Drew & Nicole

This is going to be our first spring with the courtyard set up the way it is. So we’re still in the process of figuring out particular care and maintenance of each individual plant. Some of the ground cover plants are not suitable for direct sun nor do they like being dried out. Extra care and a close eye is part of our daily routine while we figure everything out. We’ve definitely noticed the ivy, the ficus, the magnolias, and a lot of the ground cover plants are really starting to take off. The deciduous ornamental plums have just begun sprouting their new leaves so we are beyond excited to see them come back to life after watching them drop their leaves during their winter phase. Very exciting times to come as the ground cover plants begin to properly fill out and give us the look we are aiming for. Jarrah slab ethanol burner fire table and the matching Jarrah side tables done by our main man Saxon Hennessey. Yet again blowing us away with beyond amazing workmanship ship. Peace and love Drew and Nicole ❤️ #courtyard #courtyardgarden #plants #gardenmaintenance #gardeninspiration #garden #gardening #planties

The frequency of our watering days changes significantly throughout the year. During winter it can be upto anywhere between 3-4 weeks and at the moment (middle of spring) it is about once every 12 days. We havent had the indoor beds during a hot Perth summer yet but we expect to be watering weekly or even less once the 40 degree days start coming around. We have ordered a second humidifier so we're prepared for those dry summers days when ambient humidity tends to drop a little. Have also put through an order for the outdoor overhead electric awning which will keep the house temperatures down come summer time. Peace and love to you all ❤️🌱 #plants #plantbabies #plantaddict #plantaddiction #gardeninspo #gardenbeds #indoorplants #indoorplantsdecor #teamtnk #thetnkloft #plantmumma #plantdaddy

We got pretty lucky in regards to the architecture of our place. The start video is taken from the 3rd story where you can get a view of both the indoor and outdoor setup. The 3rd story is used as a cinema/gaming room where the projector screen is mounted across from the void of the plant/office room. The TNK loft us really starting to properly take shape now. Still many big things to come including a huge vertical garden and suspended reading/lounge net which will be suspended above the plant room where you will also be in perfect view of the projector screen. Stay tuned fam! Peace and love to all ❤️🌱 #plants #plantbabies #planties #gardening #indoorplants #indoorgardening #gaming #gamingsetup #plantinspiration #gamingroom #office #officeinspiration #perth #indoordesign #interiordesign

Both myself and Nicole have realised the power of what plants possess over the past few years of plant ownership and our integration of plants into our domesticated living and work spaces. As Nicole works from home most days, the goal for this room was to basically fill it with as many plants as possible while making it as easy to manage as possible. I think we achieved this goal pretty well as watering frequency is reduced by 50% and watering is done by the garden hose which takes less than 5 minutes. It also makes me feel pretty good to know that I’ve done my absolute best in making her work space the best work space we could possibly achieve. Because- happy wife= happy life 😉 #plants #office #officeinspiration #officeinspo #indoorgarden #indoorgardening #gaming #gamingsetup #deskspace #greenliving #cleanair

As we grow up, “fitting in” is something a lot of us can struggle with. The thing with fitting in is that it has this tendency to make us conform and follow social norms which can then put distance between yourself and the core of who you are as a person. For both me and Nicole and for a lot of others, it’s not really until you truly begin to find yourself and understand who you are as a person in your 30’s when you realise that you’ve probably been led astray. It’s not really until you’re in your 30’s we began to find a lot of comfort in what separates us from the social norm. In some ways, myself and Nicole have somewhat disregarded societies expectations and social norms as it can limit your freedom and free thinking. Because if we hadn’t of thought outside the social norm box, we would probably still have 70-80 plants all in hard to manage pots in this room and not cool as f**k gardenbeds. So we say f**k yeah to being weirdos and hell f**k yeah to thinking outside the box. Do what makes you happy as long as you’re not hurting anyone in the process. Even if it may reduce the value of your house 😅 #stayweird #indoorgarden #livingwithplants #indoorjungle #plants

AWE Noun, Awe is the feeling of respect and amazement that you have when you are faced with something wonderful and sometimes rather frightening. “they gazed in awe at the sun setting over the mountain on a clear day” Usually a sense of awe is reserved for things over vast spaces like the nights sky, a really impressive view over a canyon or a sunset. But for us plant lovers, we can find a sense of awe within a plant whether it’s grown in your own home, outside your home or within their natural environment. With this eye for plants, quite often throughout your day to day doings, we are regulary presented with the beauty and grace that plants can offer us. There is something just so uniquely magical about plants. It’s a weird one as its something both me and Nicole never really paid much attention to before we started getting into plants about 3 years ago. Now we’re at a point where we will often marvel daily at the process of a new leaf unfurling and get excited like little children on Christmas eve 😂 Peace, love and happy growing to you all ❤️🌱 #biophilicdesign #courtyardgarden #junglegarden #courtyarddesign #livingwithplants

There's no doubt for most, our younger childhood years were some of the most fun and carefree times of our lives. Then we spend our teenage years and early adult life collecting responsibilities, desperately trying to find our place in the world and frantically figuring out the true essence of who we are as humans. Within the pandemonium, at times a lot of us I believe can begin to neglect the balance of engaging and nurturing our inner child. Those days where we could get away with pooping on the floor and then vomiting all over ourselves and then expect someone else to clean it up with zero repercussions like it was normal part of our day to day lives. The days where all that really mattered to us was play. Unfortunately those kind of antics are generally frowned upon because we're now adults. However once you have worked out the happy medium of adulting, celebrating and engaging your inner child is more like feeding your soul instead of an over indulgence, escaping and reverting to impulsive and instant gratification seeking behavior. Because now you've earned it and you've incorporated respect for yourself and your own accomplishments. Both me and Nicole really do try to put a lot of effort into "play" (hence the Mario Cart that we often play in the loft) along with just being absolute retards at times and not taking ourselves or our lives overly seriously. MASSIVE ups to harne_hennessey the videographer magician for fabbing up this reel. Forever doing the video works of God that you do my man. Always massively appreciated! Peace, love and happy growing to you all 🌱❤️

Although our house does represent a lot of life with the plants that we grow, it's also important to participate in the understanding of Yin and Yang/life and death, the 2 complimtary forces that make up all aspects and phenomena of life. This understanding has the potential to respect the fact that our time and existence is our most precious commodity. These are some of our "Memento Mori's" which are artistic or symbolic tropes acting as reminders of the inevitability of death. And "Amor Fati" translates to "love your fate". Although the topic of death itself is generally considered an uncomfortable and potentially morbid one, to us, it is a reminder to truly make the most of our lives. ****Everything was sourced from ethical suppliers. Peace, love and happy growing to you all 🌱❤️ #skulls #bugs #bugsofinstahram #taxidermy #taxidermybugs #taxidermyart #entamology #mementomori #yinandyang #yinyang #amorfati

In general, the novelty and happiness gained from materialistic possessions is forever fleeting and that thing you purchased a year or 2 ago rarely is appreciated as much as what you did when you first purchased it. The exact opposite can be said for plants as they grow and transform into something far more spectacular than they once where when you first purchased said plants. We often find ourselves looking at the plants we purchased a couple of years prior and marvelling at how much they’ve grown and evolved into an even more beautiful specimens. Plants can provide you with an endless sense of achievement as you continue to provide the plant with whatever it needs to sustain its life and allow it to thrive. It’s a synergistic bond that you then develop with the plant as you provide it with what it needs and it gives back to you with its grace and beauty that it has to offer. Plants are the real MVP #biophilicdesign #indoorgarden #plantlife #courtyardgarden

We live in Perth, Australia which is generally a pretty warm climate but our standard atmpsheric humidity is on average around 20-30% lower than what is ideal for most of our plants. We do our best to try and replicate as similar invironmental conditions as what is natural for our plants so running humidifiers is a pretty good idea. As you can see pretty early on in the video, we run an in line activated carbon filter through our garden hose which can extract some of the impurities like chlorine, iron, hydrogen sulphide, lead and pesticides to avoid build up in our humidifiers and on the leaves of our plants. Letting our water "sit" overnight to evaporate the chlorine is useless for us as the water in Perth is treated with chloramine instead of chlorine which is significantly more stable and does nothing to evaporate the chlorine. We will do another video soon which will cover the in line filter that we use. We run a small fan to increase circulation and ventilation during the day to combat mold. However, it's probably not even necessary that we do so as Perth is pretty warm all year round and mold issues is somewhat unlikely. Although misting doesn't tend to raise humidity much at all, we still do mist most days to help clear the leaves of dust and to help hydrate the plants further, along with helping to simulate as natural environment as possible. Will our plants die if we don't run the humidifiers? Probably but but it just isn't ideal. Always happy to answer any questions anyone may have. Peace, love and happy growing to you all. 🌱 ❤️ #humidifier #biophilcdesign #growingplants #indoorplants #indoorgardenbeds #indoorgardening #addictedtoplants

I think this video explains our position in regards to moisture metres. Moisture meters don't actually measure moisture. They measure the conductivity in the growing medium and due to water being a very good conductor, if the growing medium is wet you will get higher conductivity and low conductivity if the growing medium is dry. However, they are just notoriously innacurate due a lot of us using chunky aroid mixes with a lot of orchid bark and perlite which in turn reduces the amount of surface area that then comes in contact with the probe, ultimately reducing the conductivity. Another issue is that mineral salts from your growing medium or fertaliser can slowly penetrate the probe causing it to create minor rust/corrosion. Even minor and barely noticeable rust/corrosion can cause the metre to reduce potential conductivity rendering it innacurate. We just go by the finger test where we just put a finger all the way into our growing medium or pick up a good handful and just access how it looks and feels. Another good test is to use a wooden chopstick and insert it into your pot or garden bed and just see what it looks like when you pull it out. Wet/dirty stick= still wet. Dry/cleanish stick= mostly dry and probably a good time to water. If you insist on using a moisture meter and do not use chunky aroid mixes then make sure you wipe down the probe (ideally with demineralised water) and dry it with some paper towel or dry cloth after each use. Peace, love and happy growing to you all 🌱❤️

So it's now around the 8 month mark since we did the indoor beds and we think we've finally come to what looks to be the final outcome of plant selection. We have been tinkering and playing with other varieties since we made the beds and so much of this process has been trial and error in order to figure out what works and the positioning of plants in order to really give us the effect we're looking for. We still have half a dozen small moss poles to put in and 3 that already need extending which we will be doing that over the next coming weeks. In order to really achieve this overgrown look we want, we have realised that we are now at a point in which we are probably going to have to supplement with some decent grow lights. Since we do not do things by halves and we're total suckers for locally produced products, we have gone with the best of the best and will be using growlightsaustralia LED panels that the girls at plant_playground hooked us up with. These beds are going to go straight up f*cking wild once we dial everything in. And for those wondering, no we are not planning on growing any special indoor tomato's in our indoor gardenbeds. That would be illegal and we are strictly against illegal activities in our house as such. We adhere to all laws set out by the Australian Government. EsPeCiAlLy laws set out to protect us from eXtReMeLy DaNgErOuS drugs like special indoor grown tomato's. Peace, love and happy growing to you all. 🌱❤️

It’s easy to see progress and transformation via the technology we have available to us these days. However, if we could only see the personal growth and transformations we make internally, I really do believe that we would be a lot happier and more kind to ourselves. Personal growth and development is done in the smallest of increments that it can be hard to precisely see how far you’ve come in life. With such small incremental change, so often we lose hope and sight that things could ever be any better as we struggle to see progression. Both me and Nicole, like most of you have experienced some very dark times in our lives. Times where we really had to dig deep to find some form of meaning and purpose in order to drag our sorry and sad arses out of bed on a day to day basis. But as they say, for there to be light, there must also be darkness and what comes, will also go too. It’s just how the cookie of life crumbles. The transformation we have made in our house is cool but it’s the internal transformation that we’re both the most proud of. This post is just a friendly reminder to be kind to yourself, count your blessings and not your problems, do your best to not resort to unhealthy and unsustainable coping mechanisms (just like what Nicole and myself did for many years) and to do your best to not bottle your sh*t up. Side note, this is what our plant room looked like before we got everything out of pots and into beds. Watering and repotting was a struggle and we just didn’t vibe with the whole look of everything in pots. Forever grateful to jennna.b_ the horticulturalist who we flew over from Melbourne to stay with us and give us a hand with this transformation. Without her, this job no doubt wouldn’t of gone anywhere near as smoothly as it did. Peace, love and happy GROWING to you all ❤️

One of the best, yet also the most unexpected joys of creating the TNK page has been connecting with others who have chosen to follow along within this journey Nicole and myself are taking. I think a lot of us begun to truly understand the depths and importance of human connection when that lame arse pandemic came in all unannounced like that unwanted food poisoning we’ve all once experienced. It savagely stripped us of so much of that human connection that we didn’t realise how much we required to really be content and happy with our lives. Social media does tend to get bashed a lot and although it can be treacherous place at times, I still believe that a lot of good does come from it. This ability to connect with people we wouldn’t ever have the opportunity to with people all over the world has now become one of our favourite aspects of creating this page. Ultimately we just want to thank everyone who has liked, commented, shared and even ventured into our DM’s. honestly, thank you all so freaking much! Some of these DM’s are now transpiring into real life social interactions with a few people that we have connected through this page coming over to hangout this week which we are pretty excited about. So to anyone else that feels as though you might want to pop over for a visit, please do reach out and we will do our best to make time for you. Always a huge shoutout to our main man hennessey_timber for coming through with the goods on this magical timber feature wall. And his brother harne_hennessey for doing us a solid and putting this video together. Always so grateful to have you guys apart of this journey. Terrariums were done by thegreenemporiumperth Peace, love and happy growing to you all ❤️

We made a couple of changes yesterday. We've decided to change out the deciduous ornamental plums for some evergreen Syzigium and swapped out the Dracena in the big pot for a flowering ash tree. We struggled with the ornamental plums since day dot as the growing conditions within our courtyard just weren't suitable to provide them with enough sun to give us the filled out effect that we wanted from them. The flowering ash is probably our new favourite in the house as we love the texture and canapony look that it provides. So much of what we do is just trial and error. Some things work out and some don't. We just have to be patient with the process and do as much research as what we can. We've been totally blessed with most of the advice and help we have recieved in the process and that is something we are extremely grateful for. We really hope everyones Wednesday is going to plan for ya'll! Peace, love and happy growing to you all. ❤️

We are constantly thinking of other creative ways to make our spaces better. I think next on the list for the courtyard will be a unique way to hang some Spanish moss and some small hanging pots filled with cascading plants. We will do it in the same way we mounted the grow lights where we will have branches that come out off the wall. These will have to hold a bit more weight than the grow lights so I dare say that I'll have to make some brackets that mount flush to the wall instead of putting threaded rod into the branch and chemsetting that rod into the wall. Stay tuned for that one 🙂 Anyway, we hope everyone is having an amazing Wednesday! Peace, love and happy growing to you all ❤️ #perthgarden #perthgardendesign #perthgardener #gardeningperth #perthphotoshootlocation

We have made a lot of changes since we first made the indoor beds about 10 months ago. I’d say that of the original plants that we put in, less than 50% are the original plants. As typical plant parents, we’ve just founds other plants we prefer and sourced plants to give us the overall look we are trying to achieve. In this process we have also added a lot more moss poles which now total 17 moss poles and make up about 20 metres in total. It takes about 15minutes to put in about 25 bottles with some moss poles needing to be extended very soon and the tallest being 2.5 metres. There is talk of making an automatic drip system for all of the 2.5 metre poles, we’re just trying to figure out how we’re going to do it all. Although we do run humidifiers in this room, we have had a lot of success by creating micro climates in our beds with the grouping of plants and the addition of moss poles which tends to create smaller pockets of humidity around the plants and poles. We have always found that plants tend to do better when grouped together and this is no doubt why. Peace, love and happy growing to you all ❤️ #mosspoles #mosspolewatering #mosspoles #wateringplants #indoorgarden #indoorjungle #biophilicdesign #biophilia #urbanjunglebloggers #indoorgardenbeds

And there we have it! A video of Nicole singing. First one and I really hope there will be many more to come. This is now my favourite video we have done. I often hear Nicole singing away while she’s working upstairs and it really does bring me a lot of joy to hear it. I’ve actually been asking for her to fab up a reel of her singing for a little while now but she has kept putting it off. No doubt as we’ve all experienced many times before, that negative self doubt talk can creep in and take control of our thoughts at times. But as we have said a few times before, nothing too great in life comes from chillaxing in that comfort zone. So I guess today Nicole woke up on the “f**k it” side of the bed and finally decided to do this video! I’m really glad she did 🙂 Anyway, as for propagating, it’s a pretty simple process. Make sure you cut with a node attached, chuck it in some water and patently wait. We usually wait until the roots have roots. Or secondary roots as some call them before we plant them. This can take months in some cases. Some people change the water, some people don’t. I personally don’t think it matters that much. Peace, love and happy growing to you all ❤️

We have wanted to open up the doorway to the plant room/office and wrap the edges with stone cladding and put a recycled timber beam in to support the corner of the loft to replace the structural steel door frame for fair while now. Multiple power cables ran through the bricks we wanted to take out and not damaging the plants while we bashed out the bricks that were no longer required just made the job that little bit trickier. We started with using an acro prop to support the corner of the loft as what we wanted to take out was load bearing. We then chopped out the steel door frame with a reciprocating saw and then ever so slowly and cautiously bashed out chunks of the bricks with a bit if not so gentle persuasion with the help from some gimpies and cold chisels. Semi organised chaos soon erupted within our working area with rubble flying around along with a moderate plume of dust that encapsulated us. Along with helping us complete this process, Saxon from hennessey_timber also supplied and help fit the Eucalyptus Wandoo beam that was recycled from an old bridge down south. The Wandoo beam was some of the most dense and hardest timber Saxon has ever used and would of weighed well over 100kgs over the 2.5m length. Saxon has also been my main go-to man with all of the projects that I have needed further advice on and Nicole and myself are both truly blessed for the time that he has for us. Our resident sparkies griffiths_luke and chloetrangriffiths_ from Metro Electrical came to the rescue and changed around all of the electrical stuff that needed to be relocated and did a amazing job as per usual. Our resident legend tiler dubzah1 also came to the rescue with 2 full days of laying the stone cladding which we are beyond stoked with how it's turned out. I broke a tile when I was smashing out some of the bricks as I had punched a hole through a brick and into the bathroom. James was also kind enough to fix my boo boo up for me 😅 As usual, big love and appr

Urban lawn mower 😝 We have played around with a few things for ground cover over the access way to the courtyard but nothing has really grown on us. Pun intended. At the end of the day we just realised that you just can’t really use anything that can’t handle a little bit of abuse around a heavily trafficked area. The other issue we had was that due to the overhead planter boxes, we get a bit of drainage that drips onto the (now) grassed area. So a ground cover that can tolerate full sun, some foot traffic and a high water consumption was becoming a tricky one. This is a perfect example to why at times outdoor plants can be tricker to figure out than indoor plants as with indoor plants you can control your variables a lot easier. You have control their sun exposure, their watering schedule, their humidity exposure and you obviously don’t have to worry about them being trampled on. Yet again, this is another example of the trial and error process that we continue to work through within the TNK house. Our grass area is obviously too small for a lawn mower so my cordless beard clippers will do for now until we figure out how we will “mow” it. 😅 Peace, love and happy growing to you all ❤️ . . . #biophilicdesign #plantlife #urbangardening #courtyardgarden