Are you one of those people that no matter what you do, you'll always end up with dead indoor plants? You're not alone. Luckily for you, we got some tips from a plant queen to help you out of your plant-killing spree.

Opening earlier this year at the quieter end of Hampton Street, Into the Wild has since turned into a destination store: that shop that everyone’s keen to check out, regardless of where they live. 

Owner Marita McCausland’s dream of opening a bricks-and-mortar store became a reality after two years of trading indoor plants online whilst running a plant-styling business. And what a welcome sight the store is - its pale blush walls highlighting the constantly revolving greenery from cascading ivys with metre-long trails to giant fiddle leaf figs and lush monstera to tiny little pots of cacti and succulents. 

At Into the Wild, Marita’s passion for interiors and indoor plants well and truly collide, her plants are sold alongside a carefully curated selection of ceramic pots, stands and hangers, the end results producing beautiful, sculptural, living art pieces for the home.

"I guess our main point of difference in setting up the shop was to be really interiors-focused and not like a nursery," says Marita.

" I don’t want plastic pots everywhere, I want people to be able to come in and mix-and-match a really broad range of pots and plants, and come in and feel they can see that in their home, rather than going into a nursery and not knowing where to start or what to choose."

The opening of the store couldn’t have come at a better time. Indoor plants have seen an astronomical surge in interest in the last couple of years and unlike the plant craze of the 1970s, Marita insists that this time around, it’s not a craze and it’s not just a trending hashtag: they’re here to stay. But why the fascination? Why have so many of us become obsessed with our indoor jungles? 

“Apartment living is part of it. People don’t have backyards so they want to create their gardens and oases indoors,” says Marita.

“Indoor plants are less a craze and more an addiction. People get one and realise how much it transforms one tiny space of their house and then they’d look around and go ‘Where else can I put one?’, because it makes such a massive difference to your interior.”

Additionally, a few years back, NASA published an article on the best air-filtering plants for the home. A couple of years ago, the wellness trend migrated from body, mind and soul to interiors and lifestyle with indoor plants emerging as the easiest means to improve the ‘wellness’ of your home—these days, the articles on the health benefits of keeping indoor plants are endless. 

That’s all well and good, but what about those who are notorious for killing indoor plants? The other day I noticed my air plant had died. You know what air plants need to survive? Air. 

“Plants aren’t that hard,” says Marita. 

“I think people are really, really scared of indoor plants because they’re scared of killing them. 80 per cent of people who walk into the shop say ‘I love indoor plants, but I always kill them.’ 

The frequency of watering and how they’re watered are almost always, generally, the answer, to nearly every single person who says they kill their plants.”

According to Marita, we tend to overwater our plants because we think it’s the only way we can interact with and do something with our plants. Instead, says Marita, we need to ‘leave them alone’ and just look at them.

And apparently…it’s that easy. But for those of you who still don’t have the confidence, pop into Into The Wild and chat to Marita in the flesh—passing on her knowledge, chatting about plants, figuring out where you’re going wrong and what you can do to stop being a plant murderer is what she loves most.  

“Customers know I’m really passionate about it, they know they can get easy advice that’s super simple and stripped back. 

“I want people to walk away and think ‘Okay, I’m good, I’m comfortable’

“We have so many repeat customers now that come in every week to buy more plants, and they love their little jungle homes and it’s so nice. These are people that came in and were buying their first plant together, it’s like their first baby!! And now they’re coming back for their 7th or 8th plant saying ‘I thought it would be so hard’, but it’s not, it’s really not. You just need the right advice - wherever that may be, wherever you go.”

THE LOWDOWN

Into The Wild is open Tue-Fri at 251 Hampton Street, Hampton.

Check out their online store and website and be sure to flick them a follow on Instagram.

All images via Into The Wild x