Ditch sickly house plants before they depress you, say researchers

WE HAVE all experienced that sinking feeling when an ailing houseplant just won’t respond to our efforts to save it.

And now a study has found that while lush, healthy plants make us happier and more relaxed, dead or dying ones can be worse than none at all.

Sickly plants should be removed from homes and offices to avoid depressing their owners, joint research by the RHS and University of Reading has found. The study, published in the journal Building and Environment, examined the plant types most likely to boost people’s wellbeing, concluding that people reacted best to “lush, green plants with a rounded, dense canopy”.

Participants were asked to assess the beauty and interest of a series of different common house plants, including a cactus, weeping fig, bird’s-nest fern and snake plant, as well as how much they thought they would improve air quality.

A neglected palm used in the study “was the least attractive, least preferred plant and participants thought the appearance was unhealthy and depressing”. The neglected palm was scored as 1.5 times more depressing, on average, than the healthy plants. The healthy palm, by contrast, was popular because participants associated it with “holidays and happy memories”, the study said.

Devil’s ivy, weeping fig and palms were the most popular varieties, while a snake plant and striped calathea were seen as less beautiful. “Sansevieria (snake plant) and calathea both had markings on their leaves which some participants found stressful,” the study found.

For a pot plant to die on you feels worse than not having grown one in the first place, a scientific study has found. Tennyson would not agree. “’Tis better to have loved and lost,” he wrote – not of a pot plant, but of his dear friend Arthur Hallam, dead at 22. Yet the same principle applies. Horticulturalists recommend plants that are easy to keep alive, such as Sansevieria, which needs little watering. That is like investing affection only in people who don’t demand so much as a cup of tea. The scientists suggest that Sansevieria (known as mother-in-law’s tongue) repels some people because its markings resemble that of a snake. It is more likely that their associations are depressing, as they are popular in the windows of dry cleaners. Better to love an orange tree grown from pips, whatever the risk.