I am getting the satisfaction of knowing I am growing what I want. And loving it! Besides, I don't see how growing too many plants makes a home ugly! Especially when the leaves and flowers of each hoya species/cultivar/etc. are so different and beautiful!
No one has ever posed that question to me, personally. But they do ask me to make cuttings for them!

So her point was that your environment is not beautified by all the plants you grow? Really?? I don't get that at ALL. Ok, it must be something like how I feel when I see a family with 5 children and mom's expecting #6. I think, "what the heck? 5 ain't enough??" LOL!

Only the obsessed get the obsessed. Everyone else, I think, tries to analyze WHY we grow so many plants. My friends and family probably assume I go overboard because I have no children - my plants and pets (4 cats, 1 German Shepherd) ARE my surrogate children. And maybe they're right. But they brings me lots of joy and I at least hope that they can see that.

But I DO find my environment beautiful. The only real downside is that there is constantly a mess to clean up. It's hard to have this many plants in every nook and cranny, and four mischievous cats and one crazy dog's tail and keep things super neat and tidy. But I don't mind a little dirt spilled here and there (waiting to dry enough to be vacuumed) when I can peruse my jungle, drinking in the beautiful and variable leaves. No one can tell me this isn't paradise!

Denise in Omaha

lol Yeah, Denise. I think that is how it is. She wasn't trying to criticize. She wanted me to give her some insight into what it is like to do our hobby, what kinds of people are attracted to it, and what makes it rewarding.

I mean, I would be thinking the same thing if I were in her shoes. I was thinking the same thing at one point! That wire shelving doesn't match the aesthetic of hardwood floors and period molding and I would never use them. Ha…!

Anyway, these are the points I made. Let me know if you agree/disagree.

Point 1: Expertise gives you different vision

When I look at a chessboard, I see this: blahblahblahblah. Sure, I know the rules of chess and could technically play (aka lose) a game. But when expert chess players look at mid-game chessboards, they see patterns. They see the strategies of the players and how the board will look many moves into the future.

In the same way, when my sister looks at my plants, she sees a wall of green leaves and vines, which look pretty much the same as each other. She sees this: blahblahblahblah. When we look at our plants, our eyes are able to make much more sense out of the picture. We see them as individuals even when they are massed together, because our eyes are much more experienced with this task. We get a lot more information out of the image, so it is not abstract or boring. This is especially true when looking at our own collections.

Point 2: Working with our plants releases endorphins

If you have 3-5 plants in your house then watering them takes about 5 minutes. Maybe you feel a little insecure about your ability to keep your plants alive, so when you walk over to them, it's with a sense of trepidation and humility.

Comparing this type of plant interaction with the time we spend with our plants is like comparing walking to the parking garage with going on a 10 mile run. Our brains release endorphins while we work with our plants, so our brains start to drool endorphins just from looking at our plants... in anticipation of the calming activity they represent. As someone who has a much higher than average baseline anxiety level, I know that, even if I have neglected my plants and there's going to be hell to pay, once I start working on them my brain will shut off and I will feel no anxiety until I'm done. It's like taking drugs.

Point 3: Different collectors have different things they get out of it

A serious grower could absolutely have the goal of using their sophisticated knowledge of plants to beautify their property. But they could just as easily have a different goal, such as learning more about the genus of plants, its members, their adaptations and variations, their potential medical applications, etc, etc etc. Or their goal could be to set themselves high challenge bars, and attempt to crack the code and bloom a species of which there are very few photographs, or grow a prize-winning plant for a show. Or their goal could be to socialize with other growers, swap plants, and make friends. Saying someone has failed to meet an aesthetic ideal with their grow room is making some pretty rash assumptions about what interests and motivates them.

Point 4: What is good for us is not always good for the plants

One of the biggest shifts that occurs, when a person gets serious about this hobby, is that they start to put the plant's preferences before some of their own. Sometimes you can reach an equilibrium in which the plant habitat looks beautiful to everyone (and not just other collectors), but often, what looks "pretty" (I'm looking at you, girl with African Violet sitting in the middle of her coffee table) is a much less happy environment for the plant. So, when my sister looks at my setup through her eyes and sees "ugly," I'm looking through the plant's eyes and seeing "comfy cozy!" Frankly, most "aesthetic" plant setups look like torture camps to my eyes, and there's nothing pretty about that.

Point 5: Aesthetics…

This is the bit that you two both jumped right on. Some people would kill to live in a modern SoHo loft and others would give their eye teeth for a rustic Montana ranch. I know my plant setup isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I have gone to great pains to make it aesthetic in its own way. Kind of in a science lab or professional greenhouse kind of way, but hey, that is still pleasant.

When I'm finished moving, my plants are going to have a room to themselves, one which happens to have some of the best views in the house. I can tell my sister and mom are a bit taken aback that I would give the best room to the plants, but to me it just makes sense. Aside from the logic of good South and East exposures, it is one of the rooms I will be spending the most time in. So, while it will look like a very bright storage room to them, it will be the heart of the house to me, and a very beautiful space indeed.

But, I suppose if I can keep asking her what she sees in her fiancé, she has a right to ask me what I see in my plants. ;)

======================

And now my responses to your remarks above…

Denise, I am very much in the camp of believing that when someone gets extreme about an aspect of their life, it must be serving a function of some kind. That doesn't mean they are broken and need to stop. We ALL self-regulate. It's just that some methods are untraditional and eye-catching and others blend right in and camouflage the root problem/feelings the person is trying to work out. (e.g. A businessman working 80 hour weeks; a housewife going Martha Stewart crazy; a college student binge drinking… are all pretty invisible to our eyes. But buy 100 indoor plants and eyebrows definitely get raised.)

Many years back I got really into MMORPGs and played one quite obsessively. (translation: big online game you play with other people.) To truly be a part of that community, you have to log an embarrassing quantity of hours every day; it basically becomes a second job. I can certainly say that the other people I met during that time of my life were all wrestling with something or another. Today, the only ones of us that are still playing that game or similar ones had very very serious underpinning reasons for living their life in limbo. Everyone else eventually balanced themselves out and started using their free time more productively.

As I've told people before, I got into Hoyas on the back of a really bad breakup with a partner of 8+ years. There's no way I would have collected this many Hoyas if I started today. But it's a part of my lifestyle and identity now. So, it's not like, just because I'm in a better place, I'm going to chuck out all the plants. (lol) Of course, most people here don't have collections as disproportionate as mine, so I am not speaking about you guys at all. But my collection most certainly bloomed from a time in my life when I needed some serious anxiety management tools.

That said, it's pretty arrogant to make assumptions about what other people's reasons for their excesses are. We don't all want the same things out of life. So, what you perceive as a 'lack' in someone's life, might not be driving them at all. All you really know is that they've found something that works for them, and if you have the desire to judge them for their choice, then you've got your own issues to work out.

This post was edited by greedyghost on Thu, Oct 2, 14 at 14:26

HA! I, too, was a victim of a certain MMORPG for a few years, as was my husband. He had come home from deployment and was on shore duty (basically a break from sea duty until the next sea assignment). We were re-adjusting to being a couple again, and he suggested a certain popular game as a way to bond. Well, it worked until it almost consumed us. I quit first, mostly because of drama regarding other players, but also because it became boring. Same thing every day. It took him a bit to quit, but then he started seeing what I did. And quit as well.

With hoyas, as with my outdoor gardens, I have always been drawn to them, not because of anxiety or a bad experience, but because they represent a natural perfection, an ideal of what beauty nature holds. I am a nurturing type, so one more thing to take care of also drew me to plants in general.

I used to have a fear that I would eventually "hoard". But after being a part of a foster/rescue program for cats, and after having several kittens born and come and gone through my doors, I have never had more than a total of five that I personally own. And two of those are cats that no one else would want (one has a mild form of feline cerebellar hypoplasia, and the other has anxiety issues). This, along with my ability to just up and toss a plant that just WON'T live, no matter what, confirms and reassures my fear of becoming out of control.

Ha. Yeah, I knew a few couples who played together, but only one who did so successfully. I actually think any kind of game is harder to play as a couple, because it requires you to have the same playing style. I didn't play THE MMORPG (well, not much). I played FFXI, which is even dorkier, because only 5 other people were into it. (sigh) ;P

A few years back one of the Hoya people on here did contact me on Diablo tho. That was cool. ^_^ So there is a teeny sliver of overlap between gamers and plant geeks, as unlikely as it seems.

~-*-~-*-~-*-~-*-~-*-~-*-~-*-~-*-~

Well, I wasn't trying to imply that I was intentionally growing plants as means of controlling my anxiety. lol I was just pointing out that there is a (subconscious) reinforcing mechanism at play. I psychoanalyze too much.

~-*-~-*-~-*-~-*-~-*-~-*-~-*-~-*-~

I have a fear of hoarding, too. But I think most people naturally self-regulate. Like a MMO, there just comes a point where it's just not fun anymore. If you acquire too many plants, and you can't maintain them well at your current skill level, then it becomes like a job, and so you naturally make adjustments until your plants are fun again.

I agree completely. And I think psychoanalytical people are actually better for it, being one myself. It is a good trait.

My husband has ask me questions close to what your sister wanted to know GG. Like "Is it mainly women who collect Hoyas?" He was very surprised that about 1/2 are men.

He very jokingly calls my plants (and people who grow them) "those crazy Hoya people". For some reason he relates the word Hoya- to like insanity. In a very jokingly sort of way.

I was bringing in a few plants before a frost last night. He ask me was I sure I didn't want to just put all the Hoyas outside and let the frost "finish them in"? He's very much just a joker though.

I think hes coming around to liking them. Last week I had one blooming and he saw it without me telling him. He told me Hey your plant is blooming! Maybe I can get him to see the beauty we see one day! :)

There may not be a truer saying than Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I grow many ugly plants, because to be honest, many orchids are just not attractive in my eyes. But I have hundreds of them. So why then?

Because I find them interesting. I find it amazing what nature has come up with, I find it fascinating what shapes, colors, pollination techniques nature has developed, and when I finally bloom something that takes a lot of work, the personal pride and satisfaction I get is my reward.

When it comes to Hoyas, i do find most to be attractive plants, but I've taken it a bit further and am landscaping my yard with some. I'm lucky enough to live in a place where I can do that, and if I'm having a bad day, a simple walk around my backyard soothes me. Now I do have one or two Hoyas that I don't find attractive, and at some point I'll get rid of them.

Since I've been growing orchids longer, it's easy for me to cull the collection, and I do it pretty regularly.

I agree that some people don't find plants attractive. That is fine. I don't understand my husbands hobby, it doesn't interest me at all. He doesn't understand my interest in growing. Luckily we both want the other to enjoy life, so we both accept the time/costs/space we each put into our hobbies.

My mom and sister do ask why, they just don't get it, but over the years they just seem bemused about it. Like we don't understand her fascination, but hey Renee is just Renee.

What a great question! Ha!

My own Hoyas (and other plants) are grown for maximum vitality and beauty, and I prune them when they overgrow their boundaries.

However.......my brother always makes fun of my plant collection. He simply hates all the containers on the deck - he says it looks like a Santa Cruz house (pots all over deck railings). I don't actually have plants on deck railings, but this is his joke.

That said, he never turns down a plant that I give him as a gift.....

Josh

I grow my plants out of beauty and it is much appreciated by gardeners and non-gardeners alike. True that most don't get my passion about my Hoyas and other houseplants, but they are happy when they see something of mine in bloom or notice the beautiful foliage.

Teisa, I can relate to the humor part of your post. My best friend calls me a "botanist" since I have a green thumb (some people might even say I have two lol). My parents say the same thing as your husband when anything in Xanadu (that's my entire garden including the houseplants) is blooming.

GG already knows this, but I'm a gamer, too. Not online, but yet a gamer. I love the older games. Heck, I was just playing Mario Party (Nintendo 64) today. I still have NES games that work, too lol.

If I see someone that admires my plants, I'll spare them a cutting, just to see if they can get that spark that I got when I first got into gardening.

Brad AKA Moonwolf

GG, it sounds like your sister implied that a few big plants is prettier than many small ones. I actually agree with that, and I think HUGE plants look even better, especially indoors where they are not expected to be HUGE.

We sort of have no choice but to start with very small hoyas because buying a specimen plant is just simply not an option for most, at any cost. You could come sort of close by getting a bunch of EA 8-inch baskets, but they are too common and often boring and not the ideal species I want to get and grow anyway.

Even if somehow miraculously I did have a few huge plants... (Well, talk to me in 10 years - maybe I will) - many grow so slowly that to compensate for that, I'd still need to grow a good number of them - then something new and exciting would always be happening to keep me entertained.

My friends do joke about this hobby of mine. One keeps repeating that she'll organize an "intervention" for me. But she also gladly took a few cuttings from me, and we halved a couple big plants we bought together, because we each wanted plants a bit smaller than were for sale that time. It was me who introduced her to being more bold about growing house plants, and she is not complaining. Several others ask for plant growing advice all the time...

Generally, New York is a place where one can famously do whatever they hell they want, and growing 150 plants is very low down on the list of strangest things people do here. I inserted a bright yellow ribbon instead of a shoe lace into one of my shoes and a bright blue one into the other, as a show of support to my country of birth Ukraine (those are the colors of the flag), and not even once in NYC did anyone look strange at me or ask me any questions, in many months I've worn those shoes. The threshold for strange things here is way high, and I actually do not feel like this hobby, or my way of going about it, are particularly strange. I belong to three different plant Societies (another perk of a big city), and some people there are way more extreme about how and what they grow.

Like Renee, I also grow orchids - and that has been very puzzling to me because, again like her, I find most orchids unequivocally and highly ugly when not in bloom. Not only are they ugly, many also look very similar. When they do bloom, many often triple or quadruple in size, which is hard to manage when you grow on a full plant stand. But I am not abandoning them and even building up the collection because - and this applies to my hoya growing as well - I am absolutely fascinated by these plants' growing habits, discovering what makes them thrive and trying to understand what they tell me. And this is another major reason for me to grow many plants (within limits) - I can learn more when I am growing more plants.