Heather Hauser
Kerbi Howat’s Flora houseplant shop in East Nashville isn’t cluttered. No, it’s lush. Wreaths of plants create paths to its counter; they hang from the ceiling and emerge from canvas pockets on the wall. The air smells cleaner. There’s a peaceful, womb-like feeling.
Howat, 33, seems to radiate its calm. Seated in an austere backroom, she’s dressed in muted colors and leather shoes. With neatly trimmed bangs and shoulder-length, earth-brown hair, she considers, she germinates, she listens. Explaining the appeal of her burgeoning store, she says she knows two things:
Heather Hauser
“People are interested in more than just a big-box nursery experience,” and, “People want beautiful plants.”
The popularity of houseplants is on the rise. An often-cited 2016 study by the National Garden Association found that, of the six million people who took up indoor and outdoor gardening that year, five million were under the age of 40. Anecdotally, Instagram feeds and friends’ homes—maybe even your own—have grown more verdant.
But Howat was far from a plant whisperer when she launched her business in 2016. After stints with jewelry-makers Red Earth and Penh Lenh, the onetime social entrepreneurship consultant found herself advanced to a role in which she didn’t fit. Working in operations at The Next Door, a Nashville-based addiction treatment center for women, she had drifted far from what she loved.
“It was a wonderful organization, but my specific role didn’t have me in a place where I was happy where I was going,” she says.
So Howat left. She traveled. She considered. Then, with business partner Kate Holl, she left her dormancy and grew in a new direction. Launching their business in the back of a customized teardrop trailer, the pair would pull up to coffee shops and breweries on the weekends, distinguishing themselves with strange and beautiful plants that were accompanied by unique care sheets created for each. A storefront came a year later in 2017.
Heather Hauser
While Howat cites the normal ties to plants—grandparents with green thumbs, her own few houseplants, and a modest garden—she doesn’t come off as nor claim to be a plant whiz. What she knows and where her business is headed is as a designer with living things. She cites a growing rental business, which is becoming a popular alternative to the standard cut-flower offerings at weddings.
“It’s really expensive to get flowers, and you just throw them away at the end,” she says. “We’ve ushered in a new sustainable option for events.”
Howat has also started consulting for businesses and private homes. Plants, she says, can completely transform a space.
“You can take someone’s aesthetic and really play up the plant and planter selection to add to that.”
Gone are the days of terracotta; she lists midcentury and modern as two of many different styles that, with the plants themselves, “make a design element.”
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