Indoors
Monstera
Monstera deliciosa
A big-leaved climbing aroid with the famous holes. Straightforward to keep alive, harder to keep looking like the photos.
- Houseplant
- Grown for foliage
- Average
- Type
- Houseplant
- Light
- Bright, indirect light
- Water
- Average
- Hardiness
- H1B
- Where
- Living room, bright spot out of direct sun
Position and soil
- Sun
- Partial shade
- Aspect
- South-facing
- Exposure
- Sheltered
- Soil
- Chalk
- Clay
- Loam
- Sand
- Moisture
- Moist but well-drained
- Soil pH
- Acid
- Alkaline
- Neutral
- Ultimate size
- 4-8 metres tall × 1.5-2.5 metres wide · 10-20 years to get there
- Habit
- Climbing
- Foliage
- Evergreen
- Family
- Araceae
Sourced from the RHS. Figures are the RHS species entry for Monstera deliciosa, whose sizes assume a heated glasshouse rather than a living room.
Care
- Watering
- Let the top few centimetres of compost dry out, then water thoroughly until it runs from the bottom and tip away whatever collects in the saucer. Overwatering is what kills these, not underwatering — a thirsty one droops and recovers, a waterlogged one rots at the base and does not.
- Feeding
- Balanced liquid houseplant feed once a month through spring and summer. Nothing over winter.
- Pruning
- Cut just above a node — the little bump where a leaf or aerial root emerges — and the piece you removed will root in a jar of water in a few weeks. Trim off the lowest yellowing leaves as it climbs; they are not coming back.
Winter — Water much less
Much less light means much less water — go from weekly to roughly every two or three weeks, and only when the top of the compost is properly dry. Cold compost that stays wet is the classic winter houseplant killer. Keep it off cold windowsills and out of draughts from doors, and away from a radiator, which will crisp the leaf edges. No feeding until spring.
Pets and children
All parts contain calcium oxalate crystals, so a chewed leaf will burn and irritate the mouth of a cat, dog or small child — unpleasant rather than dangerous, but worth putting it somewhere out of reach.
A climbing aroid from Central American rainforests, sold as a tidy little tabletop plant and entirely willing to outgrow the room you put it in. Thick glossy leaves on long stalks, deep green, with the splits and holes that earned it the Swiss cheese name.
What it actually wants
The holes — fenestrations — only appear on mature leaves. A young plant putting out plain heart-shaped leaves has not failed at anything, it is just young, and if it keeps doing that once it has some size on it the answer is more light, not more water. This is the single most common mistake: plain leaves get read as ill health, the watering can comes out, and a perfectly healthy plant ends up with yellow lower leaves and a soft base.
An east-facing window suits it, or a couple of metres back from a south-facing one. Direct summer sun through glass bleaches pale patches into the leaves.
The aerial roots are structural, not decorative. In the wild they grip a tree trunk and haul the plant upwards. Indoors, give it a moss pole and push the roots into it rather than snipping them off as untidy — a supported plant produces noticeably bigger and more heavily split leaves than one sprawling sideways out of its pot. Left unsupported it does not stay compact, it just leans until it falls over.
Winter
It stops growing from about November, so stop treating it as though it is growing. Water far less often and check the compost with a finger first. Move it off any cold windowsill — the air behind a single-glazed pane on a January night is a different climate to the rest of the room — and keep it clear of draughty doorways and away from radiators, which dry the air around it faster than the roots can keep up. Feeding resumes in March, when the light does.