Terra Cotta

In praise of the prince of pots

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A brief word in praise of the prince of pots. This time of year, when our eyes fail to fasten on anything green outside, they tend to fall more often on the houseplants. Houseplants do a lot for us, though it’s more or less a myth that they filter the air to any meaningful degree, unless we keep a literal greenhouse full of them, at which point we are no longer decorating but participating in agriculture. But, if cared for properly, they do create a sort of household rhythm by which we walk from place to place with our small watering cans, noticing, tending, moving, breathing.

And once we learn the art of basic propagation—which is almost comically easy when it comes to most common varieties of houseplants—they also give us a general sense of expansion and development. Under the right conditions, nature is very generous and, with a little skill and time, one plant bought for less than the price of a bottle of wine can become four, twelve, twenty, bringing us a sense of accomplishment that’s related to but different from the rhythmic abundance of the annual vegetable harvest, since many houseplants live for years and years and, therefore, can develop a personality, a presence in their corner of the home that no stalk of corn or tomato bush could have, no matter how magnificent.

And all these plants have to be put in things, a necessity that brings us inevitably to a very dangerous place: the ceramics aisle of our local garden center. Once we’re there, we’ll see that the options are almost limitless: pots come in every conceivable size, shape, color, and material. If you are like me, you will have started off by buying flashy colors in plastic, and regretted the choice almost immediately. While inexpensive and sturdy, plastic looks dingy very quickly and somehow never manages to look nice. It overheats too fast, cooking the roots, and provides almost no protection from the winter frost.

On the second round, then, you might have sprung for ceramic with a colorful glaze. These purchases probably lasted you a little longer. But, with a keen gardener’s eye, you will have eventually noticed that the thick glaze lets little to no moisture through, making it hard to see how saturated the soil is, and resulting in a tendency to overwater your plants, leading to root rot. You’ll also have seen that, though a plant can last years, your love of that color never quite manages to. The deep lapis shade you loved in late spring, because it seemed to push your house that much closer to summer, looks tacky and comical come January.

And so, like me, you will have arrived at the final conclusion. The purchase you should have made in the first place. The choice of experience, of maturity: terra cotta. You will have concluded, with magnanimous chagrin, that the wisdom of the ages should never have been doubted. There’s a reason people have been using this low-temperature fired clay as a home for their plants for millennia. Its soft orange-red never troubles the eye, never steals the show, but always looks tastefully restrained. And, like pair of all-leather shoes or a brass sculpture, over time it develops something that no other ceramic can claim: patina. Techniaclly called “efflorescence," those mild white streaks and whorls that appear on old terra cotta like scudding cloud are actually deposits of salt washed through the pottery over time. They cannot be manufactured, conjured, or painted on. They have to be earned. They’re the reward of that highest of gardening virtues: patience.

Once you go terra cotta, you never go back. You’ll haunt the ceramics aisle looking for chipped discounts and end-of-season sales. You’ll jerk dangerously to the side of the road, risking your children’s lives, to pick up a few cast-aways at the end of a driveway. And you’ll always get the biggest ones you can find. Ideally, pots so big they need dollies to move around. Because plants grow, after all. And there is always room for more of something beautiful.

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