After spending a week in Bangkok this June visiting growers and going to the Bangkok International Exotic Plant Show, I wanted to put together a proper directory of everyone we managed to visit. Each grower's collections were so unique, they are working on different lines and traits, and I wanted to have them in one place for anyone curious about who's who or thinking about planning their own visit.
These are in the order we visited them. I so much appreciate the time everyone took out of their days to show us around and answer our endless questions about IDs. I was so in awe of everyone's growing spaces and kindness!
If you're planning a trip yourself, I really recommend chatting with people beforehand on Instagram and asking for advice on who to visit and in what order. The growers are scattered around the surrounding area of Bangkok and the drives between them can take a long time with traffic. Everyone we met was really helpful and kind, and they know each other super well, so trust their advice!
Aroid Studio [@aroid.studio]
Day one of our trip was at Aroid Studio's family home greenhouse. The owner Dream studied for two years in Philadelphia. Most of their current hybridizing happens in a shared greenhouse with a friend but they were just finalizing building a completely new greenhouse which will have better ventilation and AC. The heat was actually one of the things they mentioned as a real challenge for the current space, especially during this time of year in Thailand.
The oldest greenhouse was an incredible jungle, filled with enormous Philodendrons, probably the biggest I've seen in person. Apparently it's not really in active use anymore. They also said they managed to hybridize their huge variegated billietiae and got three or four variegated seedlings from the cross, which was pretty cool!
Some of the plants they showed us really stood out. There was an incredible RVDP × Luxurians clone with a striking deep red sinus and very dark foliage, a Night Dragon hybrid with a red sinus, plenty of mint-variegated material, and a Panamense × Carla hybrid (never seen that before!).
They mentioned that they're especially interested in mutated hybrids and dark foliage, even though the current trend across much of Asia seems to lean more towards silvery and pink-red crystallinum types. I found that interesting, as their breeding preferences felt much closer to what many European collectors tend to appreciate.
Wut [@wut_woodyplant]
Wut spent the entire second day driving us around, which was so generous of him. His main work is actually with mangoes and durians, and he also studied logistics, so we really connected over wanting to trade sitting behind a computer for working with plants. Plants are his hobby and passion. He originally focused on Alocasias but has since moved into Anthuriums.
His own greenhouse was packed with absolutely beautiful variegated Anthuriums in all the imaginable colours, and he said variegated plants are what he's most interested in. He was showing us how they make lots of different crosses, germinate all the seedlings, and only keep any variegated offspring they find. Apparently, the only way to know whether a parent has transferable and stable variegation is by testing it through hybridizing. It was also unbelievably hot and humid. I think my shirt was completely soaked within a few minutes of walking in.
He very kindly took us to his brother's greenhouse and then drove us all the way out to Siam Flora in the afternoon, more than an hour outside the city. We spent the whole day chatting about plants and life in general.
Beyond being an incredibly kind and generous person, Wut is also very well connected within the Bangkok Anthurium community and seems to know everyone. It was just an absolutely lovely insight into the passionate collector community in the Bangkok area, where they can visit each other's greenhouses so easily.
KN Variegated [@kn_variegated & nuttanan.kn_variegated]
Wut took us to KN Variegated's greenhouse on the way to Siam Flora. They had an entire room dedicated to large variegated plants, including variegated warocqueanum and variegated splendidum, and their work highly focuses on variegated Anthuriums. The climate control was very high end, and their whole collection was just absolutely insane. The amount of incredibly rare, high-end plants that I'd only ever seen on Instagram before was mind-blowing to me.
The space was absolutely packed with massive plants, and we were so nervous about knocking something over or brushing against the leaves as we walked through. But they were so easygoing and generous, happily letting us take our time and look at everything. They also mentioned that they have another greenhouse where they grow out all the seedlings from their hybridizing work. The greenhouse we visited mainly housed many of their mother plants and was attached to their home.
For this greenhouse, I think the pictures speak louder than words, so here are some of the impressive plants we got to see.
Siam Flora [@siamflora]
Visiting Siam Flora with Jeera and Noot was the highlight of the trip for me.
Siam Flora is Jeera's family operation, originally started by his father. Jeera has seven siblings, all working with plants, and Siam Flora represents two generations of Anthurium hybridizing. They're located outside Bangkok, more than an hour's drive from the city, depending on traffic.
They're best known for their decades-long work with variegated bird's nest Anthuriums, producing colour combinations you don't see anywhere else. I could really tell they are very respected in the Bangkok community for their knowledge. They've also created some of the most iconic velvet leaf Anthuriums to their name, including RVDP, Bouillon, and Night Dragon. Noot told us that Night Dragon came from a batch of Thai variegated papillilaminum crossed with an Ace of Spades that had been selected for its form. The same seed batch also produced RVDP, Bouillon, and one other selected plant.
The first greenhouse we visited was full of velvet leaf Anthuriums growing in 20-litre buckets, organised by the traits they were working on. There was a whole aisle of variegated forgetii, another of Night Dragon types, and a section of magnificums with strong orange emergents. These were plants the size you never see.
Jeera and Noot were also incredibly generous. After showing us around the greenhouse, they took us out for dinner, ordered a huge table full of dishes, and introduced us to different drinks and local food. They also very kindly allowed us to reserve a Night Dragon clone, which will be arriving in a couple of months.
Inflomation Bangkok [@inflomationbkk]
Inflomation Bangkok has a smaller setup right next to his house, which we visited on the third day of the trip. His growing space felt really personal and packed with so many unique plants! It was beautifully put together, with a wide variety of plants including Mexican species, a variegated section, Panamanian species, and the red silvery types. He said he's most interested in the red silvery types, which is very much in line with the current trend in the Asian market. For him plants are also just a hobby and his day job is in graphic design.
He does a lot of cool complex hybrids which are definitely worth checking out. The plant that really stood out to me was his Choco Magnificum, which had like that Stripey look with forking veins but less of a rhino texture.
Mikael, Rootwell and Co [@rootwell.and.co]
We were planning to visit Mikael on the first day of our trip, but unfortunately he got sick so we didn't get to see his space in person. It was a shame to miss it, especially because he has a really high-tech setup with air conditioning and everything dialed in, which would have been so interesting for me to see and compare against my own setup. We still ended up hanging out with him a lot during the show, and one evening him and Dan from The Lonely Sanctuary took us out to dinner, which was so fun.
Mikael has an absolutely incredible collection, some of which you can see on his Instagram. He sells some of the really coveted plants that everyone is looking for. Apparently most of the Black Holes in circulation came from him, which gives you a sense of the kind of material he works with. Really amazing stuff, and he is so nice and sweet on top of that.
Thanks
I'm beyond grateful to everyone we got to spend time with during this trip. I also want to thank everyone we met at the show, as well as all the sellers we bought plants from.
One thing I found really interesting is that, for most of the growers we met, plants are actually a hobby and they have completely different day jobs. Many people were also talking about building new greenhouses and improving their growing setups, so it really feels like the Anthurium scene is growing and booming in Thailand right now.
These are just the growers we had time to visit on this trip. There are definitely many more people in the community worth following, and if you're planning your own trip, I'd definitely recommend chatting with people beforehand on IG. If you're visiting around the time of the show, it's also worth keeping in mind that growers are incredibly busy then, so it's best to arrange visits before and leave enough time for greenhouse visits outside of the main show weekend. Thursday, which is the setup day, is especially busy.