House plants have enjoyed quite the renaissance over the last five years. A study from the National Gardening Association found that indoor house plant gardening spending grew to $2.17 billion in 2021 from $1.31 billion in 2019, due in no small part to the COVID-19 pandemic. But when and why did we start bringing the outside in to live in our homes with us, making us plant parents, casual connoisseurs and special variety fanatics? The Lloyd Library’s current exhibition, Welcome to My Jungle: In-Door Plants, explores our centuries-long fondness for flora.
“We have the first-ever book that mentions bringing in house plants, not just as storage during the off-season, [but] to actually make your house smell fragrant, like bringing basil and marjoram and flowers and carnations and setting them on your shelves,” said Patrick Ford, reference and cataloging librarian at the Lloyd Library.
That book is The Garden of Eden, written by Sir Hugh Plat and published in 1675. In it, among other botanical writings, Plat referenced the possibility of growing plants inside homes. The impetus for house plant ownership was spawned in part by colonialism.
“[At] the dawn of the Imperial Age, colonialism, Western European powers are going all around the world searching for things that will make them money,” said Ford. “Part of this is they all want to find the next sugar or something. This rush to document everything, all species of plants, is important to the story, this thrust of 18th- and 19th-century botany. So this is a great example of botanical imperialism at work.”
Ford curated the exhibition, which is entirely created from the Lloyd Library’s existing collection. The library’s founders, the Lloyd brothers, were both 19th-century pharmacists who followed the school of eclectic medicine. This branch gathered medical traditions from around the world, from naturopathic remedies to immunization therapies.
“They really understood, as most medical practitioners had for centuries realized, that there was a real strong connection between plants and medicine,” said Patricia Van Skaik, the library’s executive director. “This collection of books basically included everything — things about nature, things about plants and things about medicine. And it didn’t have to be about all three.”
The Lloyds amassed a collection of about 50,000 volumes of such books by the mid-1920s. Today, the Lloyd Library has 150,000 volumes of monographs and serials.
“Because of the nature of our collections and what printed books document, we can show, very well, the really fancy plants and things that were used as house plants, from the dawn of printing going all the way back to the 17th century through early 19th century,” said Ford.
The exhibition highlights house plant trends, tracing their shift from a status symbol for the wealthy elite to a Victorian-era trend led by adolescent girls and, finally, to their everyday popularity by the mid-20th century. The introduction of Wardian cases, a sealed ancestor to modern-day terrariums, in 1833, is a house plant gamechanger.
Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, an English physician with an affinity for botany, and nurseryman George Loddiges sent a Wardian case filled with 20 plants from England to Australia and 19 survived the journey. This success is documented in his landmark book, On the Growth of Plants in Closely Glazed Cases, first published in 1842.
“That completely transforms modern house plant culture,” said Ford. “Because it means that all of these different types of species that are new to the Western world, they can be shipped here now. They cause great excitement on the continent. That’s why we see these fabulous new plants. You see caladiums from Indonesia [become a] common house plant. We see all manner of orchids. This is why by 1870 we’re going through something in England called ‘orchidelirium.’ People are so crazy for all these new and wild plants.”
The books in the exhibition aren’t all house plant-specific. Many feature plants and flowers from more exotic climes. Dutch illustrator Berthe Hoola van Nooten’s lush illustrations of the native plants of Java, including the caladium, are featured in a book commissioned by the Queen Consort of the Netherlands, published in 1880.
“Back in the 19th century, they were really interested in creating books called floras,” said Ford. “A flora, beyond just all plant life, another synonym for it is a book that documents the plant life of an entire region. So this is a flora of Java showing off all the Javanese plants. Some of them are very mundane and not as eye-catching, but this one is super duper bold. That’s why we’ve opened it to this page — plus, it’s a common house plant.”
In 1893, caladiums were featured at the Chicago World’s Fair, in the Colombian Exposition. This marked the plant’s introduction to the American public. Around this time the phrase ‘pteridomania’ is created.
“This [author] coins this term, ‘pteridomania’ — which means fern mania, fern fever,” said Ford. “He has a quote in there: ‘Your daughters perhaps have been seized with prevailing pterodymania and are collecting and buying ferns with Wards cases wherein to keep them.’”
As the exhibition moves into the 20th century, the abundance of the ornate Victorian era aesthetics becomes passe.
“Post World War II, a lot of women are going into the workforce, and they’re decorating work spaces with flowers and domestic things,” said Ford. “That inspired a lot of people to bring them back into the home.”
African violets exploded in popularity in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Books from the ‘70s and ‘80s feature contemporary house plant classics, like monsteras and succulents. A copy of Stevie Wonder’s 1979 album, Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants, his musical response to a popular book of the era with the same name, is also featured, along with said book. The exhibition closes with Plants at Work: An Inspirational Guide to Greenterior Design, a 2021 book referencing the popularity of biophilic design, a term describing the integration of nature into the built environment.
“We’re gonna warm you up this winter with these wild, wildly colored plants,” said Ford.
Welcome to My Jungle runs through April 11. A Valentine’s Day plant matchmaking event is planned on Feb. 15, where you can be matched with your perfect plant companion. More info: lloydlibrary.org.
This story is featured in CityBeat’s Jan. 22 print edition.
This article appears in Jan 22 – Feb 4, 2025.