I started getting into collecting houseplants about 1 year ago now, however, over lockdown, when I couldn’t spend as much time outside in nature, my love of bringing nature into my home bloomed. So, when I moved into my new flat which is in a converted church in Bristol, last month, I went a little houseplant crazy! In this video, I will give you a tour of my converted church flat and my growing houseplant collection. This is my first plant tour video, but hopefully as I learn I will be able to share more plant tips with you and we can grow our houseplant collections together.
Here is the video:
Or, if you would prefer to read the transcript, here it is below:
Hello beautiful people!
In this video I'll be sharing with you some of my favourite house plants, some tips of how to take care of them, their favourite spots they enjoy, and why they might be good for you to have in your space. So, hopefully, you can learn a little bit more about how to create your own indoor jungle. Not only this, but I am now back in Bristol in my new flat and I'm living in a converted church. So I thought I'd share with you a bit about this space that I'm now living in as well because it's pretty cool: very unique for a flat, so I thought that some of you guys might enjoy more of that aspect as well.
I started collecting house plants last year, but during this time, I was still living in a space that was not my own; I was in a spare room, so I was very mindful of only having this small place and also a place that wasn't permanent which meant that I would have to move those plants, changing their home at some point when I eventually found somewhere to live more long-term. But, just at the end of lockdown, the start of June actually, I moved into my own flat in Bristol.
I'm living in a converted church and because I have all of this space now that I can call my own, I can fully grow my urban jungle! So I've collected a lot of plants over lockdown which I thought would mean it's the perfect time to share with you guys kind of the start of my journey and hopefully, well I have big ideas for my plant space, so hopefully this collection will grow.
Aside from making your space look beautiful, which plants definitely, definitely achieve, there are loads of benefits for our physical and our mental health which come from having plants in our surrounding areas as well, and these include reduced blood pressure, reduced stress if you're working in your home environment, which most of us are at the moment, they've been shown to increase productivity, if people are recovering from illness, severe illnesses like in a hospital, there have been multiple studies that have shown that plants help aid and speed up their recovery.
Even within your home if you're trying to prevent yourself from getting more common illnesses like colds, coughs, flu having house plants can help to prevent them because they purify and clean the air and they just make it
a much healthier happier place to be living. So, if I haven't sold it already, I would highly recommend anyone going out there and getting some houseplants.
This one here is a strawberry saxifrage. This one does well in bright, but not direct sunlight and it likes a lot of water, but you do have to be careful that you don't water the leaves, so you just have to really... um oosh she's dry she needs some more water! Erm but you just separate out the leaves when you water her and make sure they don't get too wet. But this one I just find is so beautiful and the church beams that are left in the
Place, they have this kind of purpley undertone, so this one literally goes perfectly in this space and it's just so beautiful!
This one, I actually have on one of the pillars, and one night I came in and she had fallen off of the pillar onto the sofa, so my housemate got me this fab new pot for her that's a bit heavier and hopefully will keep her safer on the shelf that she lives on. One of the cuttings that I have is from this plant, so if you'd like that, as I said before, either drop a message in the comments or feel free to message me directly on Instagram and let me know! Ivy's are a great one for filling space
It's a kind of succulent. It doesn't like too harsh sunlight and you really need to be careful with the frequency of watering with them as well: they kind of need to dry out a bit or you can have problems with mould. Sorry, I'm just rearranging her a little bit! But yeah, she was one of the ones that I actually bought from a garden centre when I moved into the flat because I knew that I had these beautiful pillars in the living room that I wanted lots of hanging plants for, but also along the kitchen tops I want to fill with plants, I want to get some shelves to make the most of the high ceilings that are in here, and really fill the space with plants, but it's going to be a journey, it's going to take a while.
So I also have quite a few little cactus that are growing; they're really nice space fillers especially on shelves, and this one has quite a few little baby cactuses, cacti sorry, popping out! They're really easy to care for, they look really nice, they fill space, and they're just survivors! Cactuses are survivors, so I look at them and I think "wow you're doing well" and it inspires me and it makes me happy, so I like cactuses.
We've got a pineapple! And look how cute and dinky it is, but apparently, because it's fully yellow to the top and smells amazing, she's actually ready to harvest. So you cut her off from here, we can eat her, from the same shoot it will re-grow a new pineapple, and then we can also plant the top of this and that will grow into a pineapple one day as well. But basically, apparently... I've been watching up on this... Apparently when you harvest this pineapple the next one to grow will be bigger, but it will take about like seven or eight years to get the pineapples that you see in supermarket sizes.
This one's actually called a dumb cane. Not a very nice name is it! Okay so these plants, they need consistent watering, but do check: you want about an inch of dry soil before you do the next water, so just pop your finger in, feel how dry the soil is, and make sure you do let it dry out a little bit before going on with the next water. But, other than that, they're super easy to care for and they're beautiful and really fill the space
really nicely like for, I think this is a 16-centimetre pot, which isn't massive, and for me who's on a budget, but trying to fill the space as much as possible plants like this are absolutely perfect.
This beautiful one here is a pinstripe calathea. Okay so again, this is one that does well in quite humid areas, so it's important to really spray the leaves of this one. This plant is a little bit harder to care for than some of my others, but I found a perfect spot for her, where she seems to be thriving. She was from my local garden centre, where I get quite a few of my plants from. I got her, when I first moved into the flat actually, about two days later I went to the garden centre and got a whole car-load of big plants because it was my first time that I could actually buy plants of this size like this, so it was really exciting! If you did want to propagate this, you can't just take a cutting like you can with some plants, you actually have to propagate by dividing, so right at the base you divide the plant and pot into different pots. Even if you're not planning on propagating it you should look to repot it maybe every couple of years or so, based on how it's looking in the soil, making sure the roots have enough space, but not too much space because you don't want to stress the plant out by putting them in a massive pot from a quite a bit smaller one.
Okay so this one here is a Calathea warscewiczii - we'll say a type of calathea! I got her off Facebook marketplace. She's absolutely massive, which is amazing, but she wasn't that healthy when I got her. She drinks a ton of water she needs a lot, a lot of watering: I water her pretty much every other day at the moment, but I think that's because she's in a super sunny spot so maybe that will change. It's actually also known as calathea jungle velvet, and I think that's because of the leaves, like they are so
beautifully soft! I mean I don't know why it's got that name, but that's what I'm saying it's got that name because the leaves are so soft and I love it!
She is my favourite plant. I absolutely love her because she really fills the space. This is a devil's ivy. I don't know why it has that name because it's so precious and so far from the devil! For those of you that did want cuttings, I have taken a few cuttings that are now already growing in soil, I've only had her about four weeks now, so those cuttings are planted ready to go. These also make really nice hanging plants so, I put those cuttings into like a small pot, so hopefully they'll start hanging over the side, and I can add them to one of the spaces which I want to fill with more hanging plants. Also, as you can see, for this plant because she's so tall, and I'm having her as an upright plant, instead of a hanging plant, I've got a moss pole, which she's attached to, and it's really important that you not only water the leaves and keep them clean, but that you also mist the moss pole as well, to keep it nice and humid and that will really help it grow. This plant is great for purifying the air, which is one of the benefits I mentioned earlier, so, she makes my breath cleaner. I love having her here! They're also super easy to look after, really versatile, and they're really great for brightening a space, because they do have these like golden flecks throughout the leaves that really just bring some light into a room. Yeah, she's beautiful!
As you can see, I don't yet have many plants in my bedroom. It's not as bright in here: it's bright in the mornings, but that's about it, so I'd need some plants that were better without too much light, so if
anyone has any recommendations on what plants these could be please let me know in the comments below I'd really appreciate it!
Thank you so much for watching this video, I hope you enjoyed it.
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