These creative and nature-inspired ways to display air plants and other houseplants are from the new book, Living With Air Plants: A Beginner’s Guide to Growing and Displaying Tillandsia.
Without the need for soil, air plants offer many unusual and whimsical ways to grow plants.
This excerpt from Living With Air Plants: A Beginner’s Gide to Growing and Displaying Tillandsia, by Yoshiharu Kashima and Yukihiro Matsuda, is used with permission from Tuttle Publishing who also provided a review copy and sponsored the book giveaway. Thank you, Tuttle!
Living With Air Plants
Living with Air Plants shows a vast array of these versatile little plants growing in spaces where you never thought a houseplant could thrive. Showing you everything from basic cultivation to creative display, this handbook and reference gives you all the basics:
- The various types of air plants and their characteristics
- Growth cycles and preferred environments
- Selecting and maintenance
- Propagating / dividing
- Providing creative and healthy habitats
- Enjoying air plants in just about any space
If you want fresh ideas for displaying air plants and other houseplants indoors, this book provides helpful tips and beautiful photos. Perfect for those who love an earthy style like I do. ~Melissa
A Little Garden on Shelves
Here, potted plants line a wall-mounted shelf to form a little garden, transforming a wall into a charming space. The plants displayed are all type that, like air plants, prefer partial shade or the same amount of light as that filtered through a lace curtain, such as orchids and succulents. Potted plants with small flowers that change from day to day add to the enjoyment.
Here’s some sample pages from the book:
Materials and Equipment
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Method |
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1 Wind wire around the base of the air plant and twist it around driftwood to keep the plant in place. |
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2 Add the remaining air plants, considering the overall balance.
Choose plants that differ in color, size and form to create dynamic effects. |
Display and Care
Watering, care, and so on are easiest when types that favor similar conditions in terms of direct sunlight, humidity levels and the like are brought together.
Air does not circulate well at the back of deep shelves, so place shallow shelving somewhere with good ventilation.
From time to time, place each pot outside in shade.
Air Plants Used
A Stricta hard leaf
B Capitata domingensis
C Latifolia caulescent form
D Tectorum
E Fasciculata
F Streptophylla
They are perfect in these old-fashion bird cages:
Living with Air Plants
~Melissa the Empress of Dirt ♛