The History of Indoor Plants

Plants have been used indoors for many centuries. The Dutch interest in painting interiors and flower pieces went hand in hand with an increasing interest, throughout the western world, in the cultivated plant.

Again, the Dutch tulip craze of the 1630s must have influenced other countries, but travelers, since the returning Crusaders, would also have brought plants home and fostered them indoors prior to the advent of glass.

We know, too, that herbs were used extensively indoors : mostly for medicinal and culinary purposes.

In the seventheenth century, orangeries, structures made of brick or stone with large south facing windows, were built to shelter orange trees in winter.

But it was not until the introduction of glass structures, which could be heated, that plants could be grown inside to any degree.

Tropical fruit was initially cultivated in primitively heated houses ; pineapples, guavas and limes were grown - and also the first camellias.

Later, there followed the date palm and banana. Succulents, such as the aloe and agave, were also raised for medicinal purposes and to decorate terraces in summer.

During the nineteenth century, the conservatory became a standard addition to larger houses ; house plant cultivation moved into the realms of fashion, with fern houses, palm houses, and houses for exotic plants being all the rage.

Simple potted plants too began to escape from ghe conservatory to become the necessary accompaniment to the heavy, draped look of the late ninteeenth century interior although the smoke from open firepleces did the plants little good. Floristry became a fashionable lady's accomplishment.

One reaction to this style was to seek inspiration from what must have been a continuing, unsophisticated, cottage tradition of keeping temperate plants indoors to root or over winter, and of hanging herbs from the rafters to dry. An alternative Modernist movement at the beginning of this century used specific plants in its interiors -the lily being a great favorite. But the real origins of the use of house plants lie in Scandinavia where, traditionally, plans were brought indoors to relieve the bleakness of a long winter; and it was not until after the Second World
War that they really became part of the modish interior. It was then that house plants as we know them started to make their appearance, with species from Asia and Central and South America becoming available. Since then, new varieties have been bred which can be kept very successfully indoors.