It's Getting Crowded In Here

My Chinese Evergreen plant, Aglaonema, can be traced back more than fifty years. This was my grandmother's plant, and I remember it as a child in her front hallway. She died in 1969 and by the early 1980s when my aunt Hoohoo died, it had seen better days. I brought it home and took it out of the dirt and placed it in water to strengthen the roots—where it sat for more than TWENTY years. With my career and other life choices, I just never got around to planting it in soil. It thrived for a while, it almost died a few times, and finally around 2004 I potted it. It had been reduced to three single leaves and a massive root system. Within a year of being potted, it had begun to grow into actual stems and now has "trunks" more than an inch thick. It has sprouted 5 baby plants and I've repotted it three times. I can honestly say that it's never been healthier or larger. I know my grandmother smiles down at this one! 

My lush fern next to it is almost 10 years old, and has had its ups and downs as well. I put it outside on the porch a few days too early in the spring three years ago and it was touched by frost one night. I had to cut all the dead fronds off, and it has now come up from the roots and is beautifully full again.

I like to mix-and-match my indoor plants in their pots. Plants grow next to each other in nature, so I don't see any need to have plants growing by themselves in individual pots. This is a large curly spider plant—Cholorphytum comosum bonnie, a Schefflera arbicola, and a large-leafed philodendron (barely visible on the left), all existing together happily. This grouping has been together for approximately five years, and I've had to trim the baby "spiders" off for new plants fairly regularly. I've also "topped" the Shefflera several times and created new plants. The long single leaf sticking out on the right is last year's Amaryllis. It has a few healthy leaves, but didn't send up a flower stem this year, and isn't part of this group. 

I think the key to planting like this  is to group plants that like the same lighting and soil conditions. You don't want to place a water-needy plant in the same pot as one that prefers dryer soil, for example, or one that prefers shade with one that requires full sun.

Hanging in the window is my lipstick plant, Aeschynanthus radicans. I've had it for almost ten years and have had perhaps a dozen "lipsticks," or flowers, during the entire time. It has nice dark green and full foliage though so I keep it around. My Thanksgiving cactus is on the lower left, and is still blooming, and what is left of my violet garden is on the right. I had six African violets growing together for several years, but they all grew so large and were falling out of the pot that I had to remove them. I now have two older ones and a brand new one planted together in the center of the hand-painted pot, and am watching them as they once again begin the move towards the edges, and freedom, lol!