Cool millennials develop growing interest in succulents

Those in the front line of youth tend to view gardening as the boring domain inhabited by the older generation.

Sowing seeds and planting plants with green-fingered dexterity was thought to be the preserve of the middleaged and retirees.

Why there is this ageism I don’t know. As a kid, I was always fascinated by my father’s enthusiasm for gardening. He was no expert, and never claimed to be, but somehow he produced great displays each spring and summer. Healthy blooms of wallflowers, tulips, pansies, roses, dahlias. From an early age I admired this seasonal alchemy he conjured from the soil.

He enjoyed it as a tactile escape from a desk-bound job, a welcome outdoor antidote to the office.

Ask him what he was doing as he’d head out, trowel in hand, to bed in some new plant, he would wryly say he was off to “work on the land”. It was a great phrase – implying his flower bed had effectively inflated into a tenacre field.

In my early twenties, I carved out a small plot and filled it with plants. It was something I enjoyed doing. A desire to dig into the soil and have the satisfaction of watching something grow out of it.

Friends, however, took the view I had prematurely hit my dotage to entertain such an live in flats, where gardening isn’t even an option.

That the house plant makes an undemanding addition to any dwelling has been embraced by its admirers. It doesn’t need walks, doesn’t make a mess (unless you knock it over), and doesn’t have mood swings.

These days the younger generation are enjoying sharing their homes with such calming greenery.

It always amazes me that there are fashion trends in such areas as plants. It is understandable in socially trendy items such as clothes, decorations, cars. But plants?

Well, actually, yes. Back along, no Victorian parlour was complete without the presence of the parlour palm. A forgiving entity that, although a native of the rainforests of Southern Mexico and Guatemala, stoically tolerated the atmospheric fug of a Victorian room complete with coal fire and flickering gas lamps.

By contrast, sold, by popular demand, at a garden centre near you are such contemporary delights as succulents and cacti. These seem almost purposely designed for the clean lines and minimalist modernism of today’s homes.

Take a flip through any interior design magazine and the bright and breezy trendily furnished living quarters will have at least one token succulent on display.

Ironically my first interest in plants started as a boy when an uncle gave me a couple of cacti and an elderly lady down the lane gave me a succulent she kept in her porch.

By default, I had become the proud owner of a small collection when few but dedicated fanciers were really aware of such plants, and those that were had to acquire them from specialist growers.

I still have the succulent. Not, in fact, the same plant. But a descendant that can be traced back to the original through a dynasty of cuttings.

It is good to be cool and down with the youth at last.