DEVON, UK. September 21st, 2026 – New figures suggest orchids have a unique ability to leave British houseplant owners scratching their heads. Devon nursery Houseplant.co.uk analysed Google search activity covering September 2025 to September 2026 and found that plant owners made more than 500,000 searches looking for answers to plant-related questions. Orchids accounted for over 285,000 of those searches, making their care by far the most common source of confusion.
The question appeared in dozens of forms, from “how to look after orchids” to “how do I look after an orchid plant”. Combined, orchid care beat every other houseplant question put to Google by British searchers roughly twenty-five times over.
The rest of the top ten, in order, were where to buy plants, how to care for a peace lily, how to get rid of the tiny flies that appear in pots (fungus gnats, Britain’s most-searched plant pest), “what plant is this?”, when and how to repot, how often to water, what soil to use, how to look after a cheese plant, and how to clean leaves.
Rebecca Tapper, who founded Houseplant.co.uk after spending nearly twenty years running a plant and flower shop on a high street in Devon, said: “Orchids get gifted. Somebody hands you one in flower, it looks expensive, and now you’re terrified of killing it. That fear sends a quarter of a million people a year to Google, and the sad part is the answer fits in one sentence: stop watering it so much. An orchid would rather be ignored than fussed over.”
The nursery’s growers offered one-line answers to the other most searched questions: A peace lily that droops is asking for water and recovers within hours. Fungus gnats mean the compost is staying too wet, so let the top layer dry out. Repot in spring, not winter. Water most houseplants only when the top two centimetres of soil feel dry. And a cheese plant mostly wants to be left somewhere bright and given room, since a happy one outgrows furniture.
Tapper added: “Half our job is talking people out of doing too much. Plants die of kindness in this country far more often than neglect.”
The nursery expects the orchid panic to peak after Christmas, when the winter gifting season puts orchids in thousands of new homes. Its growers publish free care guides for every plant they sell, from orchids down to cacti, alongside its range of large indoor plants and 600 other varieties.
Houseplant.co.uk grows and dispatches from its nursery in Paignton, Devon, has delivered more than 350,000 orders, and checks every plant by hand before it ships.
