Plant propagation in four easy steps

There’s one person in most offices who takes care of all the plants. They stick notes on the pots, warning you not to water them, stalk the corridors with a jug and look accusingly at the sad brown thing on your desk as they walk by. In our office, that person is Deb, one of our Guest Experience Team. Currently stuck working from home, she is still reaching out to make sure that everyone surrounds themselves with as much healthy greenery as possible. Here’s her simple method for filling your home with plants, without even having to go outside.

Deb’s simple steps to a plant-filled house

Here’s a really simple way to turn a few plants into many with just a bit of patience and a few items you probably have already at home. There are other ways with special root powders and soil, but this is a simple method which I use all the time. It’s called water propagation, which sounds fancy, but it’s really easy and you can have all the little green babies you want. Here's how:

Take the plant you want to make the babies from and cut the leaf on the stem, just below the little nobbly bit where it joins onto the main stem. You can do a few at once and if you do, make sure to cut them all the same length. This isn’t to do with helping them grow, more just for putting them in the same size jar.
Put the cuttings in an old jam jar or anything the right size for the leaves to sit just over the rim and the stems to be completely underwater.
Be very patient. This could take weeks, but eventually you should see little white shoots starting to grow from the bottom of the cutting. As long as the leaf itself doesn’t start to change colour, don’t worry about it, it’s still ok and just working out how to grow the roots.
Once the roots have grown a few centimetres long, you can move them to a pot of damp soil. You’re not going down to the garden centre to get new pots and things at the moment, but if you have space in another plant, you can pop them in next to it for a while.

So that’s a simple way to make yourself lots of little green babies and surround yourself with lots of colour and growth and life, even while we’re all stuck indoors. Happy propagating!