Many people who have had bad luck with growing plants feel they lack a green thumb. But often, the fault lies in inaccurate imaginations or the ‘mental-models’ we have about plants.
What are mental models?
A mental model is the image we have in our head about how something is or works. People form all kinds of interesting mental models for things that are complex and ‘opaque’, i.e. where their inner workings are hidden, like computers, human bodies and plants. Here are a few faulty mental models of plants that are surprisingly common, especially among first-time urban gardeners.
‘Dry leaves means dryness’
The leaves of a plant can assume a range of appearances that can be labelled as ‘dry’, but that does not always mean it is suffering from dryness. Even overwatered plants show withering/yellowing leaves that people assume to be ‘dryness’. They water it, only to make it worse. Just as a good doctor rarely arrives at a diagnosis with just a single symptom, one should look at other signs, such as checking if the soil dries up too soon or remains water-logged, if more top leaves are affected than bottom etc.
‘Indoor plants are designed for indoors’
Many people buy indoor plants thinking they must survive all indoor conditions and feel cheated when they don’t. But ‘indoor plants’ is a misnomer as no plant in nature was designed to be indoors. It is a convenient term for designating plants that are typically found in forest floors, where they don’t get full-throttled and receive less intense sunlight. That does not mean zero sunlight. Different indoor plants need different levels of indirect light and hardly any can survive in dark corners.
‘Freshly potted plants last longer’
According to a well-known home decor store, many customers insist on buying freshly potted plants, applying the mental model of ‘fresh pieces’ in furniture to plants. What they do not realise is that a well-established plant could be better than a freshly potted one, which can show signs of transplant shock after being taken home.(The author is co-founder of greenopia.co)
‘A healthy plant is photoshop perfect’
A category manager of one of India’s largest online gardening marketplaces rues how many plants are returned as ‘damaged’ because of a minor leaf tear or natural colour variation. According to her, online plant buyers often tend to be those with no prior experience of plants and they apply the same mental models of ‘damaged’ to plants as they do to t-shirts. Smart sellers jazz-up their plants by spraying them with wax for a glossy look taken as ‘healthy’. So if you’re a first-time gardener having trouble, don’t blame your thumb! Perhaps the fault lies in a troublesome mental model, which, once corrected, can give you bounties for life.