Living with Houseplants: Four Years Later in a Brooklyn Apartment
The first time we visited Summer Rayne Oakes in 2013, the wellness author and houseplant enthusiast was living in Brooklyn with more plants than we’d ever seen in a 1,200-square-foot apartment. Asked to count them, she reported her collection totaled 120.
Four years later, Oakes’ botanical family has increased to 670 plants and they live, in addition to a green wall, in several plant closets, a vertical swing garden, an herb drawbridge garden, indoor trellises, and even an outdoor garden plot. We recently caught up with her with questions about how she keeps her collection thriving (which she kindly answered while on tour to promote her new book, SugarDetoxMe).
“One thing I’m trying to get across to people is that your home is a sanctuary; when you plant roots and live in an area, your home becomes a place of refuge—to unwind, to think, to grow,” she says.
Read on to learn more of the lessons she’s learned from living with houseplants.
Photographs courtesy of @homesteadbrooklyn.
Gardenista: What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned while living with an abundant and evolving “plant pad” in the city?
Summer Rayne Oakes: I’ve learned from my plants, that in order to grow, you need to seek out the sunlight—even if it means having to stretch or contort yourself to get it. I’ve also learned that it often takes more than one plant to create the ideal environment that plants want to live in; it requires a whole community to shift and change the dynamics—not unlike a community of people. And perhaps, most important, my plants have taught me what it means to grow roots. You often cannot grow or even change the community that you want to live in, if you don’t stay long enough to imprint upon the very soil on which you stand.
GD: What are your secrets for growing plants indoors?
SRO: I always share with people that they should first ask themselves what type of plants they think would like to live in their home, as opposed to what plant you want there. When you turn that question around, you immediately begin figuring out what plant is best suited for the conditions of your home.
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