Succulent Wall Art

Succulent Wall Art: Hanging It Alongside Everything Else

Succulent prints are unusually easy to hang beside other things, which is most of their appeal. The forms are geometric — rosettes, spirals, blunt repeated shapes — and the palette is muted sage, dusty blue-green and chalky grey, so they sit quietly next to line drawings, black and white photography, plain typography and ceramics. The one thing they fight is other botanical work in the same green range, particularly large tropical leaf prints, which occupy the same colour but move at a completely different tempo.

Pair by contrast of scale rather than by subject. A tight macro of one rosette next to a wide, sparse landscape works. Three medium botanical studies at the same crop and the same distance from the subject turn into wallpaper. When you are building a group, vary how close the camera stands, not only what it is pointed at.

These images tolerate poor light better than most greenery. Because the plants themselves are pale and matt, they do not depend on a bright highlight to look alive, so a north-facing wall or a windowless bathroom will not kill them. That is also the smartest place to hang one: somewhere a real succulent would slowly give up, which is exactly where a picture of one earns its keep.

The difference between a good example and a dull one is usually depth. Strong images show the faint bloom on the leaf surface, the slight translucency at the leaf edge, and the tight geometry at the centre of the rosette. Flat, over-lit versions lose all three and end up looking like clip art of a plant. Check the centre of the spiral first; if it is mush there, the rest will be too.

Keep the print away from your actual plants. Hung directly above a shelf of the real thing, it invites a comparison it cannot win, and the pair reads as a display rather than as artwork. Put it on the opposite wall and each does the other a favour.