Gifts of Life is a home-grown business in every sense of the word. Step out onto the balcony of its founder Renee Lang's Palm Jumeirah apartment and you'll find countless species of succulents, planters of every imaginable shape and size, and all the accoutrements required to transform these often-underrated plants into cute and quirky decorative features.
No one, it seems, is more surprised about Lang’s evolution into a “succulent specialist” than she is. And it all began quite by chance. Lang had always been outdoorsy and passionate about natural living, and her parents and grandparents had kept stunning gardens in her native Australia, but there was little else to suggest that she would ever start her own plant-based business. She has spent the past eight years living in an apartment in Dubai, so didn’t even have a proper garden of her own. But a little more than a year ago, a close family friend gave Lang a selection of more than 50 succulent cuttings from his extensive collection. She brought them home and started planting.
“As soon as I saw the succulents, I was at a loss for words,” she recalls. “They were so beautiful. They come in so many variations. It was funny, as soon as I started to learn about them, I had such an appetite to learn more. It was very intoxicating for me.”
By December last year, Lang had a flourishing collection of plants, some of which were rare and highly coveted species, and she was experimenting with increasingly imaginative ways of potting them. So she decided to share her work on Instagram.
“I really just did it for my own amusement because I thought they were so beautiful and I had started potting them in all these different ways. I also had so many speciality species, which, among the succulent community, were quite noteworthy.”
Lang’s Instagram feed was an instant success, and she was inundated with enquiries. Because she had plenty of plants to spare, she decided to try selling her creations at the Ripe Food & Craft Market in Dubai.
“I went to Ripe and experienced so much positive feedback and so many enquiries. That started the ball rolling. At my first Ripe market, I sold half of my stock. I came home with all these empty boxes and realised that this was an actual thing – a business. So I decided to do it full-time.”
Succulents are currently having their time in the sun, so to speak. Popping up everywhere from wedding bouquets to table centrepieces, not to mention interiors and gardens around the world, they are, as Lang has discovered, very on-trend. It’s easy to see why. Apart from being extremely hardy and requiring very little maintenance (a real bonus for time-poor urbanites), they come in countless variations, colours and forms.
On her balcony, Lang points to her biggest seller, the lilac-hued, rosette-forming Perle von Nürnberg, from the Echeveria genus. “It’s so visually appealing – it is so amazing that that colour can occur in nature. And they stay healthy for so long. My mum has ones in her garden that are years old. They are such hardy plants and flourish under full sun.”
Lang’s personal favourite is the flapjack or Kalanchoe luciae, but the Graptopetalum, Sedeveria, Haworthia, Crassula and Sedum species are also proving popular, she says. Many of the species that Lang sells have been chosen specifically because of their ability to thrive in the UAE’s harsh climes. “I don’t sell anything that didn’t survive last summer. These are the hardiest plants I can find.”
Lang explains how her creations come together: “I have my parent plants, which I will never sell. These are my oldest plants and are incredibly healthy. I propagate from those plants. It varies between species, but it takes about five months from the new plant rooting to it being ready to be sold.”
Once they are ready, the plants are transferred into any number of containers, ranging from simple glass jars and oversized soup mugs to tin buckets and lightwood boxes, which are then jauntily embellished with jute ribbon and other cute decorative features. New to the mix are beautiful alabaster pots, which Lang will also be selling separately. Every creation is finished with an adorable sticker that reads: “Be Gentle. I’m alive.”
“I’ve never been a creative soul,” says Lang. “And then all of a sudden I started potting these plants and suddenly everything that I would look at in my environment would be an idea or a potential pot or a way of doing something differently. And it just grew.”
Lang pots her plants in a soil mix that she creates herself, which consists of equal measures of wood chips and perlite. This creates the porous environment that the succulents’ root systems need to thrive. “Their root systems are really happy when they can breathe,” she explains. “And by making the soil so porous, I can plant them in pretty much any container with an open top.”
Apart from offering beautifully presented succulents in a range of containers, Lang has also branched out in to “living frames”, wedding favours and decorative features for events, and is supplying a number of Dubai-based cafes, including Sophie’s on The Palm, with her creations.
Succulents, however presented, are particularly well-suited to the UAE lifestyle, she maintains. “Most people in Dubai live in apartments and only have a windowsill or balcony; succulents are so hardy that you can put them on your window sill, forget about them for a couple of weeks and then give them a big drink of water and they will be fine. People in the UAE also travel a lot, so the plants will just keep thriving at home while you are away.”
When it comes to upkeep, succulents generally only need to be watered every 10 days or so. While they will be happiest outdoors in direct sunlight, they will also fare well indoors, particularly if placed near a window or in a bright room. They will need sporadic pruning, but very little else. And with Lang charging Dh55 for a single plant in a simple glass container, they are also an extremely cost-effective way of introducing some greenery into your home. They only thing to be wary of is overwatering.
Lang continues to sell at Ripe markets in Dubai twice a week and can be contacted via her website (www.giftsoflifedubai.com) for bespoke orders. So what’s next on the agenda for the fledgling business? “I would like to see this evolve into a full-blown succulent nursery. The succulents will always be my pride and joy, but I am also starting to bring alabaster containers into the UAE; and working on other things like natural candles and other bespoke, natural products.”
In the process, Lang is becoming something of an authority on the subject of succulents in the UAE, although she baulks at the term. “I don’t know about being an authority. I think I’m a contributor. A very happy contributor. I’ve never been so engaged in something and so motivated. It’s so rewarding.”
sdenman@thenational.ae
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