I feel that house plants are one of the easiest way to add some personality to your home. Not only do they add some greenery and interest to neutral schemes but they purify the air and if you're like us, you can become really attached to them {and definitely get a bit too excited when you see new leaves growing!}. With this extra warm summer, ours have all been growing at a rate of knots. We always feel a pang of envy when we visit hot countries and see our favourite plants living outside {!} and practically like trees. Oh, to have plants that big or that climate. I share photos of all of my plant babies in the bath when it's watering time, and always get a flood of questions about looking after plants so I thought I'd share a little blog post on our favourite types and some FAQs...

- Where to buy plants? We've always loved having plants at home - I remember Ben's huge yucca's that he'd had for years that we kept on the landing outside our London flat! But over the past few years, our collection has grown as our house has, and also they've become so on trend that there are so many new varieties easily available to buy now. There are new companies popping up all over the place offering a house plant service for your home and it's definitely brought a new micro-gardening trend into play for millennials. We've always found Ikea really great for cheap, healthy house plants along with local garden centres and Columbia Road flower market. We've also used Root houseplants who I found on Instagram and they deliver houseplants to your door!

- Fiddle leaf fig plants are our ultimate favourites, their leaves don't look real. But they can be a little tricky to keep happy. We lost one over that cold Winter when we went away and the house got too cold. I'm hoping this Winter our current one will stay warm!

- I also love Monstera {swiss cheese plants!} and antler ferns with their feathery, stag like leaves. But rubber leaf plants seem to thrive the best in our house.

- We haven't gone as far as naming ours, I think we'd lose count! But we definitely feel pretty attached to them as they've grown with us over the years.

- I think everybody always freaks out over how much, and how often you should water plants. I tend to do ours once every 10 days in the summer, giving them a good soak and about once a fortnight in winter. You can tell though pretty quickly if they're thirsty as their leaves will droop or the compost will look/feel dry and shrink away from the sides of the pot. Some need more than others. They all like humidity so if you can spritz their leaves occasionally too, they seem to like that. But in reality, we're all so busy so you want to choose plants that aren't too high maintenance.

- I like to put them all in the bath as a lot of the pots I keep mine in {baskets} have holes in so if I watered them in situ, it would soak the floor. By putting them all in the bath, or the sink, I give them a good soak and then let them drain there overnight before putting them back. But I think I need to invest in some saucers to sit under them in their baskets, or maybe line the baskets with clear plastic to make it a bit easier to water them now our collection keeps growing.

- Shamefully I've only just bought my first bottle of  plant food, I think you're meant to feed them every couple of weeks in summer when they're growing. But mine have all done fine so far without it. You can also get these really cool leaf shine wipes! I just damp dust mine every so often, their leaves of course are where they soak up energy from the light so you want them to be free from dust.

- You'll quickly work out which position your plant likes around the house. With all of mine they like a lot of light, but not too much all day direct sunlight, ideally away from radiators or cold draughts. We've just installed underfloor heating in our new loft bathroom so I think that might be a good spot to keep some of our plants over winter on tick over or if we go away for a while {as long as they have a small saucer of water so as not to completely dry out}.

- I love the look of plants in baskets and our house is pretty much full now with them.

- If you're not green fingered at all and are scared of paying out for real plants that could drop half their leaves within the first couple of months, there's a huge range of faux houseplants now. These are the best range that I've seen, particularly this fiddle leaf fig in a basket.

I'm currently deciding whether to buy my husband a big cactus like he's always wanted, but they're all over £100 and so spiky!











{Plant bathtime}