Killing with kindness

The sad inevitability of over-watering our houseplants

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There’s a story my mother likes to tell. I’m not exactly sure why she likes to tell it, or what it is meant to say about the key players (her; me), but I’ve heard it so very many times now that I could almost convince myself that it wasn’t merely an anecdote, but a memory.

The story goes like this. I was a baby. Maybe four months old, maybe not even that. The chronology is a little hazy, but with the analytical hindsight that I now possess as a parent,  that age feels appropriate to me, because one of the key background details to the story is that I was exclusively bottle-fed. 

My parents were worried about me, because after every single meal (ie, bottle), I would immediately be sick. And we’re not talking, like, a productive burp here, but what seemed to my parents to be a full evacuation of the contents of my stomach. This wasn’t just gross, but concerning – when a baby is that age, one of the most anxiety-inducing questions is whether the child is feeding enough, and gaining enough weight.

So my mother took me to the doctor. She explained the recurring scenario. The doctor, an astute, Poirot-esque character in this memory/story, quickly came back with: “Madam, may I ask how much you are feeding Daniel?” My mother indicated a line on the bottle, or a number of bottles, to which the doctor sagely surmised: “Well madam, Daniel is being sick after every meal because you are feeding him twice as much as his little stomach can contain. He is simply too polite to decline, and so keeps drinking until he can drink no more and then… out it comes.”

My mother tells this story with a big smile on her face, sometimes accompanied by a bashful giggle. Which seems a little odd to me, because feeding a child to the point of regurgitation isn’t something I’d be super keen to boast about. 

But I think she tells it for two reasons. One, because she likes what it seems to say about me: that even as a baby I was supremely polite and well-mannered, a chubby little gentleman. And two, because of what it says about her: here is a provider who, as long as her child still showed some willingness for food, would make sure that food was available. Even to the point of excess, to the point of vomit, that food would be provided. Such was her devotion to her child, and her commitment to keeping him sufficiently fed.

And actually, she hasn’t learned from this story. Come to think of it, neither have I. Not just because to this day, when I go round to her flat for a meal, I will continue to accept seconds until the point that I have to loosen the top button on my trousers and cradle my bloated food-bump like someone in the latter stages of pregnancy. But also, because I find myself displaying that same tendency: to provide to the point of excess.

For evidence of this, I need only look across the room. Not at my son, who was a thankfully un-sicky baby, but at my plants.

I’ve lost track of the number of houseplants that I’ve watered to death. My list of victims is endless. Calatheas (prayer plants), alocasias (elephant’s ears), and famously “unkillable” sansevierias (snake plants) are the most numerous fatalities under my care, but few species have been spared my unquenchable thirst to quench theirs. 

The problem is that plants, irritatingly, do not have a baby’s gag reflex. They aren’t just overly polite, but physically incapable of rejecting our loving care and attention. This is a real problem, because people tend to love their plants. We just want what’s best for them! “Here, darling, have a bit more water. Still thirsty? No? Maybe just have a drop more.”

At times I have felt like I’m replaying that iconic scene from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, in which John Cleese’s waiter convinces the dangerously large and dangerously full Mr Creosote to consume just one more, wafer-thin mint, with explosive results. 

I must say, I’ve got a pretty good success rate when it comes to keeping my garden plants alive. But mainly, this is because I simply leave them to it. A bit of water to get them established, and a regular drink for anything in a pot or container. But otherwise, they seem to manage just fine with a policy of benign neglect, foraging for water and nutrients in the soil, as they have evolved to do.

What plants have definitely not evolved to do, of course, is to grow in small pots – often devoid of any drainage – in centrally heated rooms with limited ventilation and an annual average rainfall of 0mm. Our homes are effectively hot, sunless deserts. A plant’s survival in these conditions is entirely dependent on the knowledge and attentiveness of its human custodians.

Which most of the time means one thing: certain death. Just as a new car depreciates in value the second it is driven off the dealer’s forecourt,¹ a houseplant begins its slow march towards ill health and death the moment your card payment is approved. 

It is worth pointing out that there is very little you can do about this. Commercially grown houseplants are propagated and reared in environmentally optimal glasshouses, where every single atmospheric variable is carefully calibrated and controlled. Water, nutrients, air humidity, light intensity, light hours, everything optimised for the specific plant cultivar(s) growing in that space. 

Plants love living in those places, but you wouldn’t. And so the truth is, once you remove them from their glasshouses and put them on a shelf in the human-friendly climate that is your bedroom, you’re facing an uphill battle to keep them alive, let alone looking their best.

And yet still, it is so upsetting when their foliage starts to droop, or curl, or turn yellow, or brown at the tips. When their stems sag. When their leaves drop. And when these symptoms occur, what do we tend to do? Reach for the watering can, of course!

Ironically, too much water is the most common cause of death for domestic houseplants. Killing with kindness. We’re all guilty of it.

There are preventative measures one can take, of course. It is apparently possible to keep a houseplant alive for years and years and years, given the right care. Just as in the back garden you wouldn’t (or at least shouldn’t) put a sun-loving plant in deep shade, or a pond-dweller in a rock garden, each individual houseplant has its own requirements. 

We usually think of houseplants as ornaments or pretty organic knick-knacks, to beautify an awkward corner of the living room, or green-up a gloomy shelving unit. More fool us. If the placement of a plant is led by our requirements, rather than the plant’s own, it will not thank you for it. We should always try to place a plant where it wants to be, where it needs to be.

But if placement is the easy bit; it is watering that can feel like a dark art. On the off chance that you haven’t heard this advice before, you’d do well to know this rule of thumb. (That is, it is literally a rule concerning your thumb.) Stick your digit in the soil up to the first joint (or knuckle or hinge or however you like to think of it). If it feels moist, don’t water; if it feels dry, give the plant a good drink. 

Simple, right? I’ve known about that rule for a long time now, and yet have still had to send many of my prized plants off to the proverbial compost heap in the sky. 

I’ve been caught out by other issues too. Drainage has been a big one: houseplants tend not to like sitting in wet soil. If your pot doesn’t have drainage holes at the bottom, then you’re in trouble. A useful trick is to leave the plant in its plastic nursery pot, and place this inside your more decorative container, ensuring some separation between the two receptacles on the underside of the plant. 

And there’s more. Of course there’s more. Winter is coming. Here in the northern hemisphere at least. And in winter, our houseplants will react to the decreasing light levels by entering a kind of dormancy. Their growth will slow down. Their leaves may start to look a bit worse for wear, their form a bit sad. This is when most of us start to panic, dousing the plants in water. Another case of death by good intentions. As a figurative rule of thumb, houseplants that need a weekly drink during summer will only need it monthly during the cooler, darker months. 

There are a lot of variables, and each individual plant is a little green diva with its own unique set of requirements. But even if you do everything to satisfy their needs, it is worth remembering one simple truth: so-called houseplants do not want to live in your house.

They certainly don’t want to live in mine. And they don’t want me waiting on them hand and foot – or should that be root and stem? They are reluctant guests here, and most of the time are at their happiest when left well alone. I have come to terms with this fact, and it has done wonders for easing the feelings of guilt and shame that come when yet another Boston fern bites the dust. 

If you have a burning desire to nurture life, to feed, to provide, to watch something grow and flourish and fulfil its fullest potential, and be able to say, beaming with pride, “I did that,” then get a puppy. Or a kitten. Or a goldfish. 

Your houseplants will not appreciate your kindness. Put down the bottle. Leave them alone. Go be kind someplace else.

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How is your track record with houseplants? Are there any that you have found especially easy to keep alive? Or especially difficult? Have you picked up any tips and tricks along the way that I haven’t mentioned here? Leave a comment, or hit reply, and let me know! 

And if your love of houseplants is second only to your love of newsletters, then check out A Houseplant Journal by fellow Substacker Astrid, and The Plant Ledger, by houseplant guru Jane Perrone.

Picture credit: Miguel Carraça on Unsplash

1. Apparently in the UK right now, for about 1 in 5 models, the market for nearly-new secondhand cars is actually hotter than that for brand new vehicles. This is unprecedented, and has to do with global shortages of semiconductors and long factory lead times. You can read more about that here, if you're interested.