, but my niece Molly's friend Julia expressed an interest in taking one. Which she did. I saw Julia over the summer and forgot to ask her whether she's still got it going.

The money plant, because it is low maintenance, is pretty much my plant ideal.

Still, if I lived in London, I might have dropped in to the Joy of Plants pop-up in Mayfair to figure out whether there's an even more perfect plant match out there for me. At the pop-up, you can spend some time getting to know a plant before committing to a purchase and taking one home. A speed-date of sorts.

A spokesman, from TheJoyofPlants.co.uk, said: "Finding a new plant love isn’t all that different to finding a new partner. It takes a lot of research, some trial and error and a sprinkle of chemistry to find ‘the one’.

“So, we’ve set up this plant dating pop up to help match plant singletons with their leafy love matches.

"As the winter nights are beginning to draw in, and we’ll be spending more time inside, we are encouraging everyone to get ‘plant-nered’ up.” (Source: The Sun)

The idea for the plant matchmaking stemmed - get it? stemmed? hah-hah-hah - from research that:

...found the typical adult has owned a single plant for as many as five years, with just seven per cent claiming they have managed the same length of time in a human relationship.

I'm not yet there with Kath's money plants, but I'm pretty sure I've had plants somewhere in my life that lasted for five years. And I don't want to brag, but I've been in plenty of human relationships that have lasted a good while longer. Including my relationship with Kath's, which is now pushing 73 years of age.

I suppose they meant romantic relationships, and, while I can't claim a 73 year partnership, my husband and I were together for nearly forty years - eight times the longevity of the average plant relationship - before Jim died. (I was going to say "was planted six feet under," but that would have seemed callous. Or at least tacky. Plus I don't recall that the portion of his ashes that were buried, rather than strewn, went six feet deep.)

The Brits take their plant relationships seriously, but the top three considerations aren't exactly surprising.

When deciding which plants to commit to, the top three ‘vital statistics’ adults look for include how much water they need, what type of light suits them and where they might fit in within their home’s current aesthetic.

Although I would think that cost would factor in, or the required upkeep (beyond watering). 

Oddly, the research found that:

...nine per cent believe houseplants and flowers make a good companion in their life.

I don't see the companionship angle at all. Companionship, it seems to me, has got to have some two-way-street element to it. A dog will lick your hand. A cat will allow you (maybe) to pet it. But a plant? Nice to look at, but a companion?

My mother's not here to ask, so maybe she did get some sort of companionship from her plants. She was widowed young, and once she became an empty nester, she lived alone for many years. So...

I do know that she cared deeply for her plants. When she went to Florida each year for a month, which she did in the last decade of her life, she had someone look in on them. 

Me? 

I'm not feeling the companionship vibes from those money plants.

Maybe if I got a plant more to my liking, things would change. Is it time to invest in a colorful coleus? 

If only I were in London, there'd be someone to help me figure it all out.

But I'm not, so I won't be meeting my plant match anytime soon.