At a time when shelves of mass-produced houseplants beckon in both big box stores and supermarkets, Robert Moffitt provides an example of an alternative model to consider.
Mr. Moffitt, founder of Haus Plant, a botanical design studio in Los Angeles, wonders whether we could expand our definition of houseplants instead of spontaneously purchasing another one of those leafy goods that too often become what he calls “quick little throwaways.”
What if we scoured sources like Facebook Marketplace and estate sales and, like he did, focused on characterful plants with more sculptural shapes—plants with presence that perhaps had the potential for long-lasting companionship?
While we're at it, we should also rethink the generic flowerpot, he suggests, and experiment with extremes in shape, size and material to showcase its occupant in the most artful way.
The plants Mr. Moffitt specializes in are not simple pothos or peperomias, and admittedly may require some visual recalibration on our part, at least until we are sympathetic to the beauty of their peculiarities.
“I picked up basic houseplants at Home Depot or the grocery store, like a lot of people do,” he said. “And over time I started to just focus on the more interesting and strange ones that you don’t see often.”
Mr. Moffitt, 37, has no formal design training; He is a former trained nurse, which is reflected in his attitude towards plants. He worked at UCLA Health for a decade and said in his later years there, “I turned to plants myself as a form of therapy.”
They also satisfied another need. “I’ve always had a drive for creativity,” he said, “and I think plants have been there for me as a creative outlet.”
He started working at a friend's plant shop on his days off, and in 2020, during the pandemic, he knew he wanted to change careers. He explored possible retail spaces, but they proved too costly, so he started his business with a plant truck, which he drove to farmers markets in Palisades, Brentwood and Malibu, attracting a clientele he might not otherwise have, including various celebrities.
Two and a half years ago, Mr. Moffitt rented a former auto body shop on West 3rd Street in the Miracle Mile neighborhood as a headquarters for himself and 13 employees, as well as a very charismatic turtle named Willy, the residence's mascot and his own popular Instagram account. The showroom is open for plant sales by appointment; A large portion of the business consists of plant-focused design and maintenance in customers' homes or businesses, including hotels, corporate headquarters and design showrooms.
“I look at plants and the styling that I do and the service that we provide as kind of connecting people with nature in a different way,” he said, “through the lens of design.”
A strategy for dry times
Mr. Moffitt's palette includes some “very Dr. Seuss plants,” he said, and the most extreme of these are the caudiciform plants, those with distinctively swollen stem bases, or caudexes. He first fell in love with her at the Huntington, the cultural institution and botanical garden in San Marino, California.
These oddballs include the shaving brush tree (Pseudobombax ellipticum), native to parts of the Caribbean, Central America and southern Mexico; the Queensland bottle tree from Australia (Brachychiton rupestris) and the baobab tree (Adansonia digitata) from sub-Saharan Africa.
In each homeland of these plants, an annual extended dry season poses a challenge, which is why the thickened storage organs evolved as a survival mechanism. The plants drop their leaves, close up, and feed on the water stored inside for a rainy day.
Caged in a pot, with some vegetation and perhaps roots trimmed, even trees that would become small trees in the wild essentially transform into bonsai.
They sit defiantly in Mr. Moffitt's favorite shallow bowl- or pan-shaped vessels, which, despite their meager proportions, may not need to be altered for decades. These are plants from poor, harsh areas, and they don't demand much. It offers you fast-draining, airy potting soil – for cacti and succulents, for example – and bright light. He waters them weekly in the summer, but also respects their annual dormancy period from late fall to mid-spring, perhaps giving them a drink every four to six weeks.
They age gracefully, becoming more impressive with each passing decade – just like Willy, the African sulcata tortoise, now 8 years old and weighing 33 kilograms (on his way to perhaps 100 years and a peak weight of 90 kilograms). Mr. Moffitt adopted Willy from a turtle rescue farm and named him after Willy Guhl, the modernist Swiss designer whose fiber cement vessels frequently appear in Haus Plant's work.
Any resemblance Willy bears to a venerable specimen of an elephant's foot plant (Dioscorea elephantipes), a distinctive South African caudiciform, is probably not pure coincidence. However, a vine with heart-shaped leaves does not emerge from Willy's bowl; he is more apt to devour greens than to sprout them.
The living works of art that Mr. Moffitt incorporates into his clients' spaces may have been chosen to meet an aesthetic goal, but appearance is not their only contribution. A majority of new plant parents quickly discover what Mr. Moffitt did when he immersed himself in this world: Caring for the plant is not just another chore, but often becomes a welcome ritual, “a form of mindfulness,” he said.
Clients are in a relationship based on active care that benefits both the plant and the person.
“We all have our rituals that we live by – our morning or bedtime routines – and caring for plants and just watering them or doing basic pest control can be such a routine and have a healing effect,” he said.
Roots as an art form
Among the eccentric botanical personalities that enliven Haus Plant's exhibition space is a group of absurd, giant, silver-green globes of Deuterocohnia brevifolia, a terrestrial bromeliad from Argentina and Bolivia, each between 20 and 60 years old. The plant's growth initially resembles a ground cover, but after “decades of dense, compact growth in bright light,” says Moffitt, it “slowly collapses into itself” without the need for reinforcement or other support.
He also uses pint-sized Deuterocohnia in miniature gardens, perhaps in a bowl with a Queensland bottle tree and a shapely rock as a roommate.
On a nearby workbench lie various works-in-progress, the latest subjects emerging from a sort of triage area in a remote corner where each plant he has adopted waits to begin its transformation. Repotting, as well as heavy pruning, is done for late spring and early summer.
Every residential project is unique and requires a willingness to experiment. With a given plant, can you train multiple stems to gradually intertwine with each other, or can you display some of their roots above ground? He recalled his first root-discovering adventure with a bottle tree from Queensland.
“You have a really interesting root structure underground,” he said, “but you can also lift that up to reveal what's going on” by placing the gnarled roots over a rock and using some waterproof silicone glue to provide gentle support until the roots form. Some plants are instead first connected to their containers with wires, similar to traditional bonsai techniques.
Rock figs, Ficus petiolaris and Ficus palmeri, both native to Mexico, can also be coaxed to reveal what would normally remain hidden. Once their roots are in place, Mr. Moffitt can wrap them with peat moss; Over time they become thicker and stick together.
Each effort and each season as a whole gradually improves the image and develops our perception and relationship with houseplants.
“I feel like plants can be reinvented,” Mr. Moffitt said. “You no longer have to sit quietly in a corner: you can define a space, set a mood or even tell a story. You can be architectural, sculptural or emotional.”
When Mr. Moffitt worked in nursing, he saw “how healing comes through attention – through presence,” he said.
“Plants taught me the same lesson in a different language,” he added. “They invite you to slow down, pay attention and care. That's their silent medicine.”