Smart Buy: RailScapes Plant Clips for Small Space Gardening

Living in a city, your gardening options can be limited. So our interest was piqued when a friend shared a video from Plant Traps. In it, a woman hooks a minimalist wire contraption onto a metal railing to create a support for a potted plant. The mechanism was delightfully simple, removable—and it absolutely transformed the space with greenery.

We reached out to Plant Traps founder Deborah Holtschlag to inquire about her ingenious device, and it turned out that we were among several million people who’d recently found her RailScapes Plant Clip. Since debuting her invention last March, Holtschlag has been hustling to create Instagram Stories and TikTok videos to promote it, but it wasn’t until two days after Christmas that one went viral. “The Reel on Instagram that got 100 million views was a blessing, but we also blew through our reserves,” Holtschlag says. (Don’t worry, they’re finally caught up on inventory.)

We’re not shocked that Holtschlag found gardeners hungry for her plant support. Often the products sold to hang plants from railings are ugly, require drilling, or only work on certain types of fences. Her version uses tension to sit between railings (rather than draping over the top), and it can be adjusted to fit at a variety of railing widths. Renters can take it with them when they move—and at $20 a piece, it is relatively affordable.

What did come as a surprise was that Holtschlag herself is not a gardener herself. It turns out she invented the product for her gardener husband, whose plants were taking up what she considered to be too much of their precious space patio. 

Since launching the RailScapes Plant Clip, Holtschlag says she has been thrilled to see her customers use them in many ways, including on gates, spiral staircases, wood fences with wide-spaced pickets, and, as seen in her second most popular Reel, on an indoor stair railing. 

Personally, this writer is looking at the bare wrought iron fence outside her window in a whole new light.

See also:

• Letter of Recommendation: CowPots, My Seed-Starting Secret Weapon
• The Tool I Can’t Live Without
• Object of Desire: Le Sac Seau, A Watertight Bucket Made of Linen