Indoor gardening

I happily admit that although I enjoy gardens and having a nice outdoor space, I'm really not a keen gardener at all. I do like indoor plants, and find them far more manageable - and although I'm sure my husband would scoff, I think I do know the kinds of plants which I can look after with reasonable success (hardy ones!), and what to avoid (anything delicate!).

I grew up in a home with plants on all windowsills - mostly geraniums and amaryllis, but various others along the way too. I remember once buying a tiny cactus, the size of the top part of my thumb from a primary school fete, and eventually getting the news that it flowered while I was at university! And through my teens I often had busy lizzies on my windowsill - although they inevitably succumbed to whitefly and had to be disposed of. So generally, having indoor plants is just part of my life.

Over the past few years, the collection of cacti has increased a bit - one was given to our elder daughter as a present when she went to university, but it now seems very happy on our bathroom windowsill and even flowered beautifully for a couple of months. The largest cactus in the collection belongs to our younger daughter - it's been in need of repotting and straightening up for a long time now, but this keeps getting put off due to the incredibly vicious spikes! The other cacti were bought for my garden office, but moved into the house when I did in the autumn. They seem so happy on the bathroom windowsill that I'll leave them there, and will buy some other plants for the office now that I'm more aware of the lack of direct sunlight where I'd like to have them so I see them best.

I've had several orchids over the years, and have had either total disaster or sustained success with them! It seems that as long as I have a windowsill which faces west-ish, they're happy - especially if they're in a room where I will remember to water them appropriately! This one was a gift from the previous owners when we bought our current house and moved in last July. It reflowered in the winter, and seems to have survived the scale insects which tried to adopt it as their home. I'm now keeping a close eye on it, and spraying it regularly to try and ensure the infestation is kept at bay. Current progress shows no new insect activity, but a couple of new leaves developing nicely. The photo below is from about 10 days ago, and the leaf-lets are considerably bigger now.

I have a second orchid which lives on the mantelpiece which we bought last autumn some time. Its initial flowers are long-since past, but I'm trying to look after it and nurture it as well as I can. When I recently checked it to see if it needed watering, I was very excited to notice a new little green shoot at the base of the leaves, so hopefully this might grow more too...

I also got my first air plants last summer - one in the living room and one in the bedroom which I was using as my workspace over the winter. I've read up on their care, and have watered them both once in the past few months. So far they seem to be surviving...

My dragon plant tends to look a little shabby as one of the cats is determined to eat it (yes, it's poisonous to cats, so we keep a close eye on the rare occasions the cat is downstairs and near it!). This was a housewarming gift three houses (seven years) ago, and is surviving. It's not the happiest ever, but seems to be holding on! It needs repotting, and will hopefully flourish once that's done.

Kalanchoe is a popular succulent, and I have a lovely bright red one. As with so many plants, despite the fact I've only had it for a few months, it's in desperate need of repotting. I'm hoping that once that's sorted, it will spread its roots and be happy - previous ones have generally suffered due to my lack of potting on, and have just given up once they were too cramped and had used up all the nutrients in the compost.

Very sadly, my lovely little chilli plant succumbed to my inattention in the warm weather last week. I'd been meaning to pot it on for absolutely months, but hadn't quite ever got around to it, and it didn't survive the hot sun and lack of water. I'd been so proud of it, too - grown from seed and survived over 18 months. Most things I try to grow from seed don't make it through 18 days or weeks, let alone anything like this long. Fortunately the kind colleague who gave us the parent plant a few years ago has a surfeit of chillis again this year, and has generously offered to provide another. I'll have to try and do better next time!

And now that I've admitted just how many of the houseplants need repotting I'm absolutely going to have to do something about it. Maybe at the weekend...