For most of us, apartment dwellers and city types, houseplants are an admission of defeat. We look wistfully at plants in the supermarket—tendrils and fronds, furry flaps, spines and holes and soft neon shoots—persuading ourselves that they might bring us comfort.
Read MoreWhen I was five years old, my father, a basement-reared son of inner London, decided to take his young family to rural Ireland for the summer. He’d booked rooms in a heavily recommended bed-and-breakfast, which was reportedly awash with adorable animals and good old-fashioned cooking.
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