Welcome to the jungle: The couple with 962 indoor plants

A love of indoor plants permeates Kristy Robertshaw’s home in Victor Harbor, a seaside town on South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula. They’re lined up beside the windows for the best light, cascade from ceiling hooks and stretch their tendrils dramatically down the stairwell. 

When Robertshaw did a recent headcount of plants on her property, she realised she had 962. “I was like, ‘and I wonder why watering is a bit overwhelming sometimes’,” she jokes. 

Happily, Robertshaw’s not living in the jungle alone, and shares her home and watering regime with husband David plus an extended family including young adult kids Charlie, 17 and Jackson, 20, mother-in-law Christine, Juno the Rhodesian ridgeback and Audrey the cat. 

As for the plant babies, they’re dotted through the house but also out in the greenhouse and, at the rear of the property, in Robertshaw’s onsite plant and homewares shop, Charlie and Jack. 

Robertshaw’s life has revolved around growing greenery and connecting with like-minded plant lovers for several years now. In 2017 she founded the now-157,000-strong Facebook group Crazy Indoor Plant People Australia (also known as C.I.P.P.A.), a hub for discussing “unicorn” plants, maidenhair fern problems and dramatic peace-lily timelapse videos. 

In the early days of the pandemic, when lockdowns and working from home were new, C.I.P.P.A. membership jumped by 30,000 in a few months, reflecting the soothing role plants played for so many who were suddenly housebound.

Robertshaw understands well that tending to plants can be comforting – her own passion developed in 2015 after a few tough years watching loved ones go through terminal illnesses and accidents. Plants offered her some respite. 

“It was just something that was peaceful and grounding … like a little hobby that I could do on the side.”

When she and David bought their home six years ago – a c1913 limestone-accented house not far from the beach with “really beautiful natural light and space” – it gave her a good excuse to expand her indoor plant collection. 

Robertshaw says the home’s interior style is composed around what the couple love. “We’ve never really stuck to an exact theme, but we do love mid-century furniture and we made a pact a while ago to try and never buy things we don’t love,” she says. “Although sometimes, obviously, practicality wins, like a hideous white couch that’s actually comfortable!” 

Many of their art pieces hold stories of connection.  “We love art, and we’re lucky enough to have many friends who are amazing artists so their work lines our walls.”

Particularly close to her heart are works she purchased by Indigenous artists from Iwantja Arts during a visit to the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands of remote north-west South Australia. 

“That’s something that’s really important to us,” she says. “Also ceramics – I’m obsessed with them. I love having stuff that has a story or is handmade, and that’s what we base our style around.” 

Love for bespoke homewares inspired Robertshaw to open Charlie and Jack, which was initially planned as an online store to carry items she couldn’t find locally, but that changed when she was made redundant from her student services job in late 2017. After “a bit of a crazy whirlwind” where David designed and built a stylish shopfront out of what used to be their back shed, she opened the bricks-and-mortar store in January 2018.

As you’d expect from the leader of Crazy Indoor Plant People Australia, even the retail plants are given the royal treatment.  

“I’ve bought the craziness in here,” Robertshaw says of the store. “We re-pot everything before it comes into the shop and, in true C.I.P.P.A. style, I give each [plant] a human name – we’re aware that it helps [buyers] not kill them because they don’t want to kill ‘Tony’ or ‘Colin’.”

“Tony” and “Colin” sometimes even come back for a return visit – buyers bring plants in for a “spa treatment” where Robertshaw gives them a nutrient boost, some pest protection and a leaf shine. 

Robertshaw values the personal connections she’s made in the plant world, and has already met a few C.I.P.P.A. members in person when she hit the road in her van, nicknamed Nelson Vandela. She has plans to connect with more in the future, too. 

“I’d love to cruise around Australia, meet C.I.P.P.A. members and see their collections and tell their stories,” she says. “I think that’d be really amazing.”