A guide to houseplants to make your rooms and balconies bloom.
You don’t need a sprawling garden or even a yard to brighten up your life with flowers. With help from Leaf Supply’s latest book, any space, no matter how small, can be transformed with flowering plants that bring a pop of color to a green sea of monsteras.
Bloom travels the world, featuring interviews with plant lovers who have filled their homes with blooming plants. Learn all about the different types and how to care for them, and find inspiration to introduce and style flowers in your own apartment. Whether you’ve never owned a plant or you’ve cultivated a greenhouse of orchids, Leaf Supply has tips for care, style, and arrangements that will turn your house into an indoor garden.
Read an extract from Bloom below!
Pp. 8-10 – The alluring nature of flowers
Lauren Camilleri and Sophia Kaplan
Flowers and the plants that produce them have captivated humans and pollinators alike
for eons. The beauty and sheer variety of flowering plants is a testament to the mastery of nature; they are a celebration of form, colour, texture and scent.
From the tiniest of translucent orchids to the enormous bird-like pelican flower (Aristolochia grandiflora), nearly 400,000 species of flowering plants have been documented so far. While many of these plants are grown for food, fibre or medicine, when we think of flowers it is generally more for their cultural significance. They form important parts of religious rituals, from temple offerings to funeral processions, and feature in many famous artworks, songs and books. And, of course, they have been given as gifts for centuries and are imbued with meaning – a ‘language of flowers’ so to speak.
While all this romance is an important part of the story, flowers also serve a very practical purpose as the reproductive organ of a plant. Evolution has spurred flowers to develop into attractive lures to would-be pollinators. Strong perfume, bright colours and bold shapes, along with more subtle compositions, all work to woo insects and birds to aid in pollination. In other instances, their design helps facilitate self-pollination. Regardless of the method, flowers are key to ensuring the survival of the species, and are a fundamental component of our ecosystem. Understanding the science of flowers, their anatomy and purpose, is not only fascinating, but helps to set the groundwork for any gardening endeavours.
Caring for plants and watching them thrive is a therapeutic undertaking that brings great pleasure to many. Inevitably they sometimes also wither, a part of the process that must also be respected. Although getting plants to flower indoors often takes some coaxing, understanding their care requirements will help build your confidence as a gardener and give you a greater chance of achieving this beautiful show. From light and water to soil and fertiliser, we’ve collected our best tips and tricks to help you along the way.
Flowers are fleeting bursts of joy. Like a living calendar, they help illustrate the passing of time. We’ll guide you through the seasons to show you how to grow an indoor or balcony garden that will bloom and capture your heart throughout the year. In spring, bulbs such as tulips push forth from deep, wide pots planted out in autumn, and dainty little oxalis and geranium flowers begin to appear. By summer, hoyas and begonia are hitting their peak, and hydrangeas can be brought indoors for their showy flowering period before being returned to sunnier positions on balconies for the rest of the year. Autumn heralds sweet cyclamen, Japanese anemone and a wide range of orchids, while succulents such as little pickles and kalanchoe, largely blooming in winter, add colour to cold days.
We have been lucky enough to peek inside the gardens and minds of some amazing plant people. Flower queen Petrina Burrill has cultivated an enchanting, bloom-filled garden in inner-city Melbourne. The happiness Petrina exudes is surely influenced by the containers overflowing with field flowers she enjoys in situ or arranged into beautiful bouquets. Jane Rose Lloyd, who is also the insightful and invaluable horticultural consultant on this book, has a serious passion for plants and an admirable orchid collection, which we shot in her verdant greenhouse. Ceramicist and artist Samantha McIntyre lives in a truly unique space, complete with a sprawling inner-city rooftop garden. Her affinity with bees plays into her relationship with nature and the art she makes.
Now more than ever it is important that we pay respect to our flora and appreciate its key role in keeping our planet alive. With this book we hope to inspire you to start or expand a flowering indoor or balcony garden of your very own, get closer to nature in your everyday life, and be seduced by the magical world of flowering plants.
— Bloom by Lauren Camilleri & Sophia Kaplan, published by Smith Street Books, distributed by Thames & Hudson Australia, AU$55.00, available 27 September 2022.
Bloom
Flowering plants for indoors and balconies
A guide to houseplants to make your rooms and balconies bloom.
You don't need a sprawling garden or even a yard to brighten up your life with flowers. With help from Leaf Supply's latest book, any space, no matter how small, can be transformed with flowering plants that bring a pop of color to a green sea of monsteras.
Bloom travels the world, featuring interviews with plant lovers who have filled their homes with blooming plants. Learn all about the different types and how to care for them, and find inspiration to introduce and style flowers in your own apartment. Whether you've never owned a plant or you've cultivated a greenhouse of orchids, Leaf Supply has tips for care, style, and arrangements that will turn your house into an indoor garden.
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