Oh hey, folks! Happy New Year and happy January. I was just giving my houseplants a little love, showing that I care greatly about their well-being. If I turn my head 360 degrees I see a healthy anthurium, a spathiphyllum that’s seen better days, a giant spath that is doing quite well, a tiny sago palm that I never water and is doing just fine and a dieffenbachia that has never fully recovered from a prolonged non-watering. I guess I should have shown that one a bit of appreciation months ago rather than letting it get so thirsty.

You, of course, appreciate houseplants #everydarnday. And in a “they pay my mortgage” sort of way, not in the “I love green things in my apartment” sort of way. Or, yes, maybe a little or a lot of that, too.

This guy sure does appreciate houseplants—so much so that he and his wife built a sun-filled addition to their home. We need more folks like Chris and Laurie as customers, right? (That’s what his contractors are saying, too!)

Enjoy the “holiday” and let’s hope others are enjoying it at the cash register!

Online plant retailer Bloomscape sure does appreciate houseplants. Their “plant mom” Joyce Mast was asked for her thoughts on the top houseplants for the coming year and they are listed in the Top Houseplant Trends for 2020 list published by TreeHugger.com back in December. The list includes easy-to-find and easy-to-grow houseplants for the consumer and—lucky for the grower—easy to pump out by the thousands.

• The “OG”: Maranta Red Prayer Plant and Bird of Paradise—Bloomscape’s top-selling plants for 2019.
• Succulents persist: “… generally super-interesting looking, easy to care for and make a great statement.”
• Colorful foliage: Joyce points to marantas again, plus alocasias, tradescantias, split-leafed philodendrons and watermelon and ginny peperomias.
• Plants that pair well with blue: Hello, Pantone? Some suggestions are sansevieria, calathea, dracaena Limelight and bird of paradise.
• Predicted winner of the year: Place your bets on the money tree. Braided stem, interesting foliage and a reputation for bringing good luck? Sign me up! 

 

Stock up on the above if you’re savvy. Or if you have your own list of predicted top houseplant sellers for 2020, drop me a line about it at ewells@ballpublishing.com.

I totally stole this bit from a Facebook post by Peggy Anne Montgomery (thanks, Peggy!). It’s a listing of the—what, 25?—trends that Lonny.com is seeing in the home design field. That’s a lot of trends! Plants get a mention in at least two of the trends, and ferns co-occupy a trend with olive trees and ficus.

 

Here’s what the listing has to say:

“Ferns, ficuses and olive trees will be the big plants of 2020, according to Nix and Martin. They say we are looking for soft, leafy plants in 2020 rather than the big, bold tropical plants that have been in style for the past few years. Designers agree that the indestructible snake plant will also continue to be in style thanks to how low-maintenance it is.”

Note that Nix and Martin (interior designers) claim “big, bold tropicals” are on their way out. But I’d say that’s from an interior design point of view and doesn’t account for plant collecting fanatics. Plus, it takes years for interior design trends to trickle down to the general population.

Thank goodness for snake plants and ferns, though, right?

The other mention of plants is in a non-tropical way, specifically in floral use. I’ll touch on that in this week’s Buzz e-newsletter coming out later this week. And if you’d like to read about the other 23 or so design trends, you can read the Lonny.com article HERE.

I’m finding that Pantone’s choice of Classic Blue as its Color of the Year for 2020 is getting some real traction in the industry, as evidenced by Joyce’s picks above. Nothing wrong with blue. If everyone doesn’t love or at least like blue, then they don’t hate it, either. It’d be like hating the sky, and no one doesn’t love what the sky represents.

Reader Robin Kaiser wrote in a few weeks ago with how their IGC would be incorporating Classic Blue into their sales efforts:

“We will be focusing less on matching an annual flower to the Pantone color, and more on coordinating annual flowers to a container of the color of the year. For instance, a Classic Blue ceramic patio pot will be beautiful with a mix of pale to deep pink annuals; shades of pale to medium yellow in the blue container will be really eye-catching; an assortment of white flowering annuals will look not only calm, but very crisp and clean; and pretty much any houseplant in pretty much any shade of green—from emerald to chartreuse will be perfectly displayed in this shade of blue. Blue looks great with green! Let's not fight it—I think more people will identify with blue than coral.”

Hey, thanks for mentioning houseplants, Robin!

And if a single IGC comment isn’t enough to convince you that blue is totally workable this year, here’s this from the Home Decorations Collection catalog from Home Depot:

Growers, are you potting up finished houseplants accompanied with a touch of blue? It would be interesting to see if offering plants with more blue accents—pots and such—would push up those numbers with customers. Someone on your staff is tracking these numbers … right?

As you may recall, I’ll be one of three panelists for the Elevating Expectations session “What’s Causing Houseplant Fever” at TPIE (January 23, 3 p.m., put it in your calendar!). Fellow panelists Katie Dubow (president of Garden Media Group) and Seth Reed (of GrowIt! fame) and I will be inquiring of each other what they think is fueling houseplant sales and also taking some questions from the audience.

All very well and good if you’re there. BUT if you aren’t there, how are you going to get your burning questions about the current and future state of the houseplant industry answered? Easy—by sending them to me. Frequent readers and commenters to Tropical Topics, weigh in with your questions. Or with your astute commentary on the subject for our discussion. And I know you have comments (I’ll keep you anonymous if you’d like). Send your questions or comment to ewells@ballpublishing.com.

And don’t forget about the opening keynote, Maxwell Luthy of Trendwatching—my favorite trends guy on the planet. See you there, 9 a.m. on Wednesday, January 22!