A potted history of houseplants

Nature indoors

During the 18th century, as informality took over the garden, so did a more natural form of displaying plants indoors. Cabinet makers produced tiered staging and metal stands with practical, removable trays to display plant collections. These were often arranged asymmetrically and placed next to French windows to maximise their exposure to light.

19th-century houseplants

The fashion for houseplants peaked in the 19th century as plant-collectors brought back increasing numbers of tropical and subtropical plants from around the world.  

The aspidistra – introduced from China in 1823 – soon earned its common name of the cast-iron plant, capable of surviving the darkest, most fume-polluted Victorian homes.

By the mid-19th century, the nursery trade was burgeoning and public botanical gardens, such as Kew’s Palm House (opened in 1840), inspired visitors. Gardening books and magazines flourished alongside home decoration advice manuals, where houseplants increasingly played a role in interior design.

The arrival of the orchid

During the second half of the 19th century, orchids were valued above all other flowers. But this was also the beginning of an ecological disaster. Plant collectors wiped out entire collections in the wild – and an illegal trade in rare orchids still exists today.

James Bateman, the son of a wealthy industrialist, had the time and money to indulge in his passion for plants. In 1833, while still a student at Oxford, he sponsored an orchid plant-collecting expedition to the north coast of South America. Of the 60 species brought back to Britain, 20 were new introductions.

Why were ferns popular?

From the 1850s, fern fever – coined ‘pteridomania’ by naturalist and author Charles Kingsley in 1855 – gripped Victorian Britain and much of the English-speaking world. The limited number of native ferns led to sponsored fern-collecting expeditions across the world. Such was the demand that a black market in fern collecting flourished.

All these tender ferns needed winter protection and glasshouses, known as ferneries, became the latest horticultural fashion among the wealthy. For those without the income or space for a fernery, ornamental Wardian cases were perfect for displaying ferns indoors.

A passion for pelargoniums

Most wild species of the popular pelargonium come from South Africa. The first record of a pelargonium in cultivation dates to 1631, in the collection of John Tradescant, the celebrated gardener.

From the appearance of these plants, they were initially thought to be a type of geranium and were named as such. It wasn’t until 1738 that they were identified as distinctly different from their geranium cousins – with different leaves, flowers and hardiness – and were named pelargoniums. They’re still often erroneously called geraniums today.

By the early 18th century, pelargoniums were growing in botanical gardens and the private collections of wealthy collectors throughout Europe. Realising that the plants hybridized very easily, breeders competed to produce the most interesting blooms and unusual leaf patterns.

By the end of the 19th century, pelargoniums were established indoor plants, and so widely propagated that almost everyone could afford one.

Modern renewal and revival

After the First World War, when modernity entered the home, plant-infested interiors seemed very old-fashioned. Cacti and succulents became the houseplants of choice as their architectural shapes fitted the style of the day. These were the plants which Walter Straw collected at his home in Nottinghamshire, and that Leonard Woolf grew at Monk’s House in East Sussex.

By the 1950s, people were increasingly living in flats and fewer had gardens. This and the popularity of Scandinavian design – including the Swedish passion for indoor plants – saw a revival in houseplants. Their popularity has waxed and waned over the past 60 years, but today houseplants are firmly back in fashion.