Today plants are an essential dimension in our urban lives. We need to reconnect ourselves with Nature and what better way than taking care of plants !

Urban Jungle Bloggers is all about living with plants – in your home, in other interiors, in public spaces. It’s a huge global community of plant lovers responding to a meaningful long term trend. Our editor Cecile Poignant met Judith one of the founder of this green family for you to know more about Urban Jungle Bloggers.
 

When and how did UJB – Urban Jungle Bloggers – start ?

Urban Jungle Bloggers started in 2013. My friend Igor (from Happy Interior Blog) and I (from JOELIX.com) had coffee in Paris and talked about the things we enjoyed in life and the things we loved blogging about. We realized we had a shared passion for houseplants and decided to start a monthly series on our own blogs, where we presented our plants, our urban jungles, to our readers. We called it Urban Jungle Bloggers. From the very beginning other bloggers wanted to join in and we continued with monthly topics that we sent to all participating bloggers. We then shared all these blogposts across all social media platforms so that more people could read them. What started as a fun blog project, grew into a thriving community of plant lovers from all around the world! Last year we published our first book: Urban Jungle, living and styling with plants.
 

How would you describe yourself ?

I’m an enthusiast and visual-minded creative with a passion for color, design, light and plants. And I cut my own hair.
 

What fascinates you about plants ?

Plants surprise me, by their shapes, colors and power to grow simply by giving it some water and enough light. Large plants can compete with true sculptures and add so much character to a space. They are ever changing, bending over, changing colors, growing new leaves, hibernating, suffering from bugs, recovering, and turning towards the light. They’re in constant movement, even though it’s not always visible on the outside. Plants teach me to be patient, they take their time to grow a new leaf or bloom, it’s not instant!
 

Do you have the feeling of thing created a huge green family – 405 000 followers on Instagram ?

Absolutely, Urban Jungle Bloggers feels like a big plant loving family. It’s wonderful to see how people keep their plants at home: a few in the window sill, or dozens of plants spread across the house… or even “worse”! Some people collect only one kind of plant, some are eclectic and love them all. We all share that love for growing greens and exchange our knowledge and creativity with each other.
 

Urban Jungle Bloggers’s community is really worldwide, how can you explain this global success ?

First of all, Igor and I live in different countries and have different audiences. But the community quickly grew beyond these people, attracting plant lovers from across the world. I believe that if you do something with passion, it shows, and people recognize that and want to be part of that. Plant lovers live in every corner of the world and blogs and social media allow us to share that interest with each other without physical boundaries. It’s so interesting to see that the availability of certain plants is more limited in some areas of the world, that some plants are considered weed in some regions whereas they are considered luxury goods somewhere else. We live in the right time to reconnect with nature and taking care of our plants, as more and more of us live in urban areas where the only bit of nature we see every day are the parks… and our houseplants!

Do you only love plants or are you also a flower lover ?

I do appreciate flowers and love their smells and beauty, but my heart beats faster for plants that stay fresh a little longer than a beautiful bouquet. It always makes me so proud though when my plants start blooming! I recently had a few blooming cactus plants with pink, yellow and orange blooms. But if you’re looking for some real flower girls, you should check out :

@madame_love and @stilzitat and @botanicart

these ladies know what to do with flowers!
 

Is this green love something specific to millennial ?

I don’t think so, I believe houseplants can bring joy to anyone, young and old. But on the other hand, so many millenials grow up glued to their smartphones with “instant everything” in a fast-paced, digitalized world that there is a bigger need for them to reconnect with nature. They feel the need to surround themselves with nature and want a connection to something so basic yet so essential, that will remind them of the “natural pace of life” beyond smartphones and social media. Also we believe that plants teach us more responsibility, patience, and mindfulness – they act as a sort of anchor to root us again. Especially after long and stressful days in the city. This love for green is becoming essential for urban dwellers!

How does your community work ?

There are several ways to join Urban Jungle Bloggers. You can join on Instagram by using the hashtag #urbanjunglebloggers for your plant-related photos. Twice a day we select the most inspiring images that we share with others on our @urbanjungleblog account. You can also sign up for our newsletter , in which we announce the new seasonal topic and more green tips and tricks. If you like the seasonal topic, you can use it to create a blogpost on your blog, that we will then share across our social media platforms and on our website. We are constantly inspired by the blog- and Instagram posts from our community.
 

What are your plans for the future ?

Right now, we are preparing the launch of our Urban Jungle book in French (on September 7th ) as well as a few workshops. We are keen to grow Urban Jungle Bloggers and keep it fun, interesting, informative, and creative. We also want to delve into more video content soon and who knows, maybe one day we will even take it offline and organize some Urban Jungle meet-ups. Stay tuned!
 

Cecile Poignant
 

www.urbanjunglebloggers.com
 

instagram.
 

facebook
 

pinterest
 

Igor
 

Igor’s instagram
 

Judith
 

Judith’s instagram