Martin - The Unexpected Houseplant: 220 Extraordinary Choices for Every Spot in Your Home

The Unexpected Houseplant

Tovah Martin

Photography by Kindra Clineff

TIMBER PRESS

PORTLAND | LONDON

Copyright 2012 by Tovah Martin.

All rights reserved.

Photographs copyright 2012 by Kindra Clineff, with the exception of by Tovah Martin.

Published in 2012 by Timber Press, Inc.

The Haseltine Building

133 S.W. Second Avenue, Suite 450

Portland, Oregon 97204-3527

timberpress.com

2 The Quadrant

135 Salusbury Road

London NW6 6RJ

timberpress.co.uk

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

eISBN 9781604694260

Many of the plants in this book have toxic ingredients and may cause serious poisoning to people or pets and/or can cause dermatological reactions or eye irritation. Not all toxic plants are noted in the text. For more information on houseplant toxicity in humans, seek the expertise of qualified medical professionals. For cases of suspected poisoning, call 800-222-1222, the national hotline of the American Association of Poison Control Centers. For pets, visit aspca.org for more information on toxic plants. The author and publisher disclaim any liability whatsoever with respect to losses or damages arising out of the information contained in this book.

A tireless performer of Olympic proportions, Chirita longgangensis never pauses in its flower production.

Anyone can force Iris histrioides George; it buds up rapidly after a brief chilling period.

To Dennis and Rob, for being there
To Einstein, my research assistant

This book was a lifetime in the making. So Im going to delve way back and start by paying homage to my houseplant mentors, Mrs. Bertha Doran and Joy Logee Martin. There were role models along the way, like Elvin McDonald, Mike Kartuz, Peter Loewer, and Thalassa Cruso. Id like to thank the fellow aficionados who blazed tangential paths, such as my friends at Logees Greenhouses and greenhouses in towns large and tiny stretching across the country. At Timber Press, I thank Tom Fischer for his enthusiasm and inputhe put this book on course. Eve Goodmans insight and guiding hand plus Andrew Beckmans artistic advice aided this books journey. Im grateful to Sarah Rutledge Gorman for her skillful, wise, and sensitive editing. My agent, Jane Dystel, worked behind the scenes to make this book happen. My friends Denny Sega, Rob Girard, Peter Wooster, and Naomi Price were touchstones and islands of calm. My mother forfeited several daughterly visits for the sake of this book. Speaking of family, we are indebted to Einstein, the Maine Coon kitten and research assistant, who did the stress and bounce testing. And without the graphic design aid of Tim Preston, the proposal would never have flown. Jody Clineff was her usual bastion of efficiency with the photographic liaison. But most of all, Kindra Clineff deserves all the antiques of her dreams and a bay leaf wreath for the glowing photography in these pages. She put her soul into this bookjust as she infuses every project with her sage ingenuity. Without her creativity, ideas, eagerness, patience, acumen, and friendship, this book would be nowhere.

From the road, it looks like any other house. For anyone tooling through town, my home doesnt really stand out, except perhaps for its preponderance of garden beds visible from the street and the fact that its a tad funkier than the neighboring New England architecture in the center of town. Especially in winter, youd be prone to roll right on by without giving it so much as a second glance. But if you had reason to nose into the driveway, knock on the front door, and slip inside, it would be a whole different story.

Basically, if you dont like plants, dont bother to enter. Agoraphobics will be just as agri-challenged inside as they are in the field. Because within that unassuming exterior resides a wonderful world of roaming vines and hairy stems. Leaves of all shapes, sizes, textures, scents, and combinations of colors are given free rein. You must brush by them to deliver the FedEx box. Its necessary to engage with the flower spike of the pregnant onion before gaining entry into the converted barn, where the comfy chair awaits. Watch how you angle the groceries around the kalanchoe, because clumsily maneuvered baggage will bring it down. Only dogs with short tails are allowed in.

Wherever it is possible to host plants, my house is wall-to-wall greenery. I didnt bother doing much with decorator colors on the walls; I didnt sweat the window treatments or the framed family portraitsthe plants are my decor. At any given moment, I host hundreds of houseplants, give or take a couple of dozen. In autumn, the inventory might swell when I crowd more plants inside than the light venues can comfortably host. In winter, the amaryllis and other holiday cheerfuls hold forth. In spring, the accumulation swells with seedlings that are destined for outdoors. For a few brief months in the depths of summer, the head count decreases while the majority of my indoor plants sojourn outside. But I keep many succulents and all my terrariums close by because the home feels empty without their green presence. I cant live without the jungle of leafy branches and groping vines that I call home.

And its not as though I dont have green elsewhere in my life. I garden intensively and extensively outdoors in summer. Every weekend, I hop in the car and visit gardens. Then I spend the rest of the year with the enviable job of writing about summer gardens. But I still couldnt live without plants sharing my abode. For me its all about the plants stretching their limbs, forming their buds, expanding new leaves, and responding to my nurturing (or neglect, if called for). And that sensationthat intimacy with natureis what I strive to describe in this book. If nothing else, this is the chronicle of a romance between botany and a kid who craves green.

But under that thin veneer is an ill-concealed attempt to convert you. Im hoping youll buy into this. Im doing my best to demonstrate how plants can change your psyche when you welcome them into your life. Its radical. Its the difference between holding nature at arms length and embracing it into the heart of your home. But dont take my word for itgive plants a chance. Live intimately with them. Let them connect. Experience their cycles and rhythms. Flow them into your agenda. Encourage those tendrils to meander into your everyday experience so theyre inextricably woven into your life. Do it with all the style, creativity, and devotion that you lavish on the other aspects of your life. Do it with the fervor you pour on your pets, for example, and you could end up starting a sweet relationship. Here, in the pages that follow, are the tools youll need to achieve your in-house botanical bond.

Just about every sunny or semi-sunny window in my home entertains plants like Stapelia scitula, echeveria, Begonia Zip, and