Pretty much exactly one year ago the adventure kicked off: We launched our first Urban Jungle book in both German and English. The location of our book launch was perfect and dreamy: the botanical garden in Munich. Only one day before we launch our Urban Jungle book in French (tomorrow in Paris), we want to take you on a trip down memory lane and stroll the magic botanical garden in Munich with you. Our dear friend and fellow blogger Anastasia Benko recently revisited the botanical garden and took some magical photos for us. Come in and get enchanted!
The botanical garden in Munich is located in a leafy and beautiful suburban area called Nymphenburg. Adjacent to the namesake castle, the botanical garden stretches over more than 22 hectares and features 16 different sections. A vast outdoor garden invites the visitor to stroll and take a break on one of the benches, and a variety of greenhouses ignites botanical dreams the moment you step in.
Anastasia has an incredible eye to capture details, light, moody moments. Through her lens you are truly transported into an enchanted botanical garden where plants thrive among fairytales, mysteries, and myths. Anastasia was also our guest during the book launch (and she hosted a flower workshop) and we all share the same dear moments of being there and celebrating the beauty and bounty of nature.
The celebration will continue tomorrow and on Saturday in Paris: We will launch the French Urban Jungle book in one of our favorite plant concept stores in Paris, Mama Petula, and present it to the French press and bloggers. And on Saturday we are doing a second book event and plant hanger workshop in the cool Welcome Bio Bazar concept store – if you are in Paris on Saturday, join us. All details HERE!
Let’s be frank and clear: We all love our houseplants. No matter if it is a small one, a big one, a crooked one, an oblong one. They are all beautiful the way they are. Still with a few accessories we can always accentuate the plants’ beauty and incorporate them seamlessly into our interior style. Plant stands are one way of playing with the plant’s height and visual appearance. Ranging from DIY plant stands like in ourUrban Jungle book over mid-century plant stands to contemporary options – the choice is all yours! We have curated 8 favorite plant stands (not to mention that we love the DIY plant stand from the Urban Jungle book). Here we roll:
1 – Plant Stand magician Eric Trine welded this rad stand! 2 – Iris planter and chevron stand by West Elm 3 – Plant stand by Søstrene Grene (available as of September 7th 2017) 4 – Cibele Plant Stand by OK design 5 – Wire Pot by Norm Architects for MENU 6 – Malia Plant Stand by Ivy Muse 7 – Triangle leg Metal Plant Stand by MrKitly 8 – b. for up plant pot and stand by Elho
This is not a sponsored post. We genuinely <3 the products above!
Summertime! Time to leave our urban jungles and go on a well-deserved holiday or visit friends or family. You packed your sunglasses, beach towel and a few books? Then it’s time to prepare your urban jungle for a few days or weeks without your care. Don’t stress, we have some tips so that your houseplants will survive your holiday!
• Find a plant sitter. Ideally, ask someone you trust to take care of your plants. Maybe a neighbour or friend can come visit once a week and give your plants some water and fresh air by opening the windows? Make it easier for him/her by providing some information about how much water your plants need and other specific plant care instructions. Be creative: you can use little flags or stickers to mark plants that need a lot of water, or plants that need extra fertiliser or misting. Even easier: Just make a little video with your smartphone and send it to your plant sitting friend! Also explain what “a lot of water” or “very little water” means: is it one cup per week, or an entire watering can per plant?
• Make sure your plants are healthy. Some plants may need some fresh potting soil or some air in the potting soil (by making small holes into the soil with thin stick, so that water can run through it). Also check your plants for bugs or illnesses. Treat accordingly before you leave. Or place the infested plants in quarantine.
• Group your plants. This makes watering easier for your plant sitter and slightly increases the air humidity if you decide to go for a self-watering option. And bonus points: a #plantgang looks very stylish too!
• Some plants don’t like to be moved, like Ficus plants, so don’t move them just for your holiday. If you really want it to be grouped with your other houseplants, move it gradually during the weeks before your holiday.
• Plants need light and water to stay alive, even more so in the summer when they’re growing. So don’t place your plants in a dark room with the shutters closed! Prefer a fresh room with medium light, without direct sunlight to avoid sunburn.
• Remember: more plants die of overwatering than not enough water, so placing them in a bathtub filled with water is not always ideal!
• Useful tools. There are quite a few tools on the market that can help your plantssurvive a few days or weeks without care. For example: you can find automatic watering systems at any garden center, that give your plants little drops of water. These automatic irrigation systems often have programmable settings that can be customised to provide for your plants when you are away. But there are also some reliable non-electric, more stylish solutions for your plants. Below you find some of our personal favorites:
• Waterworks is a natural hydration system, consisting of a partially glazed terracotta cone and a glass bulb with a cork stopper.
• Bjorka Design WET POT uses the same idea of glazed and unglazed terracotta and glass as the Waterworks bulb above. The terracotta plant pot basically bathes in the glass water container and soaks up water according to its needs. We love using it for water-loving plants like Pilea peperomioides. Works like a charm!
• Parrot FlowerPoweris a Y-shaped connected device that keeps track of water, sunlight and fertiliser and uses Bluetooth to send you information on your smartphone. Parrot also launched a self watering plant pot earlier this year, called the Parrot Pot which integrates this technology directly into the plant pot.
• Shoelace method: All you need for this is a glass, mug or any other vessel filled up with water and an old shoe lace. Fill the glass with water, place one end of the lace into the glass and the other end in the soil of your plant. The shoe lace transports the water slowly from the vessel to the plant pot and secures a constant hydration without overwatering your plant. Perfect and easy! A simple method for smaller houseplants.
• Lucie Kaas GRO pots are both stylish and practical. The plant pot is made of heavy ceramics in three different colourways: laurel oak, gun metal and red mahagony, and are placed on a mouth blown glass bowl in the same colour. The ceramic pot is unglazed at the bottom and has small holes which allow to soak up the water from the bowl and provide for the plant at all times.
• Elho Aqua Care is a very simple and easy tool to water your plants. Simply fill the water reservoir and plant it in the pot to give the plants the correct level of water required.
• IKEA PSselfwatering plant pot set. It’s a big plant pot that works really well for larger plants that require water regularly like Calathea plants, Marante or palms. You simply fill the large white pot with water before you leave on holiday and it will be enough for at least a few weeks. The terracotta pot inside will soak up the water and keep your plant happy and a live. It comes with a large plant stand that adds some height to your plant.
• Water retaining gel, plant water crystals, or Hydro gel. This is a not an organic method, as the crystals contain polymers, so it’s not a method we use very often. The gel or crystals contain up to 3 weeks worth of water. You simply pose them on the soil, or mix them with the upper layer of the soil if you don’t like how jelly they look. They absorb and release water throughout your holiday. We advise to test this before you go on holiday, so that you find out the exact amount of gel that your plants need.
• The Lander Planter, just launched on Kickstarter. It’s a stylish self-watering plant pot with a mid-century vibe with its plant stand in walnut or maple. Support this project by purchasing your Lander Planter now and you’ll be fine for the next holiday.
Now head off towards the horizon and enjoy your holiday! Your plants will live!
Please note this is NOT a sponsored post, we genuinely like and use the products featured in this post.
When a plantloving textile and ceramics designer from Cape Town, South Africa, launches a textile collection inspired by the plants that she keeps on her studio’s rooftop, we are intrigued. We met Heather Moore in Paris yesterday where she presented her new Roof Garden collection of her brand SkinnylaMinxat the beautiful Klin d’Oeil boutique & gallery. The story of the collection starts in Cape Town: behind the SkinnylaMinx shop, a steel fire escape leads up to the production studio via a hot, bleak city rooftop. Over time, Heather has been adding plants to this scorched place, transforming it slowly into a spiky rooftop garden, populated with the sculptural forms of heat-loving aloes, cacti, euphorbia & more.
The shapes, colours & shadows of the studio roof garden, thriving in spite of the drought and the harsh urban light, are what inspired Heather’s brand new textile design, called Roof Garden. As you can see, the design consists of a graphic pattern of plant silhouettes that come in 3 distinct colorways: Cairo (burnt orange, pink, cocoa), Miami (lemon, shell pink, cocoa) and Rio (mix of greens).
One of the Tradescantia pallida (purple heart plant-) that inspired the Roof Garden collection:
Heather’s design inspiration comes from midcentury modernism, Scandi simplicity and African style, using patterns, colors and shapes that she notices on her travels and in her daily life (that you can also follow on her Instagram!). Patterns from previous collections can easily be mix and matched with the Roof Garden collection, as the colors are complimentary. Together with the high quality of the fabrics, this makes her products last longer than just one season.
A Butterfly chair covered in the Roof Garden fabric in Rio:
Meet SkinnylaMinx’s designer Heather Moore:
For the Roof Garden lookbook, the SkinnylaMinx team visited their friends’ Jo & Stu, who own a 1960’s villa in Cape Town. The perfect setting for this planty fabric collection and it’s also home to an interesting collection of plants, both inside and on the patio. Have a look:
All SkinnylaMinx fabric designs can be purchased by the yard to use as curtains, blinds or to upholster a chair. The fabrics are professionally screenprinted with waterbased inks onto a 138cm wide cotton/linen-blend basecloth and are made in South Africa. The fabrics also come in pillow covers as well as cute soft buckets. They easily cover up your boring plant pots and turn them into stylish statement pieces:
The lush green patio of this home from the 1960’s:
We believe the Roof Garden collection is a good fit for a lot of different interior styles: if you are a plant killer, you can add a botanical touch to your home without the risk of killing another plant, or go all-the-way and use the Roof Garden fabrics for a full-on camouflage Urban Jungle Bloggers look:
Last weekend we were in Brussels, Belgium to present our Urban Jungle book to the Belgian readers and host a plant hanger workshop. And as always when we travel, we had a list of “planty” places that we absolutely wanted to visit because we heard so much about them. One of them was BRUT: they call themselves a vintage shop, which is actually true: they have an impressive amount of vintage plants on display! Together with vintage outdoor furniture, like rattan armchairs, exotic peacock chairs and large macramé hangers from the 1970s, they propose so-called “plant curiosities”. BRUT in located in the Marolles neighborhood, not far from the big Sunday market near the Midi Station and the Marolles fleamarket. Once you enter the lush shop in the Marolles neighborhood, you immediately feel the humidity in the air going up. It feels and smells almost like a real jungle. And inside awaits a wide range of rare, weird, intriguing houseplants… Paired with terracotta, rattan, formica and old cabinets. Which resonated with their motto, that goes like this: Supplier of plant curiosities and vintage furniture, BRUT is the reflection of a fringe of society caring for its environment, preferring the durable over the ephemeral, the original over the copy, the craft over the mass production. While we found their price tags were kind of steep, BRUT’s selection of beautiful old plants, including a 40 year old Monstera deliciosa and a quirky 25 year old Dracaena is truly amazing. If you’re looking to add some character pieces to your urban jungle, this is the shop to go to!
We also love BRUT for their specific plant care instructions, that you can also find on their website. In the shop you’ll find a lot of tropical plants and they have 6 basic tips to keep your plants healthy and thriving:
1 • Do not over water, even the tropical plants 2 • Do not leave water in the saucer, this may cause root rot 3 • Do not use cold water to water your plants, but water at room temperature 4 • Do not place your plants in the dark, plants need light to feed themselves 5 • Keep them away from any heat source 6 • Clean the leaves regularly with a damp sponge and spray the smaller plants
This spring, BRUT opened a second boutique, called La Pharmacie, located in the hyped Ixelles area. We didn’t have the chance to visit this time, but we will be back!
BRUT, 202, rue Haute – 1000 Brussels – Open every day 11:00 – 19:00 La Pharmacie, Avenue Brugmann, 222 – 1050 Ixelles – Open from monday to saturday 11:00 – 19:00
