Stewarts Office Plants

We supply many businesses across the South, from Sussex and Surrey, through Hampshire and Dorset to Wiltshire and Somerset. For more information about the services we offer visit our home page, or contact us here. In this blog you'll find news, interesting snippets, stories and pictures of our staff's adventures out on the road.

Friday, October 30, 2015

More brightly coloured planters


So I've continued my fashion for brightly coloured planters. This contract had five pots, all different colours (red, orange, yellow, pink, green).

The green was my favourite RAL 6018 (remember the post about my car being this colour?).

What we absolutely love about this client's premises (apart from the colouring-in wallpaper that they insist you help fill in) is that the three brightly coloured troughs, which feature different types of Sansevieria, are in three prominent bay windows overlooking a busy road in Bournemouth.


What a great advert for Stewarts!

Jonathan

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Nature red in tooth and claw

As you may be able to tell by the sudden abundance of posts after months of nothing, here at Stewarts Interior Landscaping we are finally have a period of relative calm.

So I'm reduced to mundane tasks like filing all the photos I have taken and not organised.

As I explained before, we name all our pictures so we can easily find them if we need to show a product to a client.

This photo however doesn't really have a home, so I thought I'd post it on here before I delete it.


I was sat in my office a few months ago... now, the word 'office' makes it sound somewhat more salubrious than it is. For a start it has more than its fair share of cobwebs, being in the corner of a giant greenhouse.

So I was sat in my office when I heard a high pitched drone. I turned round to see a fly trapped in a spider's web, with the spider moving in for the coup de grace.

As regular readers will know I'm not a particularly gifted photographer, but I managed to grab this rather ominous looking picture of the scene. It's probably not a spoiler to say that it didn't end well for the fly.

Jonathan

Monday, October 19, 2015

Feature plant (s): Cordyline Kiwi and Glauca

Cordyline Kiwi
In previous 'feature plant' postings, I've tended to choose something unusual, or an odd variant on a traditional plant, but this time round I'm going for two plants that are old school and proud.

Cordyline Kiwi is the most high colour variant of the Cordyline Fruiticosa family. Other varieties include C. Tango (dark red) and C' Glauca (dark green), of which more below.

The larger Cordyline family encompasses a wide variety of plants. The C. Australis family are outdoor plants in this country, but the C. Fruiticosas like the Kiwi are small indoor plants.

The Kiwi needs good medium to warm temperature and high light.

It's on my mind because I am about to put several dozen on a ferry in Portsmouth, where they will be in a window so should - touch wood - do just fine.

Interestingly, unlike most plant families, the temperature tolerance varies widely across the family. More specifically, most of the varieties (including C. Kiwi) require good temperature, while C. Glauca (shown below) is almost hardy in the UK. If you feel the leaf of the Glauca it's noticeably tougher, almost leather, while the Kiwi's leaves are paper thin.

The Glauca will also cope with a lot less light. Less siblings, more estranged cousins?

Jonathan


Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Fibrestone plant pots


At Stewarts we like to keep abreast of trends in plant pot design.

After years in which the only noticeable theme has been bright colours, such as green and pink, there is a gradual shift toward more natural looking pots, though usually still in fairly plain geometric shapes.

One problem with this is that that pots made from natural materials can be either heavy, expensive, or not immensely durable.

For example, clients really like the idea of pots made from natural stone or terracotta. Great in theory, but they will be very heavy, potentially quite damage prone, and also not necessarily waterproof: a must in an office!

The market is as ingenious as ever, and we now have a wide variety of 'Fibrestone' pots available. These are (I think!) manufactured from a composite of glass-fibre and cement, which can be dyed, which means they have the appearance of stone, but don't weigh a huge amount more than the traditional glass-fibre. Their only downside I can see is they are rather prone to getting dirty and being difficult to get clean, especially the lighter colours. So the 'Smoke' coloured ones, like the one shown, that we recently installed in an office park near Southampton are the most practical.

Incidentally, I just love using white variegated Dracaenas like this branched D. Warneckii in monochrome pots if the room is quite cold-coloured. It looks really effective; what do you think?

Jonathan