News » 20.04.2026 - New Zealand: Caring for a single hoya turned into a passion for breeding anthuriums

As the mother of a young son with severe autism, Jen Singer needed to find a home-based outlet for those moments she had to herself. And so in 2021, her love affair with anthuriums began – with a heated plant shed just a few paces from her Motueka back door, where she houses her collection of breeding plants.

Her house­plant joy had already been well estab­lished, cour­tesy of a gif­ted off­shoot from a well-trav­elled hoya, a leafy immig­rant that arrived with her part­ner's Dutch grand­mother in the 1950s.

"We had that span­ning our kit­chen. We moved down and back up the coun­try with this plant, and I abso­lutely fell in love with it, and it kind of just pro­gressed from there into get­ting into more house­plants, find­ing out what I liked."

""It's the diversity within the foliage that I abso­lutely love more so than the other plants," says Singer, draw­ing atten­tion to the leaves which come in strik­ing pat­terns, shapes, col­ours and sizes – as much as a whop­ping 1.5m in length on some vari­et­ies "
 

Source: www.floraldaily.com

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