This Bengaluru home is created to be a plant and pet paradise

Manssi’s home is also inhabited by two devastatingly beautiful adopted Indies—Mimi and her baby Barfi. According to her, the mother and son duo just ‘barged’ into her life and never left after she saved Barfi’s life. She asserts that her entire house was planned and designed around her dogs.

Secret Life with the House Plants

Manssi likes to talk to her plants, especially ones that are dying. “It may sound like hocus-pocus, but those plants didn't die. I am trying the same thing with another wilting plant.” She does a lot of the gardening herself, really getting her hands dirty. She doesn’t have any fancy gardening tools, but she swears by her pruning scissors. “The only thing that I buy quite frequently are my pruning scissors because they do tend to lose their sharpness. You don't want to go in with a dull edge because then you're really hurting them,” she adds.

Manssi sits with each plant with a napkin and mug of water—not just ones with large leaves but also the ones with fine leaves. She wipes every single frond, top and bottom, also a meditative activity for herself. Manssi explains that letting dust settle on the leaves essentially strips the plants of the surface area they need to absorb sunlight. “People make fun of me because that's my mandala art alternative,” she laughs.

Before buying new plants for her home, she does her research first to learn about them. “Also, I make sure that I know where the plant is going to be placed, only then I visit the nursery to bring it home.” Learning the watering schedules of each plant is crucial. “You can overwater a plant and kill it. If you don’t water a plant, you can kill it. Getting just the right amount of moisture is super important,” she says.

Among her prized plant collection, her absolute favourites include monstera, the rare Japanese black bamboo that she strived hard to keep alive, and a massive ten feet giant lily with evening-blooming flower clusters that are larger than the size of her face. Manssi points out that monsteras stay relatively small while potted. Planting them directly on the ground allows them to grow truly ‘monstrous’ and magnificent. Through the years and plenty of trial and error, Manssi has learned to prioritise her plants’ survival over aesthetic placement. For sun-sensitive varieties that tend to fade or burn due to over-exposure, she cleverly clusters them beneath taller plants to provide a semi-shade environment they need to thrive.

Animals and Plants Co-existing

Because of her pets she doesn’t use any chemicals in her garden, and the plants mostly thrive where they are planted with just natural fertilizers, compost and loosening of the soil every once in a while. If not, she moves the plant to another location in the house.

Snake plants are excellent air purifiers and are low maintenance, but toxic to dogs and cats. According to Manssi, any plant eaten in large quantities can lead a stomach upset and vomiting in dogs. If a plant is not a food bearing plant, it should not be eaten by any animal.

“Dogs have noses that can decipher 3,000 individual ingredients from a perfume, so why would they not be able to understand that this is a non-edible plant?” Manssi points out. In her experience as a canine nutritionist, this happens when the animal's brain is not functioning enough. When a dog is extremely hyperactive, overworked and sleep deprived, the part of the brain that is responsible for processing the information is not functioning efficiently when it comes to decision making. She says, “My dogs sleep 18 hours a day, are extremely calm, they're not hyperactive at all, so they can actually make these decisions on their own. Both my dogs eat leaves all the time. They select the leaves that they will eat.”