Your field work · About 30 minutes, best done once at midday

Audit the light in every spot you might put a plant

You cannot match a plant to a place you have not measured. Before you buy anything else, find out what light you actually have — it is the single most useful hour you will spend.

1. 1.Pick a bright day and wait until around midday.
2. 2.Walk to every spot where you might reasonably keep a plant — sills, shelves, tabletops, that corner.
3. 3.At each one, do the shadow test: hold your hand thirty centimetres above the surface and read the shadow's edge (crisp / soft / faint / none).
4. 4.Note the window direction each spot faces and roughly how far it sits from the glass.
5. 5.Log each spot in the light audit tool as high, medium or low, and give it a name you will remember.