I love plants. I can’t go through the supermarkets without at least glancing at the pot plants, or go to visit my gran without plotting when and how I can take cuttings from the houseplant on her coffee table, so I can propagate them. Ironically my most recent snippets, from a Watermelon Peperomia I gave her for her birthday a couple of years ago, and one I have successfully propagated four plants from two leaf cuttings, has now a plant of mine that she’s coveting, since the mother plant is starting to look a little worse for wear.
That’s why I love propagation, you can share and re-share your favourite plants, grow an army of your favourites and keep ancient relics from your family tree alive. For example, the three yellow tree peonies I started growing, were seeds from my grans garden. I planted them more than over a decade ago, they took two years to sprout and this year, finally, they flowered.
Peonies can take between seven and eight years to be mature enough to flower, so for the past few years I’ve been waiting with bated breath to see whether they would be true to colour or not. Then these beautiful buttercup yellow flowers appeared and all that time waiting was worth it.
As are the hot pink flowers about to open on both my Christmas Cactuses, which are cuttings from one which belonged to my great gran, and is now a huge plant that lives in my grans house and every time my grandparents were away, I was charged with not killing. Only almost did once, but I blame a blistering hot summer and a south facing window.
This is my very long winded way of say that propagation is an amazing way to increase the number of plants you own, and acquire new ones from your existing plant babs, from friends and from family without having to go out and buy new plants. Though, it does open you up to looking for pretty pots and vessels in which to place your cutting while you’re waiting for them to root. So here for Day 3, one I covet, one I aspire too and one I’m almost there with…
Water propagation is my preferred method for growing cuttings, and the one I have the most success with. Mostly that’s because it is simple. All you need is a clear receptacle filled with room temperature water and pop it on your windowsill, changing it out once a week if you remember. If you’re lucky, you’ll see fine roots start to develop and once they’re a couple of inches long you can pot them up, and the worst case scenario is they die off.
But, while jam jars, glasses and vases are all excellent options, the lure of a pretty propagator is always a risk, especially - for me - when they look like little terrariums!
So, the objects I am currently coveting for propagating are these enclosed terrarium style hydro vases by [10¹²] TERRA, a Japanese design team comprising of Daisuke Tsumanuma and Kenichi Yamada, and these are designed specifically to show off the root system of plants. And as hydroponic growing becomes more popular, and I can understand why.
Simultaneously protecting the plant while exposing its delicate root system, making them look almost like displayed specimens, this type of growing system isn’t just good for propagating your cutting. With the right kind of plant, they can happily grow in water alone, dispensing with the need for soil, pot upgrades and the accompanying mess. It’s just a really modern and attractive way of growing plants in your home and for cuttings, can be filtered down from a beautiful vessel like this, to simply using a jam jar or vase.
Now for something I aspire to, and that is the beautiful, aesthetic and lush way interior designer, Hilton Carter, has decorated his apartment using hundreds of plants, cuttings and propagators.
Honestly, this is the stuff that plant lovers dreams are made of, and my knowledge of him stems from an interview and apartment walkthrough on YouTube and this wall of test tube propagators (known as Cradles, they are sold by Carter on his website in a variety of sizes and finishes) with its neon sign above, in a narrow hall.
I fell in love with this wall in particular, along with his apartments entire aesthetic I even went as far as buying his book, Wild at Home. It’s a beautiful way to create propagation station within a tight space, giving a permanent area for your cuttings, but also a way to really enjoy how beautiful the form, colour and shape of the leaves can be, even without the mother plant. Carter, who is also known as one of the OG plant influencers on social media, is showing how wonderful plants are as pieces of design within a home, but not only as someone who designs interiors for a living, but just as someone who truly loves plants and can’t live without them.
Plants in the home are wonderful and calming, they can improve your mood, they can improve the air quality of your space and I can’t imagine not having a home filled with them. But I aspire to create a wall like this one day, not only because it’s simple, yet stunning, but also because it’s achievable. Test tubes aren’t that expensive, and while Carter’s Cradles are beautiful, they’re also potentially DIY-able for those who don’t have the budget, so as long as you’re power-tool savvy, or know someone who is, you could easily bring something like this into your own design aesthetic without much difficult.
For that I found a tutorial by self taught carpenter, Jen Woodhouse, which gives a very similar aesthetic and I shall now be instantly adding to my future diy board on Pinterest.
Lastly, after something I covet and something I aspire to, I give you something I almost did. By that I mean that I did have the intention of creating a propagation system like this simple hanging vial and string set, even to the point where I have the tiny bottles. In fact these are what I do most of my propagating in these days, the small ones at least, there’s no way I could root an avocado in one of these teeny things, if I could I’d definitely be a witch.
As vessels for cuttings go, these are small, but really effective, and while I got them with the intention of stringing them together, I never did, I got ahead of myself and wanted to use them before I strung them together, and while I may string a few purely for the aesthetic, but it would ultimately be flawed for one reason, cleaning. By tying the vials together it would make them really hard to clean and do water changes, and since the only way I’ve managed to successful and thoroughly clean them is to soak them in Milton, a sterilising liquid used on baby bottles, which works like a dream when you can’t get a bottle brush to fit.
Thus, until I think of a work around, they will sit quite happily on a windowsill in amongst other pot plants and be the perfect size for little cuttings.
With the cold this winter, and everyone trying to keep the heating off as long as possible to save on bills, it’s not the best circumstances to start taking cuttings from your plants. But there’s just something really satisfying about growing a plant from a cutting, and water propagation is the simplest way you could get started without having to buy any vessels… even if it’s stupidly pretty and you can’t stop thinking about it.
A bit like how I can’t stop thinking about/am completely obsessed with the idea of emptying my antique type-case of all the nail polish and bric-à-brac it’s collected over the years, and filling it with polymer clay and paper miniature plants! Just because artist Hannah Lemon, posted the pictures of her beautiful handmade miniatures on display in one!
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