Houseplant business grows from long Covid ordeal

A woman left bed-bound and unable to leave the house because of long Covid has rediscovered her passion for life by setting up a houseplant business.

Ruth Bramley had planned to be a nurse, and was also a British champion canoeist.

But she caught Covid weeks into starting sixth form and admits she "never really recovered".

Now 20, she says it's important people do not forget the toll the pandemic took on young people.

"I spent close to a year hardly leaving the house - wiped out with fatigue," she told BBC Radio 4's On Your Farm.

Ruth from Llandysul, Ceredigion, described the debilitating impact.

Further serious health problems followed, including being diagnosed with idiopathic intracranial hypertension - a build-up of pressure around the brain - and fibromyalgia, a chronic condition causing widespread pain throughout the body.

She had to drop out of school and give up canoe slalom - which she had excelled at since the age of six.

Ruth was a British champion by the time she was 12, and the youngest person to be competing in the sport's premier division a year later.

"It was my whole life," she said.

"I trained for two-and-a-half hours a day five days a week and having to give it up was absolutely devastating - it left a massive hole."

Even though Ruth's parents run a successful plant nursery, she had always "sworn blind I would never go into horticulture".

But at her lowest ebb, she found comfort in houseplants and started to try and grow her own.

"Having the plants did a lot for my mental health," she said.

"Being around them is so grounding - all the textures and colours - it takes you out of your head."

Her father Richard had been grappling with how to help his daughter and offered to build her a little houseplant shop at the nursery, as a project to focus on slowly over time.

"We converted what was our old propagation room, covered all the cement and concrete with old wood from the polytunnel benches," Ruth explained.

A few years on and The Houseplant Place is doing "really well" - thanks in part, Ruth believes, to the pandemic which had left her so low.

"I think they came back into fashion during Covid - when you couldn't get out and about," she said.

"People wanted nature, especially if you didn't have a garden. They also had more free time and wanted something to do that would help them feel better."

It is a suggestion backed up by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), which has reported a surge in sales of houseplants since the pandemic.

"Doing this has helped me a lot," Ruth said.

It's been an interesting journey and definitely not where I saw my life going at all.

"But I'm glad to be here in this lovely place, surrounded by plants."

The plants have even made their way onto her arms - tattoos of a cheese-plant leaf, a fern, wisteria and a daffodil - covering self-harm scars, traces of her painful journey.

An estimated 1.9m people in the UK were reporting symptoms of long Covid in March 2023 - which is the latest available dataset.

They included 94,000 in Wales, 57,000 of whom had experienced symptoms for over a year.

You can listen to 'On Your Farm - For the Love of Plants' from Farmyard Nurseries, Llandysul on BBC Radio 4 at 0635 Sunday October 13, and afterwards via BBC Sounds.

If you've been affected by the issues in this story, help and support is available via the BBC Action Line.