Tillandsias, or air plants, are trendy right now, and with good reason. They're easy to care for and require very little water. Each plant seems to have its own personality, with tendrils curving or spiking in their own unique and beautiful ways. Click through for a few thoughts on how to decorate with these strange and lovely plants...
Indoor tillandsias require only a weekly misting with water and (like many houseplants) bright, indirect light. You can also submerge your tillandsias in water for a few hours once every couple of weeks and forgo the misting; this is evidently a more foolproof way to keep them happy, but our own are doing just fine with mist.
A few ways to incorporate air plants into your decor:
• At a dinner party, decorate each place setting with a tillandsia set in a votive cup or just centered on the napkin or plate. You can use cute aluminum plant tags to make them into place cards.
• For a little bit of live plant adornment on your home accessories, use wire or twine to attach a tillandsia to the end of a lamp cord or to the end of the cord on your blinds. You can also affix an air plant to a curtain tieback in lieu of a tassel.
• Nestle a few tillandsias among your houseplants and orchids. Use them to disguise soil at the base of potted trees.
• Tillandsias are great in flower arrangements, nestled among the stems. You can even take the opposite approach and use a larger tillandsia as the base that anchors a bouquet of flimsier flowers, tucking the stems in among the tillandsia's leaves.
• These little plants also do very well in the bathroom. They love a steamy environment, and their muted colors will help create a peaceful atmosphere.
• For a party, hang tillandsias along a string of lights as natural lampshades.
We'd love to hear how you use airplants to decorate your home... do tell!
(Images: Southern Living; Martha Stewart; Flora Grubb Gardens)
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I recently wrote a little post on my blog about these soilless(made up word)beauties.
http://nameyourdesign.blogspot.com/2009/07/going-green-with-sprout-home.html
I live in chi-town and picked some up at Sprout Home this summer. I love the texture and color that they bring to our home.....AND I love the that they are low maintenance. Even an accidental plant killer like myself can manage to keep these alive!
I plan to wire or glue some to a pretty wreath as a housewarming present for a friend who often travels for work (think like 3 to 6 weeks away). I'm hoping they can survive the level of neglect they'll get.
I like tillandsias alright but for what they are and what they cost, I can't get onboard the fan train. With a few exceptions (the xerographica) they tend to look a little starved, plus a mass grouping like in the first picture is easily a couple of hundred dollars, why not buy something that is actually beautiful, blooming and won't leave you broke?
i bought three of these, and they weren't cheap! $6 each. they all died! i did the soaking in water thing and read up on their care constantly. idk what i did wrong!
I know this post is old, but in case anybody stumbles upon it like I just did: please note, that the info in the above article is INCORRECT. You do not just mist them once a week, misting is only good for increasing the humidity. They need to be completely drenched, or ideally submerged, 2-3 times per week for 10mins-1hour, depending on how dry they are, shaken off really well, and dried upside-down (so the water doesn't gather in the middle). Despite their name, these plants do not survive on air, they must be watered and cared for like any other plant--the only difference is that they don't have real roots and cannot be planted in dirt.
Sadly, you CAN kill these. I had two that succumbed to mold and all I did was spray them twice a week.