A NEW indoor houseplant shop will be opening on Saturday, July 31.

The shop, called the Nettle & Bark, is claimed by the owners to be the first dedicated indoor plant shop in Newport.

The business will be located on 34 Clytha Park Road in Allt-yr-yn.

The owners are husband and wife, Will Green, 31, and Alexia McCalmont-Green, 29.

They own the Rogue Fox coffee shop opposite the site of Nettle & Bark and also own the mEAT Bar & Grill – all including the plant shop are on Clytha Park Road.

Mr Green said: “For the last four years me my wife have run a coffee shop and in the front window we just sort of accumulated plants.

“We absolutely love them and it’s my wife's passion for like the last 10-15 years and I've got a fairly green thumb as well.

“During lockdown we accumulated a lot more house plans that we normally would have and we realised it is good for your mental health and your well-being.

“A lot of people were sort of forced to stay indoors for the last 18 months and we just noticed that having houseplants began to become a very big sort of trend amongst our friends.

“We saw the opportunity to bring back a little bit of independent retail to Newport”.

The shop has more than 900 plants with 40 different categories of plant.

The shop will be split into three different sections.

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Most of the plants will be in the first sections of the shop.

The second section will contain pots for the plants, many of which will be from local independent pot makers – though there will also be mass-produced pots available for sale.

There will also be a ‘refill’ station in the second section of the shop that is for customers to buy small amounts of houseplant soil.

“There's nothing worse than going to buy a houseplant, then realising you have to go out and buy a 20kg bag of indoor houseplant soil just to repot one plant,” said Mr Green.

“To make it easy for customers, they can buy a plant and a pot, and for a small price they can repot it instore to save them the mess

“They can use our tools and they can repot a healthy, happy plant and take it home with them ready in their newly bought pot”.

The third section of the shop is still under construction, but the intention is to make it an allotment space dedicated to shaded outdoor plants.

There will also be a large online component to the business, with the owners planning to set up a subscription service for them to mail customers plants every month.

Three tiers are planned for this service, with the highest receiving luxury houseplant goods as well as a newsletter and aftercare advice.

“We want to be a beacon in Newport for indoor houseplant lovers," said Mr Green

“We just thought to turn a passion into a business basically and give a little bit of independent retail back to Newport”.