From away to garden.com and robinhoodradio.com, this is Away to Garden with Margaret Roach. You're a weekly invitation to dig in and grow. I can't imagine life without my admittedly oddball collection of houseplants, many of which have been with me for several decades. So I was delighted recently to meet today's guest, Rob Moffitt, whose Los Angeles-based botanical design studio specializes in matching their clients with houseplants that are just the way I like them. Not just pretty, but possessing loads of personality, often sculptural in stature like living artworks, capable of forging a connection to the person caring for them, and with the potential to endure, maybe even for a lifetime of companionship. Rob's here to tell us about some favorites that you may wish to consider welcoming into your life too, and where he finds them, hint probably not at the big box store or supermarket. He'll also share some of the tricks for how he shows them off to their best advantage, so more in a moment but first these messages. Underwriting support for a Way to Garden provided by Colorblends, wholesale flower bulbs. A third-generation bulb company offering top-sized flower bulbs directly to landscape professionals and ambitious residential gardeners on the web, Colorblends.com. by High Moeng seeds Seeds, Wolcott Vermont, Professional Quality Vegetable, Flower, and Urban Seeds that are 100% organic and non-GMO project verified. On the web, HighMoengSeeds.com. And by White Flower Farm, offering a wide range of carefully selected and expertly grown garden plants.

On the web, whiteflowerform.com. Rob Moffat is a former nurse-turned-plansman. He founded his business called the House Plants, spelled H-A-U-S, not H-O-U-S-E, five years ago. At first, as a plant truck, that he'd take to farm his markets. The last two and a half years, the House plant has resided in a permanent home on West Third Street in the Miracle Mile neighborhood of LA.

He and his staff of 13

create designs to incorporate distinctive plants into clients' homes and businesses

and provide plant care services to some of those customers. I'm glad to welcome him here today.

Hi Rob, it's good to talk to you again. Good morning. Thank you for having me on.

Yes, and it was so fun to talk to you to do the New York Times column that we did together recently because our conversations are round that and sort of the almost like what is a house flat and what does it all mean? It really got me thinking about how important they are to me in my life. I mean, I've always known it, but it made me, it made it conscious, I guess. And so, you know, I kind of wanted to talk a little bit at the start here about what roles they play in our lives. Mine yours, the customers. You know, the most obvious one is beauty. And I guess that's why people call you up and say, oh, I'd like to have you come and help me make my office or my home more beautiful, but that's not where it stops, is it?

No, not at all. And that's not where it really started for me. Their plants for me sort of started as a form of therapy. I started collecting plants as a hobby and I was a you know, like you said a nurse at UCLA and on my days off because you know I was a nursery working three days a week.

So on my days off, I used to travel.

And then I started gardening a little bit on my patio.

And then it turned into collecting plants and I killed a lot along the way. But that was a part of the learning process. But it was really a form of therapy and sort of the ritual of, you know, caring for plants. And then it just sort of evolved and I started working at a friend's plant store. and then after a while during the beginning of the pandemic, he was like, you're good at this. You should really consider doing your own thing. So that's kind of what drove me to start the house plant. Yes. And I think one of the things we talked about when we did the time story is also there's once you have a house plant in your residence, you know, there's also that connection to nature and I say I'm in a cold winter area where we don't engage as much with the garden quote unquote, you know, as in certain of the winter months as we do the rest of the year. And so the house plant is like that everyday connection, right? Yeah, absolutely. We're very lucky here in Southern California. I actually grew up in Wisconsin, which had some pretty cold engines. Oh. So when I moved out here as a travel nurse initially, you know, I'd just be walking on the streets in Venice or West Hollywood and would see some of the incredible plant life. And that's what kind of first peaked my interest is just like the year round opportunity to grow some really interesting things. Yeah, and you do grow some really interesting things. I think you used the quote in the time story. Some of them are Dr. Seuss plants. Yes. I like my weird Dr. Seuss plants.

Me too.

Me too.

And so how did that happen? And so when we maybe we should say to people what is a Dr. Seuss plant, I mean, like I think the ones that quadraceiform plants, I don't know if everyone will know what those are, but maybe you can tell us a little bit. Those are sort of the Dr. Susie is devol, I think.

Yeah, I like a variety of different Dr. Su's plants, but one of them, like you mentioned, is the cut of support plants have that water storage, fat trunk of a base. And I just find them so interesting, and over time, as part of the caustic form under the soil. So a lot of times when these pot, these plants have been in a grow pot for years, you can actually uplift their roots and expose more of that. And then over time, you can kind of shape them around rocks and different things like that. So you get some really interesting ones that are sort of found in the, you know, forgotten about nurseries and different collectors. And yeah, I have fun playing around with all the different forms and shapes of them. Yeah, so some of these ones, these fat plants, these quadraceiform plants with this swollen quad axis, swollen base of this stem. Let's name a couple of though. I mean, like I've had for something years a shaving brush tree which is I think from like the Caribbean and Central America, Southern Mexico, pseudo bombacks is one of my current favorites. I kind of go through cycles with which plants I like to use the most and pseudo bombacks are probably one of my favorites right now. And why? When you tell, so it's not your average house plan, it doesn't look like a pothos, right? You know what I mean? It's not a little of a bunch of beautiful little colorful leaves that spilling out of a pot or something. That's not, it has this crazy swollen thing in this storage organ that serves the purpose. But how would you describe to the customer? And do they all freak out when you first show them these things? Yeah, I think one of the things I love about the showroom is just the interesting things that we have in there. Sometimes people just come and like to walk through the show to see the things that we have, because we're getting plants from collectors that have been collecting these for decades. Then they come into our collection and we're pairing them with different vessels. But back to your question about the pseudobombics. A lot of them have this really vaning. I know you sent me a photo of yours.

Yes. And the base of it has sort of like this, it almost looks like a volleyball or like a tortoise shell, kind of like Willie shell or tortoise. Well, when we should say just to give him credit, Willie is your, how old is he now? He's seven. Willie just turned eight. Oh, just turned eight. Okay. African sulcautat tortoise that we rescued from a rescue down in San Diego. And he lives at our showroom. And he's become our our little mascot. Or a big mascot is the case. Big big mascot. Yes. And about much much bigger. So he'll reach he'll reach to be about 200 pounds someday. Oh boy. But these plants, the base of a pseudo bombacks, for instance, it's not smooth necessarily. It's kind of craggie. And it has some green on it, almost as if it photosynthesizes from the bark, so to speak, which there are plants that have that characteristic. Yeah. And to people, like, so people come in and they're thinking maybe they want to work with you or whatever, I mean, at first, you think people are startled because I don't even know what drew me to them and these kinds of plants in the first place, but they're definitely unusual. Yeah, I think the one thing that I, one of my favorite things to do with these more interesting strange plants, if you will, is kind of view them as their own piece. So a lot of stuff in a house or an interior, you'll have a plant kind of shoved in the corner. I really like to make the plant front and center, so you can have this big beautiful room. And we do a lot of photo shoots and work with interior designers. And it's one thing I love to do is these little tabletop pieces that can really take front center stage in this photo of this gorgeous interior. So kind of viewing plants as their own piece of art or object is kind of how I view it. Yes. You do anything from a small tabletop, you know, that's, you know, like a small 12 inch low dish to, you know, 15 foot trees. So we do kind of everything in between, but one of my personal favorites is really working with some of these like more small interesting plants to kind of showcase their beauty. And you just said low dish and that's the other thing that's it wasn't is interesting looking at pictures on your website and the pictures that we did for the times and so forth. You are daring in your juxtapositions of plant and pot. You don't have a lot of things that look like a quote flower pot, you know what I mean? Literaditional dimensions or whatever proportions. Yeah, that's one thing I really like to do is kind of show off more of the plant and I think when you have this low dish it sort of allows the plant to shine. You can't really do that with every plant but some of the, you know, cut us our form plants that we talked about are the pseudo bomb backs or a folky edulis. It allows you to plant these in more of a shallow container, and that kind of gives a little bit more of breathing room for the plant to kind of shine versus taking up a big, you know, typical flower pot on top of a tabletop, because it, proportion wise, it might be too tall. So kind of making the pot a part of the piece and we work with different local artists and ceramicists. And then we source a lot of vintage containers as well from different flea markets or antique shows and lots of estate sales as well. So always on the hunt for different interesting vessels to pair these plants with. And there are other sort of swollen based plants, like I think you use some biobab trees to add insonias and the Queensland bottle tree. I think that's Australian, right? Bracky, I think it's cold, is that right? Bracky-Kiton Repestress is the one I like to use a lot. They always have a really interesting twisted trunk and a root system below the soil. Over time, you're able to expose more of the root, and especially I love when they're pot-bound. So, when one of these trees has been grown in a nursery pot for years, they'll sort of start to twist on themselves. And then when you expose that, there's all sorts of interesting things happening. And you don't really know, that's the beauty of it too, is you don't really know until you uproot some of these things and play around with it. So I think one of my, I don't know, my methods is play. Having like a small nurse, the back of our showroom is like our back of house, nursery stock area, where we just have a lot of plants that we just got in from collectors or growers. And a lot of it is just like experimenting and playing and seeing what sorts of roots you find underneath the soil.

But the Queensland bottle tree is a really interesting one that you can play around with the root structure and twisted around a rock or placed multiples together to make a bigger arrangement. So I have a lot of fun with those ones for sure. And it's not like what you're talking about is you're not taking a big plant out of It's pot and trying to shove its roots around a rock and it's done that day. This is a process, yes. This training is a process. It's a mix. Sometimes like with the bottle trees you are able to get a composition that looks really beautiful and finished and if it's been trained for years and years. Okay. So sometimes I will do that but again it all kind of depends on what you're finding underneath the soil with that specific plant. But yeah, there's others that like I will do, I experiment a lot too. So I'll do something where I'll pull up a bottle tree, wrap it around a rock, bury it back underneath the soil and allow that root structure to attach itself around the rock. That takes more time. And then you also don't really know what you're getting a year or two later when you pull it back up. If it attached or if it grew around, oftentimes with those, I find really interesting things happen. And as you know, nature is going to do what it's going to do. And we can be the artist or the guide to it, but it's still going to have a, you know, its own way of doing things. Yeah, I would think the first time doing that, taking a plant out of the soil, looking at its roots and then saying, oh, I think I'm going to train it around a rock and put it back in a pot, obviously, but trained over a rock, so it's partly exposed. Part of its root system is exposed. And adding to the artfulness, the sculptural quality of it must be a little nervous making, though. I mean, I think you said you do that with, what are they, some of the rock figs as well? Yeah, some of the rock figs as well. When you manipulate their roots and expose them and then give them, you can do, there's different methods, like you can put Spagma Moss around it

and keep that damp then give them. You can do, there's different methods, like you can put Svegma moss around it and keep that damp and the roots will thicken or you can give it, put it back in the soil and it'll start to thicken a little bit slower. Almost all the plants that we do this with will go into some type of initial shock. Which may alarming for customers or for us sometimes we'll have something planted out and it looks beautiful in the moment, but I know because I just manipulated the roots and pruned back, it will go into some type of shock. So just being careful with how soon you're letting something go out the door before just to make sure that it recovers quickly because yeah, when you're manipulating that much root structure on a plant, sometimes they even die, so I've killed a lot of plants, unfortunately. But yeah, they typically will go into some sort of initial shock period. Yeah, and that speaks to, particularly because you're in business and you want to minimize the mortality, but also for those of us who have something we love, the timing is important of when we're going to uproot something and try, whether it's just for repotting because we think it needs a larger space or whatever refreshing of the soil. And by the way, with kinds of plants we've been talking about, I'm assuming we're meaning almost like a cactus mix or something when we talk about soil. Yes, we're talking about something that's a very well-draining soil and we'll typically add like a fair amount of pearlite or pumice or like a coconut for, to just to help with the aireration of the soil to make sure that they, especially if there's,

unfortunately, a lot of the containers that we use, we end up sealing because they're going on a very expensive table and we don't want that to get ruined. So we really live by our moisture meter and finger checks with the soil to make sure that plants aren't getting over-watered. But with that, you're wanting to make sure that you have a really well aeratedated soil. Right. So you're testing with a moisture meter when it doesn't have drainage, you're testing with a moisture meter regularly to give you a hint. It's not the ultimate. Yeah, you can't really trust them perfectly. But another thing we'll do is put like a wooden stake in there. And when you pull it out, you can kind of see like a little bit further down if the soil is still damp or finger checks and that sort of thing as well. Hmm. Are there sort of, if you were saying to people which plant to start with, so to speak if they wanted to delve into, say, these plants with these soil and, these very naturally sculptural. And by the way, it's almost like we're, a lot of these are trees in their homelands, you know? Oh, yeah. And they come from places that have a severe dry season, usually, which is why they have that big swollen storage place, right, for what they need to get through the tough times. Sure. But you're almost like bonai in the Marchu, is that what's... Yeah, like if you ever see the Australian bottleneck tree out in the wild, I mean some of these trunks turn into these fat, you know, five, six round diameter trunks and they can be short, fat little trees. Like at the Huntington Gardens where I first got really interested in some of these these plants you can see some of them there that are just wild just how big they get and what we do is take them at like a younger age or if they've been can eat and some of them are much older but they've been contained to this nursery pot so it's almost like self-bond zide a little bit so it keeps them contained and it'll start to fatten the trunk or the base. So yeah, I guess what we're doing is a form of bonsai, definitely not your traditional bonsai, but but I guess I don't know if I would call it bonsai or not, but we're manipulating plants, so I think it's some form of it. Yeah, no, I just mentioned in terms of it's almost like the process. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If with a very different plant palette. Yeah, yeah. And you know, even though I've had, as I mentioned, the shaving brush tree for so many decades, I'm embarrassed to admit, you know, I never even realized I could prune it. Like I, you know, I'm the only person I knew who had this plant, right? So for all those years, I bought it at the Philadelphia Flower Show and the, you know, the vendor area a million years ago, and I brought home and, you know, I didn't know anything. And it's not like there's a handbook that has all this in it, especially not 30 something years ago. And so you also, besides playing with maybe exposing some roots of some of these plants, you also do some top, some adjustments to the tops of them, yes? Yeah, we heavily prune plants. And I think that allows it to open different canopies. And also depending on what space you're putting in and you may have it on like a coffee table where you want to be able to see through it. So we'll open up the canopy a little bit. But yeah, we'll prune back plants quite a bit. Best to do that in late spring or at least summer and that way allows the tree to kind of as it's entering its growth phase to pop back pretty quick. Right and so similarly with the the timing is so essential, we're not going to do this when they're dormant. A lot of these plants do go dormant again,. They come from places where a lot of these codisiform plants do go dormant because they come from places where they're accustomed to having a dry season. And so similarly with the repotting, you don't just do it any old time, right? Don't you time that carefully, too, don't you? Some of them are more forgiving than others, but it will just kind of affect the time frame in which they'll come back. So a lot of the like the rock figs, they'll hang at least here in Southern California. They'll hang on to their foliage most the year. They definitely thin out in the fall and winter. But especially like if we have one indoors with, you know, next to a window with really good light, I think a lot of it has to do with the temperature changes. So a lot of those, even the pseudo bombacks, I have a couple clients that have a really beautiful pseudo bombacks and it's in a Southern facing window and typically, you know, outside all of mine will lose all their foliage, which I imagine yours probably does too.

Mine does it hasn't gone to sleep this year and don't know why yet. Okay. But it typically would buy around now and it stays asleep for many months. Yeah. And I don't I don't even water it at all during those months because I'm a terrible person, but it seems to be have been fine with that, you know. Well, you got it for what 30 years you said? I'm 30, 35 years, yeah.

Amazing.

Yeah, and I haven't repodged years you said? 30, 35 years. Yeah.

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