Hydrotip.de

Clearly the best website I’ve found so far on the subject of hydroculture is the German website Hydrotip.de. I have only scratched the surface of the knowledge base on this site. I am in awe and humbled by what I read. It’s that good. Incidentally, you will also find interior horticulture information beyond the subject of hydroculture.

Like Inside Plants Live, it is a non-profit website and free to publish critical comments and reviews. Note that neither site even carries Google ads.

Couple Hydrotip.de with Plants-in-Buildings.com and some hands-on experimentation and you can teach yourself to be a very well informed practitioner of interior plant installation and care. In my opinion, you’ll learn more about modern methods on these sites than you will by attending any ornamental horticulture (or floriculture) program here in the U.S. I’m quite familiar with what they teach. Sadly, most of it is long out of date.

Unfortunately, Hydrotip.de is in German with no English version as an option. With that said it is well worth your time to explore this site using Babel Fish as outlined here. Use either Babel Fish or a German-English dictionary to help clarify some of the quite rough translation. Let’s hope that Google is allocating a lot of their resources to language translation.

After you have translated from German to English in Babel Fish, click on “The bases” (i.e. the basics). There are 63 data records (11 pages). All of them are worth reading but I suggest starting on page 4 and then click on “I would like to begin with the hydraulic culture. What do I need?” Be sure to read about “changing over “(soil to clay pebbles).

You can also click on “Sitemap” and find the same information and much more.

If you’re keenly interested in the subject of hydroculture as applied to plants in buildings, you will spend a lot of time on Hydrotip.de. Bon voyage…but do come back. Please tell a friend, or two or more what you have found here. It’s my only compensation and much appreciated. Thanks!

Guide to Interiorscaping

This is the first time I’ve seen the word “interiorscaping” used to refer to houseplants. Unfortunately, no one on the editorial staff knows what interiorscaping looks like. The photo is titled "houseplants" (right click properties). They're obviously not.

This was analogous to publishing an article on women’s fashions and showing a photo of a man in a business suit. We already have enough problems explaining to lay people how difficult it is to grow flowers inside buildings because there's not enough light.

Clark & Spears International

 
 

 
 

 

This article linked to a most impressive interior plantscaping supplier. The array of products Clarke & Spears offers is outstanding. Take a look at the wide selection of Tropical Houseplants and perhaps even more dazzling array of planters.

Clarke and Spears International (CSI) has been supplying landscapers, local authorities and garden centres since 1992. A unique Anglo Dutch company we are based in Holland, Scotland and England, each centre with a different speciality.

I’m impressed that Clarke & Spears has grown its annual turnover (sales) to 4 million British pounds ($7.25 million U.S.) over the past decade. There are only a few U.S. interiorscape companies of this size let alone suppliers.

Marriage of Old and New

No, this isn't a Photoshop creation. It's a rendering of a real building. Waverly Gate is a 21st century structure built inside a Victorian building façade that's over 100 years old. It used to be the General Post Office (GPO) in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The top floor contains a 30,000 sq. ft. two-section roof garden installed by Rentokil Tropical Plants.

If you’re interested in architectural preservation, you’ll enjoy the Waverly Gate website. There are construction photos and a timeline history of the site. It’s a particularly well done website and worth the time to explore.

I searched for current photos of the new building but didn’t find any. I’ll continue to look and will update this post when I find them. I’m particularly interested in photos of the roof garden.

Interior Hydroscaping in Singapore

Hydroculture-Space Pte Ltd makes no secret of how they provide water to the plants they maintain.

Introduction

Carrying the message of healthy living with nature, eight experienced executives pooled their talents together to establish Hydroculture-Space Pte Ltd with a vision of bringing nature closer to men and women who might otherwise have missed the benefits and comfort that nature can provide.

With the experiences that some of the executives had acquired working in the landscape industry over the last decade, we are poised to offer professionalism in horticultural services for projects in landscape implementation and maintenance and supply, rental and maintenance of indoor plants.

School in Finland

Does this look like a school? It looks more like a Fortune 500 corporate atrium to me. The photo is from the Plants-in-Buildings website. There are many more worth a look.

Plants-in-Buildings.com - Finland is known to have one of the best school systems in the developed World. These pictures of the interior of a school show its social areas, which are welcoming and relaxing.

Poet of Pots

You say you need a really big pot for your new Ficus tree? Read on...

People ask him what to plant in the giant pots he makes, and for a moment Frank Gallagher can't speak. He never saw them as something to hold plants but rather as pieces of shapely architecture on which the eye would light and the brain connected to it would experience what he calls a "feeling of warmth, comfort."

Check out more photos of Frank's creations. Amazing work!

Greenhouse in the Sky

Look up and you never know what you'll see in the Big Apple. Kidsturk on Flickr has a good eye.

Planters Palms

Planters, the largest interior landscaping company in the UAE installed preserved palms in the newly remodeled Ibn Battuta Shopping Mall.

Planterra Publicity

Here's a business article from the Detroit News featuring interior plantscaping company Planterra.