You've bought some lovely house plants, and have maybe even treated yourself to some nice plant pots - but how do you go about displaying them beautifully in your home?
There is an art to arranging house plants, so we asked Sarah Gerrard-Jones, aka the The Plant Rescuer, for her tips. Sarah shares her home with more than 200 house plants, many of which she has rescued in a sorry state and has brought back to life. Here, she shares her plant styling tips.
How to display house plants
Sarah uses a range of ways to display her house plants, from grouping similar ones together to playing with heights and levels and using grow lights in order to grow house plants in dark corners. She also has a clever tip for displaying orchids. Read on for her plant styling tips.
More on house plant care:
The tools you need to look after your house plants
The best trailing house plants
15 of the best large house plants
The best pot covers for your houseplants
Create the perfect house plant display
Can house plants really beat mould?
Group plants together
Make sure plants are from the same family, with similar needs – cacti, for example. "Tropical houseplants in particular benefit from being grouped. They create a mini microclimate when they transpire through their leaves, raising humidity, which is really beneficial," says Sarah.
Play with heights and levels
Also think about the different heights of plants and the levels that you can play around with in your home. Sarah puts her plants on stands, on tables or on windowsills; she also hangs them from the skylights in her kitchen.
Put all kinds of plants in hanging planters
Hanging and trailing house plants look great in hanging planters, but Sarah puts plants that don't trail, such as the rabbit's foot fern, in her planters, too.
Play around with texture
"I like to combine a spiky plant with something softer, such as an orchid, or a structural plant with something that’s a bit more fluid," explains Sarah.
Choose the right pot
Pots can make a huge difference to how your plants look. "My top tip for where to find pots is your local charity shop where you can not only find completely unique pots - they’re also much cheaper."
Browse the best ceramic plant pots
Create a growing cabinet
"I’ve adapted an Ikea cabinet to have plants inside – I’ve just added some grow lights and some fans to keep the air moving," says Sarah. "But you could buy any cabinet and convert it into what is essentially a giant terrarium. The benefits of growing plants inside a cabinet is that you can raise the humidity which means that you can grow plants that would normally be happy with just room temperature."
Use grow lights or bulbs
If you have dark areas of your home where you’d like to grow a plant, you can buy bulbs online that you can put straight into a lamp that you have. Or you can attach LED light strips underneath shelving and add plants underneath those. That creates an area that the plants can grow in despite it being dark.
Read about our recommended grow lights
Make the most of a frosted window
If you have a frosted window, this is the perfect place to put many tropical plants that like bright light but don’t like the intensity of harsh sunlight. Sarah also hangs house plants in front of windows: "I just knock in a nail and hang the planter from it."
Remove the stakes from orchids
"When you buy an orchid, you’ll see that it’s staked," says Sarah. "I much prefer to remove the stakes – the orchid doesn’t need its support and the stake is there purely to transport the orchid and to display them in the shop. My advice is to take those stakes out and allow the flower stems to grow by themselves. They’ll cascade down instead of standing straight up, as they would in nature."
Find out more about Sarah Gerrard-Jones @theplantrescuer