"I love the idea of having living, breathing organisms around,” says Moda Operandi cofounder Lauren Santo Domingo, who raised eyebrows last fall when she banned cut flowers at the new Manhattan showroom of her luxury e-tail boutique. Instead she has accented it with bonsai from Saipua, the hip Brooklynflorist. “All the money we were spending on flowers seemed wasteful,” she says, noting that she also has given the miniaturized trees as Christmas gifts. Jewelry designer Delfina Delettrez Fendi isn’t much of a flower person anymore either. Her Rome apartment, which is filled with midcentury Italian furnishings, is forested with furry cacti and a wall of shy mimosa, a creeper whose leaves retract when touched—which happens a lot, since “my daughter likes to torture it,” Delettrez Fendi says. Whether it’s the current nostalgia for Gio Ponti interiors, where tropical plants held court, or a desire to reconnect with nature, going green is in the air.
“People are starting to look at how to create an environment where we’re able to reach a better equilibrium in life,” observes Ryan Neil, the founder of Bonsai Mirai, outside Portland, Oregon. “The desire to play a role in the existence of this continually evolving piece of art, as opposed to something whose future is going to be limited or terminated,” Neil says, “is really appealing.”
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Architectural Digest
