The Home Front: What houseplants bring to a home
Credit to Author: rebeccakeillor| Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2020 14:48:42 +0000
When you walk into a home that’s filled with lush green houseplants it’s hard not to feel instantly better about that space, and this can be attributed to “biophilia” (our natural human affinity for nature or living things) says co-founder of Vancouver’s ByNature Design, Nicolas Rousseau, referring to the work of Harvard biologist Dr. Edward O. Wilson.
“If we surround ourselves with plants, and nature, we’re going to feel better. It impacts our brain, our mood, and we feel more calm and relaxed. Biophilia is that deep connection we have in our DNA with nature,” he says.
The acoustic element plants bring to indoor environments is also significant, says Rousseau, whose company, founded in 2012, and has since opened offices in Toronto.
Mount Pleasant plant store West Coast Jungle.
“When we use moss, or plants, all of those natural textures have a huge impact on the acoustics [of a room],” he says.
ByNature Design has become known for their living walls, moss gardens, and creative plant designs. A few years ago, says Rousseau, they also began making “preserved” plant products, in which plants are “stopped in their growing process”, with glycerine used to preserve their texture and food dyes used to enhance their colour.
Preserved products now make up about 50 per cent of their business, says Rousseau, and appeal to a slightly different market than their live plants; requiring no maintenance, watering or sunlight.
“Some people are truly passionate about living plants, and they want to care for their plants, and they know what they’re doing. But there is a new market, where people are too busy to water their plants, or they travel a lot, or don’t want to learn. Or sometimes it’s a branding thing, where a company wants something green but doesn’t want any maintenance,” he says.
There is a growing demand for houseplants among millennials, says plant expert and author of the book: The New Plant Parent, Darryl Cheng; citing a recent survey carried out by OnePoll for online furniture and home furnishings company Article (involving 2,000 millennials, aged between 25 and 39 years, surveyed between Dec. 2019 and Jan. 2020).
Plant expert and author of The New Plant Parent, Darryl Cheng.
Cheng says seven out of 10 of those surveyed consider themselves “plant parents” but almost 70 per cent of them said they had trouble keeping their plants alive.
A common mistake people make is fixating on watering their plants, says Cheng, but not putting them in places where they’re exposed to enough light. Exposure to natural light is everything, he says.
“I think when people hear ‘avoid bright, indirect light’, they think they should avoid [putting their plants] in the sun, but in fact what it actually means is we need to put the plant in a position where it will have the widest possible view of the sky. And if the sun is going to shine on it for two to three hours, block it with a sheer curtain,” he says.
When it comes to watering plants people often think they should follow some sort of schedule, but this isn’t the best approach, says Cheng.
“You are looking for a soil dryness cue. There’s only three ways you water: If it’s succulents and cacti, you’re waiting until soil is totally totally dry before you give it a good soaking. For classical tropical foliage plants you put them where there’s the right light and wait until the soil is partially dry down to two or three inches (use a chopstick and gently probe to see how dry the lower soil is). And for the last kind (like maidenhair ferns) keep the soil evenly moist. Check the soil every day and the moment it’s even slightly dry you have to water it again,” he says.
Sisters Taylor and Lakelind Booth opened Mount Pleasant plant store West Coast Jungle six months ago. Their mother is a horticulturist who has her own plant shop in Edmonton. She raised her daughters with green thumbs.
Taylor says it was only in the last couple of years that she decided to turn her passion for plants into her day job (when she moved to Vancouver, from Ontario, she had houseplants before furniture) and says their store has been received with open arms.
“We’ve gotten so much love from the community in Mount Pleasant,” she says.
When asked what she feels houseplants bring to a space, as well as being aesthetically pleasing, she says:
“They bring the space to life.”