GOING POTTY
The confinements of Covid have both fed and frustrated our revived love affair with indoor plants. We want and need more flowers and foliage in our cooped-up lives, but for many, the garden centre has been out of bounds. Luckily, there’s much to be gleaned from earlier generations, who had to mix, match and make do with what was to hand.
With a little basic knowledge, swapping and propagating can bulk up your plant collection and save you a fortune.
For a start, there are fewer rigid rules than you might imagine about what can be grown inside and what belongs in the garden.
Many garden plants can be invited in for their show-off flowering periods, then cut back and replanted outdoors. These temporary house guests will let you know when they’ve had enough. After flowering, and/or when their leaves droop or change colour and die back, their visit is over.
Even in an artificial indoor environment, plants tend to follow their usual seasonal patterns, so it’s natural for woodland flowers such as cyclamen to die back in the warmer months. They’ll be happy outside in some shade and, all going well, their corms will resprout in early autumn.
