Spanish Moss On A Tree

It is Moss Month at Plantscapes – and that means it is Moss Month for you, too, if you have an Interior Plant Maintenance account.

Doesn’t that sound intriguing? Do you want to know more?

Interior plants, just like the flowers and shrubs in landscaped flower beds, thrive and grow better with a top dressing on the soil surface.

At Plantscapes, we use Spanish moss for that top dressing.

Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) is very different than either peat moss or the moss and lichen you’ll find growing on trees and stones here in the Northwest. In fact, Spanish moss isn’t a real moss at all. It is a type of bromeliad (or air plant).

You’ve probably seen pictures of Spanish moss hanging from tree limbs in the Florida Everglades or in Louisiana bayous. It grows throughout much of the South. The moss Plantscapes uses has been carefully harvested and sterilized. All of our Spanish moss is warranted to be insect and disease free.

Every January, we celebrate Moss Month by replacing and revitalizing the moss at all of our interior accounts – at no additional cost to you, naturally. This program is just part of Plantscapes commitment to keeping your plants looking as good as they did on the day they were first installed.

What’s so great about Spanish moss?

• It helps to cool the soil during hot weather
• It retains moisture in the soil, helping to ensure your plants don’t dry out.
• It hides the rim of the containers, giving pots a softer, more natural look.
• It keeps fungus gnats from laying eggs in the soil
• It hides bare soil – which just plain looks better
• It discourages people from using planters as trash cans – a very important consideration in public places like malls.
  

  Bromeliad with Spanish moss

Plantscapes always “stages” our large containers with Spanish moss. However, after a year, egven the most artistic staging can look somewhat beaten down. Top watering can form little canyons in the moss. People often touch or pat it – “just to see” – and that can flatten or compact the moss. Over time, since Spanish moss is alive, parts of the moss will die off, leaving bare patches.

So with every new year, our technicians evaluate every container at every account. Sometimes we’ll just add a little new moss. Sometimes we’ll pull out the old moss and completely replace it with all new moss. And while we are doing that, we’ll also be inspecting the soil levels in your containers and topping them off when needed, evaluating root growth and root pruning as needed, and checking for signs of insects.

Your business is the reason we are in business. So we will make sure that your interiorscape, no matter how large or small, looks as new as the new decade.

Photo by faul Released under Creative Commons License