Vertical Garden

Vertical Gardens

This "green" trend is around for some time now. It started in the home-improvement sector and is called Vertical Gardening. Vertical gardens are also known as living walls or green walls. This innovative form of gardening allows homeowners to grow a huge variety of potted plants vertically on their wall. They can vary from using only one or two varieties of plant material to incorporating numerous plants to create a sort of tropical habitat.

Of course in tropical Indonesia you can encounter the real thing in outdoor natural environments, but various ready man-made systems are now available on the market for indoor as well as outdoor usage. Examples of a successful indoor vertical garden can be found in Shopping Centres in Bangkok and Singapore.

Indonesian Flower Design Trend

There are many very successful flower decorators in Indonesia. One of the top performers is Andy Djati Utomo of Intuition Floral Art Studio in Jakarta. His innovative work has won numerous important prizes internationally and he is recognised for his work all over the world. Recently has won a gold medal for in the category “Bridal” in the annual competition of the renowned British magazine “Fusion Flowers Magazine”. The beautiful picture on the left shows his winning project.

International FLower Decoration Trend

International Flower decoration Trend

According to Mieke Stap, a floral design expert and trend guru for the International Flower Bulb Center in Holland, "Two major floral trends dominate right now - andthey're direct opposites. You could call them Sublime Simplicity and Extreme Combinations." Stap oversees international floral design photo shoots in 15 countries around the world each year. The two trends, says Stap, lend themselves to an amateur's unbridled creativity and experimentation. "Sublime Simplicity is soothing, featuring single-colour combinations. This look emerged in the late '90s and continues to get stronger," explains Stap. "This look is subtle, calm and pretty. Think of pink-on-pink mixes of colour-related tulips and Persian buttercups," she says. To employ the simplicity theme, only one colour choice is necessary. The rest of the choices for the arrangement revolve around flower shapes, textures and how they are arranged in the vase of one's choice.

Extreme Combinations are energizing looks - bright, shiny, chaotic and high contrast," recounts Stap. "This look is creeping into fashion now, it's cutting edge, part of the new design world evolving in the new Millennium." There are two ways to achieve Extreme Combinations, she says. You can mix wildly different flowers together in one "blow-out bouquet" or you can place vivid single colour arrangements into jarring, high contrast settings.

"You might mix orange, hot pink and yellow flowers in one arrangement. Or, you could place a single-colour bouquet of searing orange tulips into a room with hot pink walls and yellow curtains. Either way, the overall effect is totally discordant - energizing." (Source BBW magazine)