Episode 127: sustainability part three - pots

Hannah Morrow’s beautiful pots inspired by David Hockmey’s pool paintings. Take a look at more of Hannah’s work at her website.

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Transcript

Episode 127

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Jane: Hello and welcome to On The Ledge podcast, I'm your host Jane Perrone and this week we're going a little bit potty. It's episode 127 and in this show I'll be discussing the rights and wrongs of plastic pots, the difference between a cache pot and an inner pot and I'll be talking to ceramicist, Hannah Morrow, about what makes a good pot. Plus we meet listener Ash and I answer a question about variegated Monstera.

Thanks to new Patreons Ryan and Antonia this week, who became Ledge-ends and thus unlocked lots of extra content in the form of my bonus podcast, An Extra Leaf. Well done you guys. If you want to find out more about how to support the show financially, and in other ways, do check out the show notes at JanePerrone.com

Thanks for all of your feedback on the bonus episode interviewing Nicola Spence about plant passports. It seems like lots of people are still getting to grips with this new set of regulations here in the UK and the rest of Europe and it's something that's going to take a while to shake down fully. I did hear from people who are giving up growing house plants for sale, on a hobbyist scale, because they're worried this is going to add too much expense and hassle to what they've been doing. Also from people who are still not sure whether the regulations affect them including somebody who was trying to take bonsai to a show outside the UK. So there's obviously lots of ground still to be covered on this one, so if you're not sure whether you come under the plant passport regulation and you're in the UK or Europe, I do recommend getting in touch with your local / national body who is dealing with this and asking the questions because everybody's situation is different.

We've had a real flood of people getting in touch wanting to take part in Meet the Listener, which is absolutely great. If you've already heard back from myself or from Kelly with instructions on how to take part, or sent us your audio, then thank you! We'll be in touch soon letting you know when that will run. As I say, we've got a bit of a backlog now, so it may be a few weeks but we'll try to keep you posted and it's just lovely to hear all your voices because I'm so used to the sound of my own voice that it's great to hear yours. Today, we have listener Ash from Connecticut in the US. Over to you Ash.

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Ash: My name is Ash Pearce and I'm calling from Middletown, Connecticut in the north-eastern United States. I have over 50 plant species growing in my little apartment with four windows. I'm also a perennial grower at my local nursery and I have a degree in horticulture, so I just really love plants.

Jane: Question one. There's a fire and all your plants are about to burn. Which one do you grab as you escape?

Ash: If I had to choose just one plant it would probably be my Persea americana Day which is a dwarf grafted avocado. We got it as a wedding gift three years ago and it takes three to five years to start producing fruit, so I'd really hate to have to wait that long again.

Jane: Question two. What is your favourite episode of On The Ledge?

Ash: I'm actually a member of my local African Violet Society and I've got about 20 varieties of gesneriads, so my favourite episode would probably have to be episode 88 which is all about African Violets.

Jane: Question three. Which Latin name do you say to impress people?

Ash: Botanical Latin is really fun for me, actually, and everything we talk about at work has to be by the Latin name. We don't use common names at all. I really like Liriodendron tulipifera which is the tulip poplar or tulip tree. Or Gleditsia triacanthos var. inermis, your common Thornless Honeylocust.

Jane: Question four. Crassulacean acid metabolism or guttation?

Ash: I love guttation. I love guttation! Not only is the science behind it really cool, the leaves always look so pretty when they're covered in tiny water drops. It's especially really cool on strawberry plants. That's really fun.

Jane: Question five. Would you rather spend £200 on a variegated Monstera or £200 on 20 interesting cacti?

Ash: I would rather have 20 new interesting cacti for £200. I especially really like the epiphytic cacti and I would really like some more Epiphyllum, Rhipsalis, maybe, and definitely some more Christmas cacti for my collection. So some unusual cacti would be so much more fun than one expensive plant.

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Jane: Thanks to Ash and if you have a burning desire to be featured on On The Ledge, do get in touch. W e're particularly interested in hearing from people who are from places we haven't yet featured in this slot.

Now, it's time for some pot chat. Yes, we're talking about containers today, not any other kind of pot that you may be thinking of. Let's start from the outside in and talk about cache pots first. Now, what exactly is a cache pot? Well it's a fancy, French term for what we might call a container, or a planter, a double-pot or an outer pot. As the name suggests, cache, means a hidden supply, so it's a cover for a less attractive pot that's actually containing the plant and its rootball. The beauty of the cache pot is that you can switch them around as much as you like without having to do any repotting.

Usually, by their nature, they don't have drainage holes in them. I have seen a couple of videos going round on the net of people making holes in cachepots using a bowl of water and a cloth and a screwdriver and a hammer. They basically invert the pot, put the cloth inside it, put it inside under the water in the bucket and then smack the screwdriver with hammer and make a hole. I'm sure this does work, it seems to work from looking at the video, it's an alternative to getting one of those special ceramic drill bits and doing it with a drill. What's worth remembering about this is you will need to make more than one hole in the bottom of the pot because one teeny hole is not going to be enough drainage for most plants, it is a way of using a cachepot as a single pot. You will have to add a saucer, obviously, but it's an option if you don't like the cachepot inner pot combination.

One of the problems with putting a plastic pot inside a cachepot is it literally does hide things. In other words you might get a little bit lazy with watering and I am certainly guilty as charged when it comes to this. You sprinkle a bit of water on the top and it comes out the bottom and you think: "I'll come back in half-an-hour and empty that out," do you come back? Maybe? Hopefully? Yes, sometimes you forget and the water gets left at the bottom of the pot which, as we know, is a recipe for the roots rotting.

One little way around this, I tend to put in the bottom of my cachepots a layer, depending on the size of the pot, anything from a centimetre to five centimetres deep of either grit or gravel or pebbles or ideally expanded clay pebbles. They're sold under the brand name Hydraulica here in the UK. The beauty of these is they're very lightweight so it doesn't really add to the weight of your pot, but whatever you use, the water goes into that layer and, generally, the inner pot is held above the water level so you don't have this issue. It can also work as a little mini pebble tray and increase humidity around the plant. The only thing to watch then is if your cache pot is not fully waterproof and you've got it on a piece of wooden furniture you may find that there's a mark that goes on to the wooden furniture from the damp pot. I put a cork mat underneath most of my cachepots to avoid this problem, you can buy them cheaply online or buy packs from IKEA.

So cache pots are lovely things. What are not so lovely, although admittedly very useful, are the plastic pots that most of our house plants come in when we buy them at the garden centre. We're all getting really concerned about plastic in the environment, so what's the deal with these plastic pots? Well, the trouble is that most of them are black or dark colours which the machines that scan our recycling at the recycling plant can't actually recognise as plastic, so lots of these pots end up going straight into landfill rather than being recycled. Now, in the long term, this is something that we're hoping that the plastic industry will sort out but in the meantime what can you do? Well, there are more companies selling taupe-coloured pots, pale brown colours, which are easier for the scanners to pick up, so they're worth looking out for. The other thing you can do is reuse those pots as often as you can. There really is no excuse to be buying brand new packs of plastic pots. They're easy to get hold of if you don't have enough, just ask around on Freegle or Freecycle and if you're trying to give some away that's also a good place to offer them because there are often community groups doing gardens or school gardening groups who will be looking for those pots. If you can't get rid of them that way, well hang on to them, if you're doing the On The Ledge sow along this spring, you may need quite a few pots for potting on your plants as they grow and it is handy to have a range of different sizes when you repot.

The other issue with plastic recycling is that you really do need to clean your plastic recycling really thoroughly, even if your local authority does collect and recycle plastic plant pots, if you leave them covered in soil they will reject them. So they do need to be really clean in order to be recycled, so that's an extra job for you if you're going to recycle your pots. I do love terracotta and where possible I do try to pot plants straight into terracotta, it works brilliantly for things like cacti and succulents that need that extra air around roots. Things like Hoyas as well, they just absolutely love a terracotta pot and it is more aesthetically pleasing. You do need to have a saucer underneath and beware that a lot of the saucers that you buy at the garden centre, terracotta saucers, are not actually waterproofed on the inside, if they don't have a glaze on the inside, they are going to suck up water and again they are going to mark your furniture. A waterproofing spray on the inside of that will avoid the water going through, I'll find a link to where I've bought that from in the past and put that in the show notes if you're interested in finding that out.

I've found, over the years, that often there are people who are clearing out their sheds who have terracotta pots that they're happy to sell me or give me and then I give a donation to charity, so that's a really good way of getting hold of terracotta pots. They are quite fragile, so you do find that you do lose quite a few to breaks and so on but they are wonderful things to have. They're very forgiving of people who tend to slosh too much water around, so definitely worth trying if you are not succeeding with plastic pots.

Do seek out and support companies that are starting to sell pots in other ways either in terracotta pots that they've upcycled or recycled. There's also a scheme called Posipots which is coming in here in the UK, which is where garden centres, at the point of sale when you're at the till, they will take the plants out of their plastic pots and put them in a Posipot, which is a cardboard temporary pot, so when you get home you can pot your plant up. I'll put details of that in the show notes too, so do get asking your local plant supplier to think about plastic and hopefully, with some consumer pressure, we can get some change moving in this area.

There are a few pots made of other things available. I've tried a few of these. I've tried some pots made from coir fibre. Quite frankly, they were absolutely useless! They were just too porous and let in too much air and they dried out extremely quickly, but I'd be interested to hear from anyone for whom those have actually worked okay. Haxnicks are among one of the brands selling bamboo pots here in the UK, so these are free from plastics and BPA and they're supposed to be compostable and biodegradable. They last about five years before they start to fall apart, so that's definitely worth looking for if you can find them.

Such items are often quite slow to decompose in the compost heap but, I guess, ultimately they will decompose a heck of lot quicker than plastic, which will be with us for millennia. I've used bamboo pots and found them really, really good. It's just a question of getting hold of them, which isn't always easy. It depends on where you live and what shops you have near you. They do seem to be available in most garden centres near me now, so hopefully the trend is spreading. If you've got any other insights or suggestions of sustainable pots for your plants, then do get in touch. I'm sure there are different things happening in the US to here in the UK, so I'd love to hear from you about what you're doing.

So where do you pick up your cache pots? Well, I am a big proponent of checking out your local charity shop, thrift store, auction house, junk shop. These are great places to lay your hands on some really interesting pots. Yes, there will probably be some ones that aren't particularly to your taste, but there will also be lots of treasures to be found there for a reasonable price. The other thing I highly recommend is looking around for people who are creating pots, we might call them artisanal in this day and age. There are some amazing ceramicists working around the world creating beautiful pots that really will make a statement in your home. Hannah Morrow is a ceramicist living in LA and I spoke to her about the inspiration for her designs and how to pick a really good pot.

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Hannah: My name is Hannah Morrow and I'm a ceramic designer. I'm originally from London but I now live in Los Angeles.

Jane: Tell me about this collection of pots that you have made which I believe are inspired by a bit of art?

Hannah: Just a back story, I was designing and getting my ceramics made in England and I started to want to make again myself. So, I was in Paris seeing my mum and I went to see the David Hockney retrospective and was just so inspired by the California paintings, the pool paintings and I've always loved them but I've never actually seen them in real life. When I came back I was looking around the house and I have this fiddle fig that I've had for ages. I actually found it in the rubbish and I've rescued it. Anyway, it needed a pot, I thought I'd really like a pink pot but I didn't really have anything. I couldn't see anything that I really liked. I thought why don't I put the two together and make different colours? The thing I like is matte pots rather than the shiny glazed ones. I put together this new collection, it took about two years to develop, and they're made from coloured clay, so that's a little bit different, in 28 different colours.

Jane: Wow, you sometimes see on these ubiquitous social media channels and all these things saying: "Try making your own pots," but I imagine when you actually get down to the graft of this, to make a pot successfully, that works successfully in every sense, visually, practically, it's probably harder than it looks. What are the characteristics of the ideal plant pot?

Hannah: For me, I love terracotta pots but they do stain. One of the challenges for me was coming up with a clay body that would vitrify which basically means it's sealed. So that was a challenge because you can have a lovely colour and then you live with it for a month and it would have all these horrible stains. I really like simple shapes, so something that was really simple that you could use inside or outside. To me, it doesn't have to look a certain way. I really do believe you should get what you love and don't feel judged on any level about what you like. Those were the things that I was most looking for, really strong colours, or just colours that are subtle but strong and just a really simple shape. But then there were challenges in making it warped and just ceramic challenges. Like you said, it's a little bit of work to go from beginning to end but you learn a lot. I learned a hell of a lot along the way.

Jane: I always find, when I'm choosing pots, that I find a really lovely pot that I love, but when I get it home and I try and put the inner pot with the plant in it, if I'm using it as a cachepot, then often times the shape of those pots is wrong, they're either too tall and narrow or they're curved at the bottom so that the pot doesn't sit comfortably, there seems to be so many challenges. I have a lot of pots sitting around unused because they just don't suit the plants that I've got at the moment. I'm always digging around going: "I must have a pot that suits this plant. Oh, no, I don't." Why is it so hard?

Hannah: You think you know what's going to work and then when you get it home, like you said, you think: "That's it". I'll go back and back and I like to mull my purchases, so I'll go back and back and even then make the wrong decision. So, I think having a variety and the thing that I wanted also with my pots was that you can complement the colour or clash with the colour. So if you have a green pot you could have a green plant or if it has flowers ... It's harder than you think, I'm totally with you on that. I've made a lot of, well, I don't want to say mistakes because they always stay around, but it is hard to find the right pot for the right plants.

Jane: How has your collection of pots gone down with people buying them?

Hannah: It's really interesting to me, the colours that people buy, because you get an insight into people's personality or just what they're going for. With my stuff, I've found that a lot of people have bought multiples, so they'll buy three yellows or a blue and a red and a yellow, just different varieties and different colours, male and female. I'm amazed and really impressed by people's colour choices. I'm like: "I wouldn't put that together, but I really like it." Then people come with or without a draining hole and I've found quite a lot of people have bought them without the hole which to me means they're probably using them maybe without plants or they can use them for both if you're careful, I guess. So it's been really, really interesting and surprising in a good way.

Jane: You said that you got your fiddle leaf fig out of the trash, I love these stories when people find... I never find plants on the side of the road. I don't know why I'm missing out! Perhaps I don't live in the right area? Tell me a little bit about you and houseplants. Are you a big houseplant grower or is this a new thing for you?

Hannah: When I was a teenager, I went through the spider plant, rubber plant, 70s mood, then moved into other stuff and I've always loved houseplants. Obviously, they're having a big moment at the moment which I think is great. For me, to be honest with you, I'm always finding plants. People throw a lot of stuff out in LA and I'm always finding plants that need rescuing so I'll bring them in, or even succulents that have been chucked out and also if you walk around you can get a lot of little cuttings and stuff. I'm always taking a little cutting and then growing it. I love the whole finding things for nothing element to gardening. Yes, I have a mixture and I've just bought a bonsai which I'm very excited about, a little bonsai. I have a UFO plant and a prayer plant and then I found my orphaned plants along with them.

Jane: That sounds fantastic. I love the idea of being in LA and being surrounded by amazing plants growing outside as well as inside, plants that certainly wouldn't be growing outside here in the UK. Where are you selling your pots? Are they being sold from your studio or are you selling them online?

Hannah: I'm selling them online on my website HforHannah.com and I'm keeping it just on my website for the moment because everything is within my control and the great thing about nowadays is it's so easy to do it with shopify and stuff like that, so that's the plan and selling on my site.

Jane: You've been very diplomatic by saying you respect people's choices, but come on, there are some terrible pots out there.

Hannah: There are terrible pots out there.

Jane: I'm thinking about pots that I own or that I've been given or that I just ended up with randomly. I've got some terrible pots of weird shapes and odd colours. One of the crimes against pots that we can mention here, I guess one crime is being too boring, the white glazed pot is so ubiquitous.

Hannah: The IKEA pot, I call it.

Jane: The IKEA pot, yes, I have many. It's such a cliché. I guess, in a way, there's nothing wrong with that if it goes with your decor, but it just doesn't say anything really.

Hannah: No, to me, the biggest offence visually is those twiddly things with florally imprint. There are a lot of things that I personally don't want. Like I said, if you like it yourself, why not?

Jane: I think the weird thing is a lot of the things, ten years ago, I'd have been really snobby about, like the pots that my parents had, the West German Lava pots, and I'm sure as a ceramicist you'll be aware of that?

Hannah: Yes.

Jane: Now, I'm looking at that going: "Wow, I'm sure my parents threw out a heck of a lot of those when they moved to Canada," I don't know where they are now but they're worth loads of money, and I'm thinking: "Gosh, I wouldn't have given you 50p for one of those ten years ago."

Hannah: I know.

Jane: So our appreciation of certain styles has changed, I think, over the years.

Hannah: Yes, I find a lot of stuff second hand or they have a lot of yard sales here. I've got a lot of terracotta pots or just nice pots second hand. They have a story of their own, which I really like. I like a mixture. I don't like everything too perfect. I think, to me, that's more interesting. It's more of a life lived.

Jane: I should just explain these West German pots to anyone who hasn't seen one. They're often in 70s shades of orange and brown and rusty red and they're bubbly and rough. Sometimes they've got an hombre thing going on, or different patterns, but they're quite... you can probably explain these better than I can.

Hannah: It's a glaze that's like a volcanic glaze, so it has a volcanic look to it, a little bit.

Jane: Yes, they seem to be very, very trendy now.

Hannah: Yes, I know.

Jane: I wish I had all of those pots from the past back in my possession, but that is fashion for you. The other thing, I'm looking at one right now on my desk which I think is a bit of a fashion crime and I think is going to date very, very badly, I've got quite a lot of these pots that are silver and geometric and have got flat surfaces, they were in for a while. One of the things that annoys me about them is they go in at the top which, for me, is a problem because any over-hanging going on just makes it difficult, if you've got a pot within a pot, it makes it difficult to get access to the plant.

Hannah: Yes and it doesn't totally make sense as a design for a pot because then things can't grow out of it, I don't know, they did have a moment, not that long ago actually, but maybe stick around, like the lava pots, maybe put it somewhere and then bring it back out again because it might come back.

Jane: That's very true and I often think, I'll have a pot and I'll think: "I'm never going to use this because I'm never going to have the right shaped plant," and then I put it away in the shed and then two years later suddenly it's coming out again and I think: "Oh, yes, I am making use of it actually." If you've got the room to store these things I think that's the crucial point. It's good to have a really good collection of pots at your disposal. The other thing I love doing, I know we don't have quite so many yard sales here as you do, but charity shops or thrift stores, as you call them, are brilliant. So what else is going on in the LA house plant scene? Are there any good house plant shops?

Hannah: They are everywhere, everywhere I go now there's a houseplant shop. The selling online here is massive. I live very close to an area called Highland Park and there's a lot of small garden shops opening up and I think, as you know, people have become really, really interested in houseplants and my hope is that I feel like house plants are the star and the pots are the co-stars, but I think people are becoming much more interested in the pots now also. Like England, I'm sure, it's a real movement and everyone's stressed and looking for some way to unwind and plants fill a hole somehow for people to relax a little bit and enjoy the plants.

Jane: Completely. Well, thank you very much for joining me, Hannah. I'm delighted that your pots are doing so well because they're absolutely lovely.

Hannah: Thanks Jane, thanks so much.

Jane: You'll find pictures of Hannah's pots in the show notes at JanePerrone.com and do check out her website HforHannah.com

Now it's time for Question of the Week which comes from Camilla who wanted help identifying which type of variegated Monstera she has. Looking at the picture of Camilla's plant, it's a tall one, it's growing on a moss pole which I'd say is a good five foot tall but it's gone up another two or three feet above that. So she's got quite a decently sized Monstera here and there is some variegation on some of the leaves. She's sent me a separate photo of those variegated leaves.

But the question is, which variegated Monstera is it? I'm sure this has been a question that has been troubling many of you as you search desperately for this plant at a non-crippling price. Both plants are still very much rarities on the house plant market but they are becoming more available as growers rush to try and get more of these plants on to the market. In other words, I wouldn't pay a massive amount now for either of these plants because the price is inevitably going to come down. So the two cultivars of Monstera that you're likely to come across, there are a few other really, really super rare ones, but the ones you're going to come across are Thai Constellation which I've mentioned many times in this show because I have some, or Albo Variegata.

I'm going to give you my understanding of the differences between these two plants based on my personal knowledge of growing Thai Constellation and the research I've done into Albo Variegata. If I've got anything wrong then please shout at me and tell me what you know about these plants because there is so much misinformation out there but I'm going to do my best to tell you the differences between the two plants.

So Thai Constellation to start with, I guess the real main distinction with this plant is that the variegation, the light parts of the leaves, are more of a creamy yellow colour than a pure white colour. So you're getting splashes, you're getting little stripes and striations, some leaves turn out half-green and half-white but there's always this splashy element, I guess that's why the name Constellation was chosen. So that's one of the big distinguishing features between that and Albo - the clue is in the name there - Variegata which has white and green variegation. So that's the first thing to look out for. Generally with a Thai it's much more yellowy than with an Albo Variegata.

Second, looking at Camilla's picture one thing is clear, the growth habit of Albo Variegata is a bit different to the Thai Constellation and I think that is because Albo Variegata is the borsigiana form of Monstera. In other words, it's more of a vining plant than Monstera deliciosa Thai Constellation, which has very, very short internodes. So the space between the leaf joints on Thai Constellation is incredibly small. I've posted on Instagram about this before, it makes it very hard to take any cuttings because there is no room between the separate leaves joining the stem to do so. Whereas on Albo Variegata, because it's a borsigiana type, the internodes are much, much bigger and therefore it's much, much easier to take a stem cutting and propagate the plant which is why you're seeing so many Albo Variegatas being cut up and put online with a single node cutting because it's possible to do that with the growing style of the plant. So look at the internodes, I would say if the internodes are really, really short and the variegation is yellowy that looks like it would be a Thai Constellation, if the internodes are longer and it's more of a vining style as opposed to a bushy style then it's probably Albo Variegata.

Camilla, I would say your plant is Albo Variegata just looking at the style of it and the variegation, that seems to be what you have. So, enjoy your plant. It's looking fantastic. It's going to hit the ceiling fairly soon so you may need to chop it back, but maybe you could make some money out of those cuttings, who knows!?

Thanks for your question, Camilla, and if you've got a question for On The Ledge then drop me a line OnTheLedgepodcast@gmail.com

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Jane: That's all for this week's show. If you're in the UK and within striking distance of London, here's a date for your diaries. I'll be at the Future Flora event at the Ace Hotel in London on the 22nd of March - that's a Sunday. There's going to be lots of houseplant sellers there, delights to be perused, and I'll also be helping to judge the Houseplant of the Year competition. I've put details of that in the show notes and also on my Facebook page for On The Ledge, so do check it out. It will be a fun day and I'd love to meet some listeners there. Remember, in winter, it's important to keep yourself well hydrated and your cacti dry. See you next week! Bye!

Jane: The music you heard in this episode was Roll Jordan Roll by The Joy Drops, Flute and Drum, Rishikesh by Samuel Corwin, Chiefs by Jahzzar and Enthusiast by Tours. All licensed under Creative Commons. See my website JanePerrone.com for details.

Choosing the right pot for your plant is a matter of aesthetics, but these days as plastic pollution comes under the spotlight, are there any alternatives to the seemingly ubiquitous plastic pot? In this week’s show I look at the alternatives to plastic, offer up some tips on using cachepots, and talk to ceramic designer Hannah Morrow about her collection of pots inspired by a set of David Hockney paintings. Plus I answer a question about variegated Monsteras, and we meet listener Ash.

Want more on sustainability?

Read my top ten tips for sustainable houseplants

Listen to the other episodes in my sustainability series

Check out the notes below as you listen…

Hannah Morrow’s Jupiter range of pots. Photograph: HforHannah.com.

• Cachepots are useful covers for a less attractive inner pot - usually they don’t have drainage holes, but have you seen the video of people making holes in cachepots using a bowl of water? Here’s an example…

• Put a layer of gravel or expanded clay pebbles in the bottom of cachepots so that if you leave water in the bottom after watering, the inner pot is held above the water level. It can also help raise humidity around the plant. Do put a cork mat under pots to protect furniture though.

• Plastic pots cannot always be recycled as black plastic is generally not picked up by the scanners at recycling centres. If you do live in an area where plant pots can be successfully recycled, make sure they are clean otherwise they will be rejected.

• Try giving away plastic pots to community gardens or see if your garden centre offers a takeback scheme. Keep a few for the On The Ledge sowalong!

• Terracotta pots are great for cacti and succulents as they wick water away from roots.

• Terracotta saucers are often porous - spray them with an acrylic spray like this to make them waterproof.

• Check out Posipots - cardboard pots that offer an alternative to plastic for garden centres.

• Bamboo pots work really well and last longer than you’d think - here are the Haxnicks ones I mention.

• This week’s guest ceramicist Hannah Morrow’s pots are online at Hforhannah.com. She was inspired by David Hockney’s pool paintings. She’s also on Instagram.

• Never heard of West German Lava pots? Here’s the skinny…

Question of the week

Camilla got in touch to ask what kind of variegated Monstera she has. There are two types of variegated swiss cheese plants available right now: there’s a borsigiana type, ‘Albo Variegata’, which is a vining type with quite like internodal spaces, whereas ‘Thai Constellation’ has much shorter internodal spaces so ends up looking bushy rather than growing tall. ‘Thai Constellation’ also has more creamy or yellow patches whereas ‘Albo Variegata’’s variegation is more of a bone white.

Want to ask me a question? Email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. The more information you can include, the better - pictures of your plant, details of your location and how long you have had the plant are always useful to help solve your issue!

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If you like the idea of supporting On The Ledge on a regular basis but don't know what Patreon's all about, check out the FAQ here: if you still have questions, leave a comment or email me - ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. If you're already supporting others via Patreon, just click here to set up your rewards!

If you prefer to support the show in other ways, please do go and rate and review On The Ledge on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen. It's lovely to read your kind comments, and it really helps new listeners to find the show. You can also tweet or post about the show on social media - use #OnTheLedgePodcast so I’ll pick up on it!

CREDITS

This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, Samuel Corwin - Flute and Drum, Rishikesh, Chiefs by Jahzzar. and Enthusiast by Tours.

Logo design by Jacqueline Colley.