*AD:Gifted: This post contains some gifted plants from Blooming Artificial. As ever my views are my honest opinion!*

Previously, I was always more of a flower girl than a plant lady and it’s only since buying our home in Manchester, that I’ve developed a love for all things greenery. Now, you can’t stop me from stroking and “ooohing” over plants in our local garden centre and plants make much more of a frequent appearance in our home than flowers.

However, as much as I love plants, they rarely love me back. Real plants need A LOT of babysitting and gentle looking after, and well, sometimes I kind of forget to do that. For weeks. It appears I am not the most green fingered person when it comes to plants (although give me a vegetable to grow and I’m a whizz at that. I have an allotment, don’t you know…), and more particularly, Fiddle Leaf Figs. I bought two after seeing everyone suddenly have them in their home on Instagram and decided they wouldn’t be that hard to look after. Oh how wrong I could be! One got spider mites and freaked me out so I swiftly got rid of it and the other slowly died dropping it’s leaves one by one until there was one lone leaf left. The drama!

The plants I have managed to look after are a Yucca, a Cactus, a Rubber plant, two Palms and a Succulent. I’m not sure how, as I don’t give them enough love, but they’re still with us and looking pretty (if you ignore the brown leaves). I give them a communal bath every few weeks or so and they seem to like it! I do think there is a certain charm in buying a real plant, looking after it and watching it grow, and it is nice to have real greenery in your home. However, you have to know what you’re getting yourself into before you buy!

Aswell as the real plants that are still with us, we also have some great faux plants. I’ve collected these over the last few years from Ikea, Sainsbury’s and more recently Blooming Artificial, who kindly gifted me with a selection of faux plants of my choice. I have to say, they are the best faux pants I’ve ever seen and are such good quality. I also like the fact there is no looking after them and I know they’ll be with me forever!

My definite favourite is the Strelitzia plant Strelitzia plant which is absolutely massive and makes such a statement. You can bend the branches to shape it how you want and once it’s in another pot you’d never know it wasn’t real. I also think it’s a really reasonable price for such a large plant, currently for sale at under £100.

I also love the Areca Palm I chose, which is UV friendly so it can also be used outside. I raised this one up from the floor with a plant pot on legs and it fits in this corner of our kitchen absolutely perfectly.

Along with a small Monstera plant for my desk, I also chose a Boston Fern, as I have had absolutely no luck with these in the past and have struggled to keep them alive for more than a week, and a Finger Cactus. The latter looks incredibly realistic and it looks great on our kitchen windowsill alongside our herb plants.

Blooming Artificial also sell faux trees and flowers, alongside their huge range of plants, and the next plant on my list from them is definitely the massive Saguaro Cactus which I just love!

With all this plant talk, I thought I’d give you my 5 tips for using real and faux plants in your home.

Plant Tips:

1. Try and mix the faux with the real. Not only does this give a nice balance it also makes your faux plants look more real when people can see some real greenery in your home.

2. Make sure you water your real plants regularly (and don’t forget and water the faux ones!) and move them around if they don’t look like they’re getting enough light. If they are thriving and looking healthy then leave them in the same spot as some plants don’t like being moved around and it can affect their growth. Similarly, use faux plants in places that don’t get much light, so as bathrooms.

3. Place your faux plants into bigger pots where you can’t really see the original pot the plant comes in. This is a way of hiding that they’re faux. You can even add decorative stones or soil if you want to fully disguise them! Also look around your house if you need some new pots - empty candle holders, big jars and tins and baskets all work well!

4. Vary the sizes of your plants as this means you can fit more in your home! Small succulents and cacti work well on desks, bathroom shelves and coffee tables and bigger plants look particularly good in corners. Inside a window ledge or a sloped ceiling is the perfect spot to place a hanging plant.

5. Display your plants in different ways - hang trailing plants from plant hangers, pop smaller plants on shelves, group cacti and succulents together on trays, and display bigger plants in big pots on the floor.