With mini kitchen gardens, cool cacti collections and blooming bulb displays, My Tiny Indoor Garden is bursting with ingenious ideas and savvy solutions to help transform any nook or cranny into a plant paradise.
Matthew is the youngest-ever curator of the Royal Horticultural Society’s garden at Wisley, and his love of plants can be seen in his home as well as his work.
‘I have always loved houseplants,’ Matthew says. ‘My grandma had pelargoniums and cacti and I took an interest really early on.’ A huge ponytail palm, Beaucarnea recurvata, is a testament to those early green-fingered years. ‘I bought it as a tiny plant when I was a kid and just loved looking after it. Now it is vast.’ And it is surrounded by other choice and beautifully tended plants. The two collections combine to make an unusual and opulent indoor garden.
Most extravagantly, Matthew has removed the innards from an antique chair and planted it up with pink-flowered Medinilla magnifica. ‘I bought the chair at an antiques fair exactly for this purpose because it had such a deep seat. The stallholder told me that the springs needed replacing, and I think he was quite surprised when I said that I was going to remove them and turn it into a plant pot. ’ It seems the perfect way to display one of Matthew’s more showy plants within this antiques-obsessed household.
The featured extract is from My Tiny Indoor Garden
