The Monstera’s unworldly flower spikes, spathe-wrapped and glaucous, are glow-in-the-dark green cream, pushing up from arm-thick vines. Others are shaking off their spent and tan-dried cloaking, the inside pocked like leather with uniform cratered lines. Hexagons edged in cream flutter finely up the spadix and dot resin in the hot March air, stigma like motorway markings up the marrowfat pea green skin. Leaves the size of small dogs parasol above with hard dots of white light spotting through in strange constellations.
Before this, the largest Monstera I had seen was in Sardinia, sun baked in a courtyard and cloaking a three-story wall. It was a little tattered and wind-battered, crisping slightly around the edges as summers edged into hottest on record, but nonetheless magnificent. It was climbing into unlimited space, leaves nearly a meter long. This is how it wanted to live, and on returning home I couldn’t help but look differently at my own houseplant offerings. I felt guilty for their shade-ridden straggling, suffering through central heating and living room existence. I didn’t want to be reminded of the poor facsimile I had forced into being in West London, so I took the loppers to it not long afterwards.
Knuckle by swollen knuckle I placed them in water around the flat. They rooted happily, coiling down brown shoelaces and pushing heart-shaped leaves out to assuage my guilt. Bonsaied into something new, I smile with the water changes and leaf wipes now, no longer feeling the reproachful watch of that magnificent Sardinian relation.
a year in the garden 