30 amazing things that happened to me last week in Italy

I was knee deep in Italian horticulture!

Italy, what are you doing to me? The men are so handsome. And 60% of them all have a twinkle in their eye too. I didn’t know where to look, as I walked the halls of the MyPlant trade event recently.

However, I quickly composed myself, drank the expected 5 espressos before 10am, and walk the halls with my (for now) (fictitious) plant hunting hat on.

It turns out that I was to discover a whole lot more handsome, as I found tonnes of unique plants and concepts... from 1000 year olive trees to a rather cool perennial for hanging baskets, compostable phone cases to a houseplant I hadn’t seen since 1988.

Read onto to see what I discovered when I was knee deep in Italian horticulture last week…

You can’t tackle events until you’ve had a pizza! I was super tired the night I arrived - luckily there was a local pizzeria just steps away. I sat alone, like a proper businessman, and had a tuna onion pizza (always my choice if I see it on a menu!)

These kokedama looked ambitious, but why not…? They might take quite a while to stop dripping after their weekly dunk though…

I enjoyed the Green Gadgets stand with all sorts of natural gadgets, including this phone case made of recycled plant based materials.

Aphelandra ‘Whitewash’ was quite cool- apparently it doesn’t flower like a normal Aphelandra, but that foliage more than makes up for it! Why do all the cool leaf plants start with A?? Alocasia, Aglaonema, and so on…