Heavenly air plants

Zenaida Sengo was an art major at California State University Chico when she started dabbling in gardening. She learned the hard way what happens when a six-pack of flowers is planted in clay soil during triple-digit temperatures. After the plants quickly withered, her father gave her a copy of Sunset’s Western Garden Book. Sengo read it and then kept on reading.

Before long, her yard was chock-full of flowers. “College housing was so ugly, I wanted to walk through beauty to get to my house,” she said.

Her Chico garden eventually gave way to San Francisco’s urban gardening scene, and Sengo eventually combined her crushes on plants, art and design as the interior coordinator at Flora Grubb Gardens in San Francisco. In “Air Plants: The Curious World of Tillandsias” ($19.95, Timber Press), Sengo dishes on the plant made popular by the Bayview District nursery, sharing ideas for decorating with the low-maintenance, sculptural wonders.

Little has been written on air plants outside of what Sengo refers to as “plant nerd books,” so she starts by clearing up common misconceptions (“air plants do indeed need water and light”). Sengo and photographer Caitlin Atkinson use their homes and the homes of friends to demonstrate how to turn the plants into the perfect accessory for any bright space.

Sengo’s abundance of tips include step-by-step instructions for attaching wires to air plants so that they may be attached to the wall, as well as other plants, decorative objects — even gifts.

Often referred to as “the tillandsia woman” by customers at Flora Grubb Gardens, Sengo writes that she was skeptical when she first encountered these spiky wonders at a farmers’ market many years ago.

“I never imagined that a type of air plant would be at the center of my life, but now the obscure plant genus tillandsia is at the heart of my home and work.”