Jungle Fever

It’s easy to give your home an exotic vibe with lush houseplants and bright blooms.

- Adrienne Wild

Houseplants make a home healthier, cleaning the air from airborne contaminants and allowing you to breathe more easily. They also make a room feel cosier and with a bit of clever styling will instantly give a boring space a chic and exotic jungle look that’s oozing with personality.

Plants soften and add texture to a room, so when choosing think about them as you would a piece of furniture or ornament. To create a jungle effect you’ll need at least one monster plant to make the room appear lush.

For sheer size and impact you can’t beat the Swiss cheese plant (Monstera deliciosa), which has large heart-shaped leaves that develop large cuts and holes. Curiously, it also produces aerial roots that in the wild help the plant scale trees, so you will need to give it a moss-covered support to cling to. Find this plant the brightest spot where it can reach its potential and selectively prune it to maintain its size.

Easier to home are the stately fiddle fig (Ficus lyrata), weeping benjamina fig and the slim-fit rubber plant, which can be ‘limbed up’ by pruning to make a bushy tree. They can all be divas, underperforming when there’s a draught or if over-watered, but are mostly forgiving of neglect.

Nothing says jungle like palm trees, which also tend to be hardy and comparatively undemanding, provided they are kept moist. Be mindful that Cycas revoluta, Phoenix canariensis and Chamaerops humilis require bright light even in winter. The pygmy date palm (