ETHEREAL AIR PLANTS

With a motto like 'freedom to create', In2plants is a wonderland of endless imagination. Their exquisite collection of air plants is enough to make any gardener rethink the way they see soilless growing. 

Their Nursery offers exclusivity and a one-on-one shopping experience but you'll have to make an appointment before visiting. These are some questions answered by Gerrit and Marinda so we can learn more about these wonderful plants.

Please tell us about your journey with air plants and what drew you to this mysterious tillandsia genus? 

Our passion for these plants started about 18 years ago. Tradition in our house is that you never buy your spouse flowers; it will be either a rock, piece of wood or a plant. Gerrit travelled a lot locally for work purposes and therefore had ample opportunities to obtain plants. Coming back from holiday, the car would always be overloaded with plants, even on my lap if needed. We started off with orchids and staghorn ferns until we got hooked on tillandsias.

Our first tillandsia came from Nelspruit 18 years ago Tillandsia seleriana. We began with this one as a companion plant for our other plants. This plant did not require any soil or roots, which fascinated us as this was in contradiction to growing many other different plants. Tillandsia air plants are epiphytes and can be mounted on wood or any other suitable material. Perfect! Now we could use all our pieces of beautiful wood we had collected.

Using little space and giving lots of opportunities to grow vertically, we suddenly had more space to fill, which was super exciting. The freedom to create and seeing the first flower on one of our tillandsia made us even more curious about the genus. This inspired us to ensure we got our hands on many more varieties.

Air plants challenge the idea of traditional soil gardening and we love that they are so exoticlooking. What motivation would you give gardeners to inspire them to go soilless?