A few short years ago, filling one's living room with spider plants and peace lillies would have been seen by interior designers as unforgivably retro.

Now, millennials have brought 1970s houseplants back into fashion as they turn to gardening as a form of achieving 'wellness'.

As the renting generation often cannot afford gardens, they have turned to easy-to-rear house plants in order to fill their tiny homes with calming green, the Royal Horticultural Society has said.

They have seen huge increases in sales of low maintenance house plants, with cacti sales rising by 34 per cent last year.

Urban dwellers have opted for the peace lily, which is efficient at removing pollutants from the air.

Sales of the Spathiphyllum (peace lily) have increased by 23 per cent in the past year.

House plants are a firm Instagram trend, with green-fingered youths contributing over 2.2 million posts of trailing greenery to the hashtag #plantsofinstagram.