I have been choosing greenery for other people's rooms since 2014, and if I am honest the first few years were a slow correction of my own habits. Nothing I specified was a disaster. It simply sat there, taking up floor, without earning its place. What follows is the retrospective I would hand to a younger version of myself: the decisions I got wrong, and what I do instead now.
The flat in Didsbury: I bought to fill, not to frame
My earliest instinct was to look at a bare corner and treat it as a hole needing a plug. So I put something roughly corner-sized into it and moved on. The client was polite about it. Six months later I went back and realised the room read exactly as it had before, only with an object in the corner.
These days I ask a different question: what is this plant framing? A tree beside a doorway makes the doorway feel deliberate. A tree in the middle of nothing just makes the nothing more obvious. The version of that flat I would build today puts an 180cm Artificial Natural Look Olive Tree with Wooden Trunk at 180cm and £59.99 half a metre off the corner, angled towards the sofa, so it brackets the seating rather than hiding in the join of two walls.
What I would change about pots first
For years I let plants arrive in whatever black nursery pot they shipped in, then promised myself I would sort it later. Later rarely came. The pot is around a fifth of what you see and it is the part that tells the eye whether this was chosen or merely acquired.
Now I budget for the container at the same moment as the plant. A heavy floor piece drops into something with real presence like the 51cm XL Silver Metal Planter by Leaf at £99.99; a smaller specimen goes into a glazed pot in a colour already present in the room. If you are unsure, start with the range of ceramic planters and pick the least decorative one that still has some character.
I under-bought on height for the best part of a decade
Almost every plant I regret was too short. On a showroom floor a metre-tall tree looks generous. In a room with a 2.4m ceiling and a 2.1m door it looks like a footstool. My rule now is that a floor-standing piece should reach at least two-thirds of the height of whatever sits nearest to it, whether that is a bookcase, a window reveal or a door frame.
A 150cm Artificial Ficus Tree at 150cm and £54.99 clears the back of a standard sofa comfortably and still sits below picture-rail height, which is usually the sweet spot in a Victorian terrace. Browsing by size rather than by species, through artificial floor plants, would have saved me a great deal of money.
Spacing: I used to distribute evenly, which was wrong
Early on I spread greenery around a room like place settings, one per zone. It looked orderly and completely inert. Plants gain from company. Three pieces of unequal height standing close enough to overlap visually will always read better than the same three pushed into separate corners.
A cluster I keep returning to: one tall tree, one waist-height plant, and something small enough to sit on a stack of books, such as a 60cm Artificial Fiddle Fig Plant at 60cm for £26.99. The height gaps do the work.
Where I start now on a new project
- Walk the route people actually take through the room and mark the two points where the eye stalls. Those get the greenery.
- Decide the tallest piece first. Everything else is scaled against it.
- Choose one leaf shape as the dominant one and let the rest be supporting texture.
- Keep a few loose stems in reserve. A 100cm Artificial Fern Foliage Stem at £9.99 lets you thicken a sparse arrangement without buying another plant.
The one call I got right early
I never tried to make a room look like a garden centre. Two or three considered pieces beat nine scattered ones, and that instinct has survived every other revision. If I were starting a scheme this afternoon I would pick one anchor from the olive trees or the ficus trees, one mid-height companion, one tabletop piece, and stop.
Two practical notes worth knowing before you order: UK delivery is free over £30, and there is a 30-day returns window, which matters more than you would think when you are judging scale from a photograph. If a tree turns out to sit oddly against your skirting, you have time to swap it. Most of my worst decisions would have been avoided if I had simply stood the thing in place and lived with it for a fortnight before committing. For room-specific ideas, the living room selection is where I usually send clients first.
