A note on names: In scientific circles, Snake Plants are now considered part of the Dracaena genus, and the name Sansevieria has been retired. However, many people still know these plants by their former name, so we’ll sometimes refer to them as Sansevierias. We have an article on the subject here.
You don’t want just any old Snake Plant – you want the biggest, boldest, tallest one you can grow. You want to see a cluster of healthy leaves reaching for the sky, and you want it fast. What can you do to make this happen? In this article, we’ll share our most reliable tips for getting a Snake Plant to grow tall and grow fast.
You’ll need to provide plenty of light and water to fuel your Snake Plant’s growth, and you should repot your Sansevieria regularly to give the roots room to expand. A balanced monthly dose of fertilizer is also helpful. Use these techniques in moderation, because overdoing any of them will do more harm than good.
It’s important to keep your expectations realistic – even in ideal conditions, a Snake Plant isn’t going to grow as quickly as a Pothos or a Spider Plant. If your Sansevieria gains a few inches every month of the growing season, you’re doing pretty well. And remember that height isn’t everything – a Snake Plant that’s etiolated due to dim light may get long leaves, but they’ll also be scrawny and weak.
How Fast Do Snake Plants Grow? And How Big Can They Get?
A mature, healthy Snake Plant can sometimes grow taller than its owner. Give yours proper care and attention, and it could reach 6 feet or more in time.
That’s assuming you didn’t accidentally buy a dwarf cultivar, of course! There are lots of Snake Plant varieties that have been bred to stay low to the ground so that they’re easier to keep in offices or small apartments. If you’re looking for height, choose one of the bigger options, such as:
- Laurentii. This is the most iconic of all the Snake Plants, thanks to the distinctive lemon-colored stripes running along its outer edges. It can grow around 4 feet tall in good indoor conditions.
- Mother-in-Law’s Tongue. Many people use this common name as a catch-all for Snake Plants in general, but technically it refers to Dracaena (formerly Sansevieria) trifasciata, which looks like the Laurentii without the golden bands at the edges. This variety can exceed 6 feet in height.
- Cylindrica. As the name hints, this one produces leaves shaped like tubes rather than tongues. They sometimes bend outward instead of growing straight up, but growers often get around this by braiding them into elaborate towers.
- Ehrenbergii. This variety produces canoe-shaped, red-edged foliage that spreads out like the points of an elegant fan. It’s sometimes called the Samurai Snake Plant (not to be confused with the smaller Samurai Dwarf variety) and it can develop a beautiful blue-green tinge with good lighting.
- Whale Fin. Sansevieria mansoniana grows wide as well as tall, creating big oar-shaped leaves with an interesting speckled pattern. Given the right care, it can reach 5 or 6 feet high.
Even these bigger cultivars will take years to get to their maximum size, so be patient with yours as it grows. A Snake Plant’s typical growth rate is between 1-3 inches per month, with around 2-4 new leaves sprouting during the growing season. You may be able to bump those numbers a bit higher by following our advice below, but don’t expect your plant to double in size every year.
Here are our top 4 tips for speeding up your Snake Plant’s growth.
#1: Light It Up
Snake Plants make their way onto almost every list of good low-light houseplants because they can tolerate fairly dim conditions. However, just because they can survive without lots of sun, doesn’t mean it’s how they prefer to live. If your Snake Plant isn’t flourishing, chances are that it needs more solar energy to fuel its growth.
Try gradually increasing the amount of light your plant receives. If it’s across the room from the nearest window, move it a little closer. If it’s on a north-facing sill, transfer it to an east-facing one. If you have space on a balcony or patio, start setting your plant outdoors for an hour or two every day, then increase the exposure little by little.
If you slowly acclimate a Snake Plant to greater and greater light levels, it will eventually be able to soak up 5 or 6 hours of direct light per day, which will amp up its growth considerably. Watch out for overheating if you have it in a southern or western window, but as long as the temperature doesn’t exceed 85 degrees, your Snake Plant should be fine.
A Sansevieria will be near the peak of its growth potential in a space where the brightness exceeds 1,000 foot-candles. If you don’t have an illuminance meter, you can perform a rough test by letting your hand cast a shadow on a blank surface like a piece of white paper. Look for a spot where the silhouette is dark and clearly defined.
Artificial lighting from grow lamps can help out if you don’t have a bright enough spot, or if you want to encourage your Snake Plant to keep growing through the winter. You’ll need to give it at least 12 hours of light per day to see significant effects. (Read more on our favorite grow lights here.)
#2: Quench Its Thirst
If you’ve read our other articles about Snake Plants, you know that the biggest hazard they face is overwatering. We always advise against letting your Sansevieria’s roots hang out in muddy soil.
It’s possible to take this precaution too far, though. Water is a vital ingredient for photosynthesis. If you’re so afraid of root rot that you let your Snake Plant get repeatedly dehydrated, you’ll wind up hampering its growth.
To avoid this, make sure you’re checking on the soil frequently – roughly every 5 days – and watering as soon as it’s almost completely dry. Test all the way to the base of the pot using a wooden skewer or a moisture meter so that you can get a sense of the conditions near the roots.
When there’s only a hint of moisture left in the bottom of the pot, water again. Drench the soil thoroughly until there’s a stream of water draining from the bottom of the pot.
This strategy only works if you’re also following tip #1 and letting your Snake Plant take in lots of sunlight. In dim rooms, it’s safer to let a Sansevieria go for longer stretches without water. That also applies to dim seasons; during the fall and winter, you can and should ease up on watering unless you’re giving the plant a substantial boost from grow lights.
You’ll also need to keep your plant in fast-draining soil with lots of chunky mineral components. Read more about the ideal soil for Snake Plants here. And to continue learning how to best water your Snake Plant, click here.
#3: Supplement Its Diet
A Snake Plant living indoors depends on you for everything it can’t absorb from the air and the sun. That includes nutrients as well as water, so you’ll need to fertilize your Sansevieria if you want it to grow.
Use a light touch – more fertilizer is not always better. In fact, if you add more than your Snake Plant can use, you can create an unhealthy buildup of mineral salts around the roots.
Once a month, supplement your plant’s water with a half-strength dose of liquid fertilizer. The ideal ratio of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium is 3:1:2, but a balanced 10:10:10 or 20:20:20 formula should be fine as long as you’re diluting it enough.
Taper the dosage down as the growing season dwindles; fertilizing during the winter is counterproductive. And remember that if you recently transplanted your Snake Plant into a store-bought potting mix, there are probably already some nutrients in the soil. In that case, you should wait at least 6 months before adding more fertilizer.
#4: Give It Some Space
No plant can grow once its roots run out of room in the pot. Although some online sources claim that Sansevierias like to be root bound, what they really mean is that smaller pots make it easier to avoid overwatering. Unfortunately, keeping your plant cramped will also limit its size.
If you’ve been following our advice about light, water, and fertilizer, your Snake Plant should be growing about as fast as it possibly can while living indoors. That means it will need repotting more often than a typical Sansevieria. Move it to a slightly bigger pot – around 2 inches greater in diameter – every 3 years or so.
When you take your Snake Plant out of its pot, check to see whether the roots have clumped together in a tight cylinder. If they have, pry them apart a bit with your fingers to encourage them to grow out into the new space. Don’t be too forceful or you could wind up damaging the root mass.
For the first month after you transplant your Sansevieria, keep it away from direct sunlight and don’t give it any fertilizer. It will need time to get settled after the abrupt change.
Final Thoughts
Getting a Snake Plant to grow isn’t all that complicated. It’s mostly about proactively meeting the plant’s needs instead of waiting for it to show signs of distress. Your Sansevieria will probably never win any prizes for speed, but if you follow the simple guidelines above, you should have a tall and gorgeous plant within a few years.