House plants and patience

I am not great at houseplants. Or at least I do not think I am. The ones I bring home from a plant shop rarely thrive unless they are a sort specifically marketed as craving neglect.

A few years ago, my husband brought home some plants from the office where he worked. This was one of those big "corporate office parks" that litter American suburbs, and the building management hired some company to provide and care for plants in the lobby and common areas. The way these outfits work, if a plant is past its prime, needs repotting or whatever, they just bring in a replacement and put the old one out in the dumpster unless someone wants to take it home.

So husband brought home a snakeplant (Dracaena trifasciata) Almanac Entry on Snake Plant. This is a plant that i supposed to be super easy to care for. He also brought a Chinese evergreen (Aglaonema) Houseplant Expert entry on Aglaonema.

Once in hour house, both of them got very sad and slowly gave up all their leaves. Too much of a shock from the conditions they were used to. Honestly, they just looked like empty pots.

But I just repotted them and carried on giving them a bit of water when the soil dried out. And very VERY VERY slowly, they began to grow new leaves. It was months before I saw any real signs of life, and probably a year before any casual observer would think "oh, look, there's a plant!"

But now at this point in time, the Aglaonema has been a really lush, full, beautiful plant for at least 4 years. It puts out new leaves slowly and keeps them a long time. The Dracaena has been slower growing, but at least looks like a real plant again.

As a person who has lived all my life in cold-temperate climate, it is a revelation to grow these tropical plants where each individual leaf may live for many years instead of leaves all growing in a mad rush for a few sunny months to then wither and fall.

One of my favorite sayings is that I was put on this earth to practice patience, and I agree that patience and perseverance are ingredients that are often left out in descriptions of how to grow plants.  I learned the patience/plants connection from my mom:  Like you, she once brought home a poor scraggly office plant, an Aglaonema, plunked it in a pot in the corner of the breakfast room and, over time, revived it.  It's an amazing tree now, some 30 years later.

I've learned to wait patiently for an indoor banana tree (in Colorado!) to put out its' first fruit spike (18 months), then months more for the fruit to ripen, and used the slow, slow process to teach my granddaughter to look for small changes, to be consistent but not too eager in her plant care, to pay attention to the process of growth, and to savor the anticipation of the "payoff" of nurturing that slow process.

As a young mother and wife, I was fortunate to have a friend who shared her plants with me.  These plants thrived beautifully.

Like Mk, the plants I bought at plant places did not do too well.

I like the title of the thread "House plants and patience" ...

One Mother's day I treated myself to a lovely hanging basket being sold down the street from my house.  No luck there.

Then there was the year that I fell in love with a bronze-colored basil plant in a hanging basket.  No luck with that one either.

From then on all my plants have been given to me.

For some unknown reason, I now have a brown thumb and just can't keep houseplants though maybe it is my house and not me.

Thanks for the memories ...

Mk Neal, your plants look very well!
I need to make some new photos of my plants. I have some nice 'snake plants' too. And many others.

I don't know if taking care of house plants has to do with patience. If that's the case ... then I must have a lot of patience ;-)
I am a house plant lover. I have house plants in my window sil since I was a child (probably about 10 y.o.). Okay, those were succulents, needed water only once a week, a lot of sunlight and nothing else.

My collection of house plants has been growing and growing. If a plants outgrows its pot I feel bad to throw part of it away. Almost always I put the parts of the plants in new plant pots. Or I put parts I cut off in water so they get roots (and then they go in a pot with soil).

I am like the husband described, who takes home plants from the office. If someone wants to get rid of a plant ... I take it!

One problem: there is no space anymore for more house plants! All spaces left don't get enough sunlight or aren't warm enough. I don't want to use 'growlights' and 'plants heating mats'.
I'm glad there's a plant swap once a year, so I can give away some of my excess plants.

Growing snake plant from leaf cutting does take a lot of patience! I tried one in water in March, it took two months to grow roots, another two months to have little pups sticking out. It does lose the variegation though but I don't mind.