Caring for houseplants starts the moment you buy them. Because many are native to hot or tropical climates, even the slightest exposure to cold can prove fatal. So, when you make your purchase at the garden centre, ask for the plant to be put in a box or bag, or have something at hand in which to wrap it for the journey home. Most plants come with a label giving, often very basic, care advice.

Heat and light

When you get home, choose an appropriate spot for your new houseplant and leave it there. Like any other living thing it needs to settle and adjust to its surroundings. Moving the plant around is likely to make it lose the will to live! Avoid drafts or anywhere subject to dips in temperature, and steer clear of poorly lit areas. Lack of light can sometimes be fatal, but more often results in weak, leggy growth and a lack of flowering.

Flowering plants and those with variegated foliage generally need more light than plain green foliage plants. Cacti, succulents and carnivorous plants all need full sun, but they can be scorched by strong midday rays if they are grown right next to the glass of a south-facing window. Cunningly placed mirrors will come in useful to provide orchids with the bright indirect light they require.

Humidity

Humidity is crucial to the health of most houseplants. Central heating keeps temperatures up, but also dries out the air – which means constant misting with a spray gun will be necessary to help replace the moisture in the atmosphere. If you think you might forget to do this, try grouping the plants together which helps them create their own humid microclimate around the foliage, or place the pots on a bed of pebbles and keep it topped up with water.

Watering

A houseplant’s’ compost needs to be damp at all times, but many houseplants are killed by over watering. It should be neither soggy nor dry. After watering, check that the compost is damp all the way through, with no surplus water, which you must ensure is drained away. Tap water is fine for most plants; it contains chalk that the plants need. However, orchids, carnivorous plants, azaleas and gardenias hate chalk, so use rain water or put tap water through a filter jug first, then boil it in the kettle, leaving it to cool before use.

Feeding

The most advisable method is to mix a long lasting, slow-release feed into the compost when potting or re-potting. Specialist plants, such as cacti and succulents, orchids and bromeliads, need very little food, while carnivorous plants do not need feeding because they catch their own grub.

Pests

All houseplants, no matter how well cared for, are susceptible to pests. Some of them are microscopic, so if your houseplant doesn’t look as healthy as it should, give it the once over with a magnifying glass. Look in leaf axils for mealybug, which looks like tufts of white fluff, and check on stems for tiny limpet-like scale insect. Inspect around young shoots and buds for greenfly.

You might not spot red spider mites because they are tiny to the point of being almost invisible. But you may well spot the damage they do as they suck the sap and cause premature leaf-drop, leaving groups of tiny pale dots on young leaves.

Compost can become home to jumping fleas called springtails (especially in over-watered peat-based composts) and vine weevil, whose grubs devour roots, tubers and bulbs. Spraying with an appropriate systemic treatment from your garden centre should eradicate nasties. Nematodes – minute parasites that kill the bugs – are also very effective.