Business
Inner Paradise: Michigan Artist, Lisa Waud, and Her Flower House
Northern
Michigan native and current Detroit resident, Lisa Waud, never took her lush
surroundings for granted growing up. Right after high school she started at a company called Polly’s Planting an
[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]N[/dropcap]orthern Michigan native and current Detroit resident, Lisa Waud, never took her lush surroundings for granted growing up. Right after high school she started a company called Polly’s Planting and Plucking. She admits, “. . . despite my first days revealing that I couldn’t pick out a geranium from the rest of the flowers, I loved it from the first moment.” Her current business venture Pot & Box is eight, and continues to grow.
“There’s a romantic perception of being in business for yourself. Some of it is true . . . and then there are the challenges—inconsistent finances and fresh product procurement—those have brought on some gray hairs, but luckily, gray is a hot color lately.” It’s our take that a sense of humor can do wonders for the longevity of a small business.
Her latest project, Flower House, makes you wish you thought of it first. Her vision “to fill an abandoned house in Detroit with fresh flowers and living plants for one exhibition weekend, and then responsibly deconstruct the house to make way for a flower farm” was inspired by the French artists, Christo and Jeanne Claude and the 2012 Christian Dior show.
The best thing about Flower House is that there’s more to come. At a preview event in May, the interior was covered in beautiful arrangements, creating an intense juxtaposition of natural, organic beauty against the devastating decay of a home, amongst many homes in Detroit that lost its purpose.
Viewing plants and flowers as a necessity of life, she recalls a past living situation. “For a year recently, I was living in an apartment where I did not have a garden. Looking back, I can see that I was unsettled. If you saw the new Mad Max movie, that was the whole premise—they were tirelessly searching for ‘the green place’. Not that the Pot & Box flower truck is as badass as Furiosa’s war rig, but I like to think I’m facilitating my clients’ visions for their own green places.”
With the sort of focus and attention Lisa gives to her clients, and her innate green thumb, naturally we envisioned her as the greatest caregiver of all time. “Despite the name Pot & Box, we don’t grow cannabis. I think there are enough specialists that I can concentrate on ornamental flowers and plants.” Waub is all for legalization, and knows and loves the usefulness of the cannabis plant, even if she isn’t growing just yet. “I’ve always appreciated that versatility—in medicine and in textiles!”
When trying to define what it is that makes flowers and plants so beautiful, Waub recalls, “Back when I worked at Polly’s, we’d have what we’d call ‘botanical exploration breaks’ in the compost pile, cutting apart seed pods with our clippers. It both added to the wonder and to our understanding. Even now, I can be completely distracted by a particularly stunning ranunculus while I’m arranging wedding flowers.”
Waub’s passion is infectious. Her gardening and design skills will make any aspiring green thumb yearn for her talent. If there’s anything else that you can take away from her flower-filled dreams, it’s that she does her best work when clients allow her to do what she does best. We may always have a particular vision of our own in mind, but allowing an artist to have the freedom to explore that vision in their own, unique way, will more often than not leave you with a sense of wonder and whimsy that you cannot force.
