Mark Lashmar or Your.Babylon is how you might know him on Instagram, is a houseplant enthusiast living with 400+ plants in his Essex home. Here we find out about his plant hobby and living with hundreds of plants.
Mark is an avid aroid collector so many of his plants are within his plant cabinets, as well as plants being in every room of his house and in an outdoor greenhouse. His love of plants started from a young age when he would spend time gardening with his Grandma, absorbing her knowledge as she passed on planting tips to him. Mark’s fascination really started to grow following his first visit to a glasshouse at a botanical garden, he recalls feeling like he was instantly in a jungle world and knew he would one-day try to recreate this feeling in his own home.
See your.babylon for videos and advice on using plant cabinets
Plant cabinets are a really important ‘tool’ for aroid collectors like Mark, as they allow for a more controlled environment with higher humidity. Grow lights can also easily be attached and a fan is an essential part of a plant cabinet to allow for good airflow, otherwise mould can be an issue. Glass shelves can also prevent air circulation, so the wire shelf pictured in Mark’s cabinet is a welcome addition. See a tour of Mark’s plant cabinet here.
The positive impact of living with many plants
Mark wholeheartedly believes that living with plants has a positive impact on his life. He appreciates focusing on the mindful activities of watering, repotting and propagation to take time away from the busy-ness of day-to-day life.
His favourite plant care activity is propagation, Mark takes real enjoyment from learning how best to propagate certain plants and nurturing them from small. The main propagation methods that Mark uses are water propagation as well as semi-hydro. (See our semi hydro blog for more details), and also moss for growing his Anthurium seeds and cuttings. Mark shares lots of advice and how-to videos of propagation on his YouTube Channel.
Mark acknowledges that he will always live with plants;
“I need to, I’m drawn to the natural world”
However, his plant-loving life has changed over time. From starting with his love of growing outdoors, to an interest in houseplants, and then his hobby changed from trying to collect as many plants as possible, to now focusing on the ones he has and trying to get them to grow as large and as healthy as possible.
Philodendron Goeldii 'Fun Bun' / Thaumatophyllum sprucaenum.
When asked which is his favourite plant in his collection, Mark finds it hard to choose as it often changes, but one of his constant favourites is his Anthurium crystallinum silver. He loves the dark, velvety foliage and it’s impressive silvery bands that adorn the leaves. Mark is particularly smitten with this plant as he has grown it from a baby, nurturing it to become a really stunning large plant.
Anthurium crystallinum silver
While Anthuriums can be readily grown from cuttings, a more involved method of propagation that Mark enjoys experimenting with is growing Anthuriums from seed. It takes patience and some work, but is undoubtedly a very satisfying and fun process. To learn more about propagating from seed you can follow Mark’s process via his instagram.
As well as the more unusual houseplants that Mark propgagtes and grows within his plant cabinets, he also has a lovely collection of large, more common plants such as Calathea, Snake Plants, Monstera and Rhaphidophora tetrasperma.
Mark acknowledges that sometimes his hobby might get a bit in the way for the others in his household, but they have learnt to live with it, as Mark states,
“It’s a part of me.”