The Challenges of Houseplants: Nature Meets Unnatural

Edward Abbey (*1927-†1989), author and noted defender of America’s wilderness, once wrote that “the indoor life is the next best thing to premature burial.” As denizens of the twenty-first century, most of us spend the great majority of our time indoors, profoundly disconnected from the outdoors, open air that our species — indeed, every species on Earth — has naturally inhabited for millennia; and even for those that may spend their working lives out of doors, vanishingly few of us, save a scattering of lucky cattlemen, cowboys, loggers, lumberjacks, biologist, park rangers, gamewardens, and the like, do so in anything resembling our natural environment, let alone out in the trees and amongst the grasses that our ancestors called home.

It’s no surprise, thus, that as our lives have moved indoors and as the natural greens, yellows, and browns of authentic life on Earth have faded from our surroundings, as plant life, whose textures and shapes, in their varied exuberance and sparsity, have formed since time immemorial not merely the backdrop but the very matrix of space in which our ancestors spent their out-of-door lives, has in all its forms retreated to the margins of daily life, to curated, well-weeded gardens and, perhaps, the odd weekend spent at the camp, many of us, confined indoors, have, in grasping for a connection, no matter its tenuity, to these fellow inhabitants of planet Earth, chosen to bring some small semblances of outdoor Nature into our indoor spaces — this, often, in the form of the small, though sometimes large, potted cacti, philodendra, snake plants, and various other houseplants that grace our otherwise sterile windowsills and countertops.

The indoor spaces into which we are bringing these plants, however, are irreducibly artificial, and these unnatural environments present plant life with a number of challenges. While the interiors of our homes and offices are precisely tailored to human comfort, they are, as far as habitats go, extremely hostile to most other forms of life; indeed, so removed are our houses from the world right outside our doors that many people shudder at the very thought of sharing their homes with cockroaches or with mice, rats, or mold, mildew; and many will rage at the simple presence of even a single fly, horsefly, deerfly, mosquito, or moth in their kitchen or bedroom. And houseplants, just like these animal pests, if left to their own devices, will, for several reasons, ultimately perish.

For one, for one thing, the air-conditioned interiors of our homes usually present a constant temperature of 68°F – 74°F throughout the entire year, which is much cooler than most plants are used to having during their growing season. Many plants also favor certain levels of humidity that are much higher than those which they experience in most indoor spaces, desiccated as the air is by the actions of these systems of central heating and cooling. Some plants, it is true, notably those from desert ecosystems, are in fact well-equipped to handle this dry air, but the open, sunny and scorched plains from which these plants originate are, in a great many ways, a far cry from your house’s interior — which brings us to what is likely the greatest challenge faced by plants indoors (notwithstanding neglect from their caretaker): light.

Plants, as you are doubtless aware, require sunlight to grow: take a look under the shaded canopy of the nearest sprawling, open-growth live oak in a well-maintained yard and you’ll see the thick patchwork of Saint Augustine grass, Bermuda grass, clover, geranium, cranesbill, false strawberry, yellow flowers and other lawn plants gradually fade away, giving way to sparse, sedge and a few other adventitious, adventurous annuals emerging from the detritus of fallen leaves, twigs, acorns, catkins, and, ultimately, barren ground. And such clearings might as well be greenhouses when compared to the inside of our homes: though we may not realize it, humans, especially those of us with lighter-colored eyes adapted to the long, dark winters and cloudy days of Northern Europe, have remarkable low-light vision, and while the living room or bedroom currently hosting your houseplants might be comfortably illuminated as far as your human eye is concerned, these indoor spaces are often in fact up to five hundred times dimmer than the clear, sunny summer days that most plants have evolved to grow in. Thus, when it comes to taking care of your houseplants, beyond simply the right species selection and the appropriate watering schedule, it is often the proper placement of your plant, next to a window that catches true, direct sunlight, that can make the difference between life and death.