I feel sorry for houseplants

...I really do. They have such terrible lives of neglect and suffering. Nearly all my friends, family and work buddies are hopeless at looking after them. Now I am no Alan Titchmarch, but I am able to keep a plant alive and it is really simple. Here are my (insightful!) top tips:

• Plants need light (some want direct light and some don’t). So that means (Hena) that a plant is not going to thrive in a room where the curtains are permanently closed


• Plants need water. Not loads of water (or tea dregs – you know who you are!) where they end up having their poor roots suffocate. Plants roots (other than aquatic plants) need air in the soil so that can actually draw up water


• Plants need food. Not all the time but every so often. Baby Bio is my plant food of choice

My favourite houseplant is the Peace Lilly (Spathiphyllum wallisii). Here is my pride and joy (I've had it for more than 10 years):

It is ace and easy to look after and blesses you every so often with lovely white flowers. The great thing about this plant is that it is really hard to kill. So when you get back to work, after two weeks of annual leave, and your Peace Lilly hasn’t been watered (by people that promised they would) and the leaves are actually lying on the desk – you simply give it a water and hey presto a day later the leaves are all perky and healthy looking.

It’s a fighter – it needs to be ‘cause it’s a tough world out there.