“You’re a lovely little houseplant, aren’t you? YES you are. Such a GOOD little houseplant!”
Banish all thoughts of Prince Charles chatting to his geraniums, if you want healthy blooms, you need to find plenty of conversation
It’s official: plants grow better when you talk to them. At one point it was thought that the CO2 we breathe out as we speak was good for plants’ health and that’s what made them grow, but more recently, experiments have shown that actually it’s all about what we say and how we say it. Here are a few tips and conversation starters for your greenhouse or kitchen windowsill.
Big them up
An experiment by the TV show Mythbusters back in 2004 found that plants who were spoken to in a positive way about nice things grew faster than plants who were talked to about negative topics. Well, we all like to hear a few compliments now and then.
If you can’t say anything nice, DON’T say nothing at all
The same Mythbusters experiment found that the plants that were told negative things and spoken to in a nasty way still did better than the plants that were kept in silence. So don’t worry if you can’t think of anything nice to say - even a few insults are better than nothing.
Read to them
If you find keeping up one half of a conversation tricky (spider plants aren’t known for their verbosity), just read out loud to them. We recommend Day of the Triffids or something else with a central character they can relate to.
Play them music
Research projects from Smithsonian and NASA seem to suggest that it’s the vibrations that make plants grow so if you can’t be bothered to chat to your plants, just pop a playlist on. Go for something with plenty of bass; plants in the Mythbusters experiment grew better when they were ‘listening’ to heavy metal than classical music. Try some Guns ‘n’ Roses, with the emphasis on the Roses.
If you’re inspired to treat your plants even more and like the look of the macrame plant pot holders in the picture above, you can buy them at saroraknots.co.uk. The owner of Sarora Knots, Sara Al Bander, tells us about her day in cups of tea in our November issue, which is on sale now.
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