It wasn’t us who described our relationship with terracotta pots as a problem first. It was the delivery driver bringing one up our front steps last fedcember, having asked – entirely without malice – “another one of these then?” like he could see a trend he didn’t want to be affiliated with. He had a point. Between our houses there are currently nine terracotta pots, possibly ten. We can’t be sure because nobody’s done a full audit since the one that split in half over winter was moved to outdoor-use only-purpose forever.
The thing no one mentions until you find someone has mentioned it at your front door is, yes, we know, how do we keep buying them when at least three have now cracked? One of them within two weeks of arriving.
Perched on a patio during a frost it obviously should’ve survived but didn’t.
Still.
We don’t know how to explain it but there’s something about the real ones, the ones that are just orange and plain and terracotta, unglazed, that feel… thicker. When you rub your thumb over them they feel a little rough. Glazed or plastic ones are nice too but the real ones don’t need styling. Buy your sad spider plant a real terracotta pot and it instantly looks cared for not neglected. Honestly, it’s doing more heavy lifting than it has any right to for very little effort from us.
We’re both admitting half the time it’s the ageing process we’re buying. Half of us thinks that’s the whole selling point while the other half believes it’s just a genteel way of saying “becoming less sturdy in a way that we’ve decided will look charming.” The pale watermarks that appear after a year or two of overwatering. The little salt crusts that happen by the rim. The way the vibrant orange dulled down to something more muted, more homey. One team refers to it as patina. The other team refer to it as limescale that’s watched too many press interviews and stamped ‘semi-rustic’ all over it. Both teams will still buy another come December.
Here’s where they actually let us down though, and this is the part nobody tweets while holding up their newest pot in_soft_focus lighting: water. Terracotta likes water. Plants love it. Terraces hate it. Shelves hate it. Windowsills hate it. One of ours has ruined a wooden floor by leaving a water ring the exact size and shape of a 15cm pot on it. Permanently. Like a waterproof evidence sticker. Saucers are your friend. Buy two saucers per pot maximum. We’ve never had enough saucers. Asking someone how many pots they have and getting a dramatic gesture vaguely near eye height is our inside joke at this point.
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Laugh with us.
We’re not above realise how dirty our windowsills actually are.
We have also, numerous times, bought pots too big or too small based solely on how they made us feel, wandered into the shop confident a pot was “probably just the right size” then realised when we got home it was either bowling the plant over or microwaving it, strangle-style, with no medium ground and had to go back out.
That is not the pots’ fault. That is the understandable fault of everyone who measures nothing and always guesses at sizing. Including, most weeks, all of us.
Would we recommend someone buy one? Hell yes. As soon as they asked. Would we also tell them their floors are going to look like death within a year if they’re not careful? Yes, immediately afterwards. Both of those things are true.
We’ll still be buying more in December.
