Episode 21: Alys Fowler

Alys Fowler is a gardener and garden writer who I first met when she became the gardening columnist at the Guardian, and I was gardening editor. Her new book on houseplants, Plant Love, is out now - I visited her at home to talk about why top-selling houseplants are like tights, how Instagram has made variegated leaves popular and why propagating cuttings in water works (despite my doubts).

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Episode seventeen: Seeking Pilea peperomioides - why everyone wants the Chinese money plant

Instagram is awash with it; but where do you lay your hands on a specimen of the Chinese money plant, Pilea peperomioides? Despite the Chinese money plant’s superstar status, the story of how it came to be so popular isn’t so well known.  I find out more about this fabulous plant from Dr Phil Cribb of Kew Gardens, who helped track down its origins.

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Episode 16: grow your own avocado plant

If you've blown your houseplant budget for the year on a beautiful Boston fern or a towering Euphorbia, this week's show will help you get your new plant fix without spending a penny. Although they grow to 20 metres tall in their native central America, avocados make surprisingly good houseplants - a little like a bargain basement fiddle leaf fig, if you will. 

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