Urban Jungle Bloggers - Page 3 of 26 -

Houseplant Travel to Brazil

Post author By Judith de Graaff
Post date 19 April 2021

Urban Jungle Bloggers - Houseplant Travel to Brazil #urbanjunglebloggers

While there is hope and optimism on the horizon as the easing of lockdown approaches, there’s still uncertainty about the possibility of travelling abroad this year. According to the Amex Trend report, people are missing travel so much that it’s taking an emotional toll and impacting their wellbeing, with nearly half (48%) of respondents citing that not being able to travel makes them feel anxious and stressed. We partnered with The Joy of Plants for our latest project to reveal how you can transform your home with houseplants to immerse yourself in another country, even if you’re planning a staycation at home.

The solution? Armchair travelling. The concept of armchair travel involves experiencing faraway places from the comfort of your own home – whether that’s reading a book, watching a documentary, or listening to the music from a particular country to immerse yourself in the sights and sounds without stepping a single foot outside your front door.

With many restrictions still in place and no sign of them easing soon, we want to showcase the power of Houseplant Travel. Houseplant Travel involves embracing native houseplants from countries across the world and pairing them with signature interior design trends to transform a space in your home and transport you to the shores of a faraway destination. Creating two distinct and beautiful looks, Igor took inspiration from Brazil while Judith chose South Africa. We both authentically capture the flora and style of each country, with houseplants firmly in the spotlight. Let’s kick off with our first destination: Brazil!

Urban Jungle Bloggers - Houseplant Travel to Brazil #urbanjunglebloggers

Can you tell us more about the look you have created?

IGOR: I wanted to create a Brazilian jungle inspired by the lush foliage of the Amazonian jungle paired with carefully selected accessories that represent traditional Brazilian craftsmanship and contemporary Brazilian design alike. My colour scheme was simple: I wanted the various green hues to dominated in combination with earthy nuances and color pops here and there.

What inspired you to choose Brazil?

IGOR: I chose Brazil because I fell in love with the country after my first visit while working on our PLANT TRIBE book. I was fascinated by the lush native flora and I realized that many favorite houseplants in our part of the world actually originate from Brazil. I was also intrigued by Brazilian design, craftsmanship and the indigenous artisans. And last but not least, I am married to a Brazilian. Need I say more? 🙂

What are your favourite houseplants to feature in the look and why?

IGOR: I will admit, I have a soft spot for the gigantic Philodendron Selloum. Its huge leaves on long, thick stems really transport me directly to the Amazonian jungle. Sitting under its green canopy I feel like I am waiting any minute to hear the raindrops fall on its umbrella sized leaves. I also love the beautiful bromeliads with their pink colour and tiny purple blooms. I remember those growing everywhere in Brazil, typically as epiphytes on big trees. Also the Philodendron Tortum is a favorite for its very unusual foliage in the Philodendron family. And the Calathea Burle Marxii is dear to my heart as it’s named after one of my favorite Brazilian artists and landscape designers, Roberto Burle Marx.

How are elements of Brazil reflected in the design and styling?

IGOR: Brazil is literally everywhere in the final styling! All the plants are native to Brazil and most of the accessories actually come from Brazil – I brought them myself from my five Brazilian trips so far such as various baskets made by indigenous people, the wooden armadillo made of Brasil wood, the soapstone vase from the state of Minas Gerais and more . Even the vintage olive green leather sofa is a piece by Brazilian designer Percival Lafer from the 1970s.

What is a unique feature or quality of houseplants native to Brazil?

IGOR: Houseplants native to Brazil are mostly used to filtered, indirect light and higher humidity as most of them grow in the native jungles (Amazonian, Atlantic Forest etc.) and are covered by taller trees. Thus this plants are quite ideal for most homes with good indirect light – no need for full south side sunshine!

What is your top styling tip houseplants native to Brazil?

IGOR: Pair the plants with earthy accessories made of natural materials such as plant fibers, stones, clay. Keep the colour scheme to the earthy side and add pops of colours here and there, either with accessories or blooming plants native to Brazil such as orchids or Heliconias or colourful bromeliads.

What is your top care tip for houseplants native to Brazil?

IGOR: Make sure to keep the humidity high for your tropical plants. I tend to mist them every other day just to give them the good feeling of being almost like at home in Brazil!

In your opinion, how do houseplants help us ‘travel’ and achieve that holiday feeling from home?

IGOR: In these challenging times where traveling is almost impossible, plants helped me bringing a holiday feeling to my apartment. I truly believe that plants in general help us unwind and relax, find our inner balance after a hectic day and nurture our well-being as well as our creativity. All those aspects I aim for in good holidays too. So they do the trick for me!

What would be your main advice for those wanting to recreate this look at home?

IGOR: Mind my crazy Brazilian jungle, you don’t have to go over the top for the same feeling at home! Pick just a few plants, if your space allows, go for bigger and more mature plants. Place them in an ideal corner and add a few natural accessories like clay planters or woven baskets, make sure you have a cosy place to sit and grab your favorite book, a drink in your hand, and travel away! Bon voyage or better yet: boa viagem!

If you could choose another country to (houseplant) travel to, what one would it be and why?

IGOR: I think I would go to Indonesia for its lush tropical jungles, volcanoes, all the palm trees and its rich culture!

Blogpost created in collaboration with The Joy of Plants.

Photography by Jules Villbrandt

Tags brazil, brazilian houseplants, houseplant travel, interior styling with plants, native brazilian plants, Urban Jungle Bloggers

Planty Product

Botanical poetry in a bottle: Slow Pharmacy

Post author By Judith de Graaff
Post date 15 April 2021

Plants make you happier! We couldn’t agree more with Slow Pharmacy. For those of you who have not yet heard of this beautiful label from South Korea, let us have the honor to introduce you to the magic of bottled plants! The founders, Lee & Jeong, strongly believe that the power of plants contributes to our overall well-being. If you read our Plant Tribe book, you know this is a point where we fully agree with Slow Pharmacy. But these two creative Koreans have interpreted the idea of bringing plants into our homes in a new, minimalistic way: carefully selected plants, hand-filled in beautiful vials, floating in a transparent liquid and preserved for years to come. Adding Slow Pharmacy vials to your home adds a touch of botanical serenity. It is a poetic way of encapsulating the elusive beauty of a plant in a bottle, offering the viewer a moment of meditative serenity and calmness. By carefully choosing the place for your Slow Pharmacy vials, you will observe the play of light caressing the plant and presenting an array of hues and details that keep your attention. Not only does this look beautiful, it truly tickles your phantasy and creativity. And before you even know, you have relaxed fully while observing the floating plant in its vial. Botanical magic happened!We both have added our selected Slow Pharmacy vials into our homes, too. Whether it is on a plant shelf accompanying your potted houseplants, on a desk to inspire your creativity, or in a darker corner of your home that is not suitable for a potted plant – the vials look stunning in every scenery and add a touch of simplicity, beauty and minimalism.

Is a bottled plant running against our belief in living houseplants? Absolutely not. These vials add a different touch to any plant loving home. Every plant specimen has been carefully chosen and hand-filled in Korea. It is a new way of bringing a touch of nature to your home. Igor says: “I love my Slow Pharmacy vials! I have selected three large vials and two smaller ones, each containing a different plant. I chose several spots in my home to display them. But my favorite spot is on my desk – the light changes over day and offers a spectrum of colors. It gives me a reason to pause, appreciate the beauty of nature and continue my work with more creativity.”Judith has also added a selection of Slow Pharmacy to her new home in the South of France. She says: “I love how the Slow Pharmacy glass vials allow to decorate your home with botanicals, even if a room or corner doesn’t provide enough light for normal houseplants. Our bedroom for instance is, unfortunately, too dark to grow plants, but the delicate and carefully selected plants like the Tabaria fern and Capsella bursa-pastoris make our bedroom shelves look like a super stylish and contemporary cabinet de curiosités.”

We encourage you, plant lover, to hop over to Slow Pharmacy and have a look at their incredible range of beautiful plant vials. Make your pick but be warned: it is not simple! Choose a vial for your home or as a thoughtful present for a beloved person – and finally no green finger excuse will work as the bottled plants from Slow Pharmacy will remain almost eternally beautiful – no work or care required! And keep in mind: plants make you happier! Yes they do.

This blog post has been brought to you in collaboration with Slow Pharmacy . As always, all opinions are our own. Thank you for supporting the brands who support this blog.

Photography by Urban Jungle Bloggers

Tags botanical decoration, plants in a bottle, Slow Pharmacy

Plant Shop

Plant Shopping at Jane Jardinerie

Post author By Judith de Graaff
Post date 10 December 2020

Weekends are for plant shopping, and in 2020: well every day is for plant shopping. On our end, we’ve been trying our best to support our local plant shops by buying plants, gifts and giftscards for family and friends for the holidays. Of course there may have slipped a little plant for ourselves into our shopping basket too. And when we couldn’t find what we were looking for, we shopped online. It’s been a challenging year for all brick & mortar shops, but so far we’ve been impressed by their agility to adjust and open “click & collect” or call & collect” or “pavement pick-up” or “drive-through” shopping options. Not only have we been highlighting the best plant shops around the world on our Instagram account @urbanjungleblog every weekend, we also included a helpful list of plant shops in the Plant Tribe book. So that, once we get to travel again, you can check if there’s a note-worthy plant shop in the place that you’re visiting. There you have it: one of our wishes for 2021.

One of the plant shops that’s in the book and that we warmly recommend is Jane Jardinerie. Actually it’s two shops, as Jane has boutiques in both Nantes and Angers. Anne and Sophie opened their urban garden centers more than four years ago and focus on the vegetable garden, the balcony and the indoor garden. But they don’t only propose a large selection of plants, tools, pots, soil, fertilizer and accessories, but also organize all kinds of workshop around urban gardening. We can’t wait to see what they cook up for 2021 when we can hopefully meet and participate in workshops and events again. For now, have a virtual look around both Jane boutiques and make sure to visit Jane Jardinerie in Nantes or Angers when you’re in the neighborhood.

Why Jane?
JANE is a tribute to Jeanne Barret, the first female botanist to tour the world. Widely unknown in France, its history has not left us indifferent… We are in the Age of Enlightenment, in 1766. Jeanne Barret embarks on the first French expedition around the world led by Bougainville to accompany the famous naturalist and botanist, Philibert Commerson, her companion. To go “unnoticed” on board, she decides to disguise herself as a man and take on the identity of Jean Baré, Philibert Commerson’s valet. The trick was discovered in Tahiti and Bougainville soon brought them to Ile de France, known today as Mauritius. Jeanne Barret assists Philibert Commerson in his discovery of new botanical species. He died in Mauritius in 1773, leaving Jane behind. She leads a new life in Saint-Louis and meets Jean Dubernat whom she marries. The couple return to France. Jeanne brings back the botanical harvests of Philibert Commerson intended for the “King’s Garden”, ie 30 cases containing some 5,000 species, of which 3,000 are described as new. King Louis XVI recognized her merits as an assistant botanist and commended her for her good behavior, he designated her as an “extraordinary woman” and paid her a pension. Of her adventure, there will remain traces recorded in the logbook of Bougainville, in the writings of Diderot and her important contribution to the knowledge of botany.

Also available at Jane Jardinerie: both our books Urban Jungle and Plant Lovers (Plant Tribe in French):

Jane Jardinerie NANTES
10 rue Mercœur
02 40 77 82 56

Jane Jardinerie ANGERS
21, rue Toussaint
02 41 96 58 36

Or follow Jane Jardinerie on Instagram

Photography by photographers tagged in all photos

Tags angers, boutique, france, french, jane jardinerie, nantes, plant shop, plant shopping, Urban Jungle Bloggers, urban plant shop

Event Plant Tribe Book Planty Product

Plant Tribe book launch at Maison Palme in Berlin

Post author By Judith de Graaff
Post date 7 November 2020

Because all the Plant Tribe book events that we planned for the official booklaunch in March were postponed, we were very excited that we managed to organize a small Covid-proof event in Berlin for the launch of the German edition of the Plant Tribe book. Only two days before new hygiene measures were announced for Germany, we had a very intimate event in several small groups at the beautiful Maison Palmė. The location in the heart of Wedding Berlin was an obvious choice: it’s the studio and event space of Jules Villbrandt, our friend and photographer that did all the photography for the Plant Tribe book, and her team Maria and Wilkin from Herz&Blut.

Last year, we traveled with Jules to the 17 homes that are featured in the book and somehow this was the first time we were reunited again, which was lovely despite the crazy circumstances:

In case you were wondering: yes we were all smiling behind our masks:

Yummy catering by Maria from Herz & Blut:
The launch of the German edition of Plant Tribe, was also the perfect occasion to reveal the plant spheres that Dirty Roots created as a limited edition with Urban Jungle Bloggers. For these unique plant spheres they were inspired by the Good Energy with Plants chapter in the book and integrated quartz and aragonite in the design for good energy for your plants.

Each plant sphere has a perfectly designed drainage hole on the bottom as well as a small dripping tray. They are easy to plant (18cm diameter and 2 liters soil capacity) and because every piece is handmade, they’re a unique piece of art for your home.

Find more information about this (very!) limited edition plants spheres Dirty Roots x Urban Jungle Bloggers here.For the launch of the book we also partnered with Art Flash gallery, a Berlin based art gallery that has a large variety of original artwork available for affordable prices. They provided five pieces of art to add a gallery vibe to our book launch. After all we think that plants and art are a fabulous combination. Check out their amazing selection of limited edition art pieces here.
Our friends at Bergamotte greened up the space and sent over these lush Ficus lyrata!
Social distancing among plants and good people – a smile can be seen even behind masks!The Dirty Roots team flipping through the Plant Tribe book:

After mingling and nibbles, we had a little talk about the book, we chatted with Jules about our big trip to all of the 17 homes in the US, Brazil and around Europe and answered questions from all the lovely people that joined us for the event. Because the groups were so small and the event space so cozy: it were pretty intimate talks and we revealed quite a bit about the process of creating a book, how we worked with our publishers and how it was to visit so many plant lovers in all these different places.

Welcome to the Jungle!

Photography by Herz & Blut
Thank you to our partners Dirty Roots, Art Flash Gallery, Bergamotte and our German publisher Prestel

Botanical Art Plant Trends Planty Inspiration

Plant Fever exhibition by studio d-o-t-s

Post author By Judith de Graaff
Post date 6 November 2020

With limited travel opportunities this year and stuck at home we all suffer from some kind of (healthy!) fever: PLANT FEVER! More than ever, we adopt plants and learn how to care for them while we work, eat, live, socialize virtually, all from the comfort of our homes. Plant Fever is also the title of this interesting exhibition at the CID Grand Hornu in Belgium, that focuses on the hidden potential of plants. The exhibition “Plant Fever Towards a Phyto-centred Design” curated by studio d-o-t-s, explores how designers, artists and engineers incorporate plants and plant derived materials in their work and how plants function as resources, pets and allies.

PLANTS AS RESOURCES
Plants are essential to our survival on Earth. Not only do we need them to breathe and eat, but we also depend on them to dress, shelter, and heal ourselves. Their features constitute the basis for practical ancestral know-how, and the materials they provide us with are at the core of our economies. Yet, despite this, we often disrespect and overexploit them to the detriment of both human and non-human communities. Lately, however, the consequences of our behaviours have prompted several designers to reconsider their role in the wasteful consumerist society we live in. Alarmed by the growing Climate Emergency, many of them are now exploring more holistic approaches to the material resources we make use of. Compostable vegetal matters are slowly replacing plastics, projects seeking symbiotic relationships with plants are on the rise and objects repurposing by-products of non-virtuous monoculture models are blooming.

Botanica Variegata, by Sjoerd ter Borg – Aesthetics of Exclusion

PLANTS AS ALLIES
The recent findings that suggest that plants are sentient beings; the ongoing climate crisis linked to the Anthropocene; the ethical debate around artificial intelligence, plant engineering and synthetic biology: all these new perspectives are shaking up the Western world’s vision of human supremacy over everything else, including the vegetal realm. Informed by novel scientific discoveries and stimulated by growing moral concerns regarding non-human beings, designers, artists and engineers have started to look into the uncovered capabilities of plants to imagine a future in which thinking like them and collaborating with them could become the new norm. While in most cases their goals remain closely human-centred, these explorations are leading the way towards a more vegetal-conscious approach to design which goes beyond plant’s instrumentalisation and mechanisation.

Botanical Manufacture, by Carole Collet

Eloj Kreyol, by Dach Zephir

GeoMerce, by Gionata Gatto + Giovanni Innella photo by Olly Cruise

Monstera Fugiens collection, by Tim van de Weerd

PLANTS AS PETS
Helped by the advent of modern architecture – which provided suitably open, bright and warm interiors – in the course of the 20th century plants have become ubiquitous in our domestic and office environments where they have been assigned a mainly decorative role. Since the early 2010s, though, the motivations driving us towards the vegetal kingdom seem to have shifted away from the merely ornamental. Plants have become therapeutic feel-good companions that help us escape the alienating condition of urban life. Described by some as symptomatic of the millennials’ generation and its widespread use of social media, the current trend of lushlyvegetated interiors mixes the desire for highly Instagrammable settings with a sincere thirst for botanical knowledge and a need to embrace otherness. Sensitive to this change, designers have started to invent DIY devices meant to reconnect us with plants and to create pots and containers intended for precise specimens.

Albero, by Achille Castiglioni x Zanotta

Olive Urchin, by Henriette Waal, Mevce Ciraci, Luma Arles

Rocaille n3, by Patrick Nadeau

It’s possible that you recognize the Phytophiler by Studio Dossofiorito below (we wrote about it here). Admiring your plants from the magnifying glasses is truly magical… as long you don’t spot thrips, mealy bugs or other pests!

The Phytophiler by Dossofiorito – photo Olly Cruise

The Phytophiler by Dossofiorito:

Team studio d-o-t-s: Olivier Lacrouts et Laura Drouet:

photo by Olly Cruise

Curatorship: Laura Drouet (studio d-o-t-s) (pictured above!)
Scenography: Benoît Deneufbourg
Graphic identity: Matthieu Visentin
Coordination: Olivier Lacrouts (studio d-o-t-s)
Direction: Marie pok
CID team: Martine Acar, Shahrazad Ameur-Merabet, Marine Babic, Dominique Blondiau, Sophia Bouarfa, Aubane Brebant, Christopher Broyart, Jeoffrey Bultez, David Buyle, Giuseppe Cannella, Laetitia Centritto, Maryvonne Colle, Matteo De Felice, Brigitte Delattre, Gaëtan Delehouzée, Véronique Demebski, Filip Depuydt, Massimo Di Emidio,Françoise Foulon, Sophie Gallez, Céline Ganty, Loïc Goemaes, Marianne Jayé, Laurence Lelong, Hervé Liénard, Maxime Mairesse, David Marchal, Vincenzo Mauro, Justine Mertens, Jean-François Paternoster, Thierry Pochet, Marie Pok, Carine Saber, Matteo Sciullo, Graziano Trovato, David Vilain, Maryse Willems, Cataldo Zitolo

Plant Fever catalogue – photo by Olly Cruise

Visit the exhibition until February 14 2021, at:

CID – CENTRE FOR INNOVATION AND DESIGN at Grand-Hornu
Site du Grand-Hornu
Rue Sainte-Louise 82
B-7301 Hornu
Belgium

For updated visitor information, please check Plant Fever and CID Grand Hornu on Instagram.

Photography by Tim van de Velde, unless stated otherwise.

Tags Houseplants, plant fever, planty exhibition, Urban Jungle Bloggers, urbanjungleblog; grand hornu