We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Elizabeth Bowler and Celeste Futch a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Elizabeth Bowler, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

This idea for Hort | Culture was born out of the concept that working with and interacting with plants can promote peace, healing, and wellbeing. Not only for customers, but also for the young people who help run our business, who are fighting more battles than I can even begin to describe living in the shelter system.

Celeste and I have both worked at Covenant House California, the youth shelter we are referencing, and the idea that a young person overcoming homelessness and/or trafficking can benefit from therapeutic activities like working with plants – which can calm the nervous system, re-regulate breathing and promote presence and peace – is where the idea for running a plant shop was born. The concept that these young people can be in a healing environment, while also building a variety of transferable workplace skills, just made sense.

The concept also builds off of a distinct need that Celeste and I saw while working at the shelter, which was to offer more support for young people transitioning out of the shelter and into a real job. By offering paid internships, we try to offer a stepping stone and to highlight the strongest skills of our interns with the hope that this leads to more confidence in themselves and what they have to offer. We have a former intern who had a great sense of design, for example, who loved taking care of our plants. Because we were attuned to what he loved and was good at, we tried to help him build even more confidence in these areas by making him our maintenance and merchandise manager. Currently, we have another intern who loves social media and wants to utilize this tool to build her own business one day – because of this, we are encouraging her to learn new software such as Canva and Planoly as well as new systems and processes which can teach her to use social media in meaningful ways in the future. Similarly, we just onboarded a new intern who wants to work with computers. We aim to support him in learning the backend of our website to reinforce the tech skillset he can bring to any future job.

Finally, the idea for Hort | Culture is also inspired by the incredible work of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. This is a job training program with a mission to employ formerly incarcerated gang members in businesses such as bakeries and silk screen shops, while offering them wraparound support and services dedicated to their own healing at the same time. Homeboy has created a blueprint where “healed people are the product”. We think this is so powerful and that this model is directly transferable to what we are building with Hort | Culture. -Elizabeth

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hort | Culture is a houseplant business selling a variety of houseplants, 3D printed pottery for plants and plant related merchandise. Moreover, it is a non-profit job training program supporting 18-24 year old young people overcoming homelessness in the Bay Area. Together with our official partner, Covenant House California, we’ve provided paid internships to young people in the shelter system since the summer of 2020. Our interns run our small business while gaining real-world workplace skills and exposure to business software and principles.

We exist to support youth with community engagement, job readiness, financial literacy, short term economic opportunities, a resume entry, a professional reference, and access to creative and therapeutic outlets for improved mental health. Our goal is to offer as many “stop gap” paid internships to young people in the shelter system as possible. We also aim to create a therapeutic environment that reduces the symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD, and trauma.
-Elizabeth and Celeste

I am proud of the resilience of our interns. Our interns come from a variety of backgrounds, social classes and circumstances. Some have had to relocate from different countries leaving loved ones behind, survived the foster care system and many other situations that would’ve broken most people. A great quote from a former intern is, “Your current situation is not your final destination, never give up. Love plants and love humanity.” They are happy to come for work for Hort | Culture whether it’s at a pop-up, an event, or maintaining the plants. They put their all into this work. Their incredible networking is why we have a storefront space today. They are always coming up with innovative ideas to grow Hort | Culture. They are the most selfless young people I’ve ever met. They all are working towards building their own business or brand but still find joy in helping others. Former interns return to volunteer and support all events put on by Hort | Culture. Their resilience encourages Elizabeth and I to keep growing, without the amazing interns there’s no Hort | Culture. – Celeste

I am most proud of seeing our interns talk about our business with community members and the pride they exude in explaining their role in helping us grow. Recently, one of our former interns said: “I know I joke about this a lot but to see someone whose traits are so different from mine and be like, Elizabeth, try it like this or try it like that, makes me think, oh ok, maybe one day I could be a manager. Maybe I could supervise people. Maybe I could help guide them….it just goes to show you that everyone brings something to the table. And I was like, oh, I bring something to the table.” To hear a statement like this, that a former intern cultivated this type of self confidence, self awareness, and self assuredness during her time at Hort | Culture makes me so proud and it is exactly what we are trying to do with this social enterprise business. -Elizabeth

How’d you meet your business partner?

I met Elizabeth while working at Covenant House in Oakland. As the Community Involvement Coordinator I was tasked with building relationships with members of the community. Elizabeth presented the business idea to Covenant House, which I loved as soon as I heard it. Covenant House was just as excited as I to partner with Elizabeth. I recruited and staffed Elizabeth’s business with interns. While managing the interns, I was blessed to get to know Elizabeth better and her vision for Hort | Culture. We shared the same values, and most importantly we both wanted to do something about the homeless epidemic in Oakland. After attending many of the pop-up’s and sharing my ideas for the business Elizabeth asked me to be an official partner in Hort | Culture. Which I was extremely honored to accept. -Celeste

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to learn that a No is just a comma in our story. It’s our time to pause, regroup and build each other back up! Although it’s disappointing when we’ve worked hard to present our business plan and we’re met with discouragement. We’ve had a business owner tell us we should accept any “opportunity” we’re offered. Elizabeth and I believe in our mission and we only want to accept opportunities that align with our mission. We always think of the interns first and how our business decisions impact their lives. So whether we’re being told No, or we’re telling others No, we are confident that it’s not the end for Hort | Culture, it is just a pause and a time to reflect and learn. I had to learn this from the resilience of our interns and stay true to our mission. -Celeste One of the biggest and most important lessons for me has been that no matter what type of plan and roadmap you try to lay out, conditions are always changing and the most important thing is to take it day by day, minute by minute even, and focus on bringing quality and presence the work that is directly in front of you. I get overwhelmed and worried sometimes thinking about our many strategies for fundraising and growth, about how many stairs there are to climb to get to where we want to go, but then I try to remind myself that the moment I am in is actually the only moment I have. This allows me to get more creative, because it frees me from thinking about regrets in the past or worries about the future. It brings me to a place of more presence, faith, and spaciousness – one where I can do a better job listening to the interns, following their lead, and soaking up their inspiration. And this in turn, helps me believe that the impossible might actually be possible. -Elizabeth

Contact Info:

• Website: www.hortculture.org
• Instagram: hort.culture

Image Credits
Kala Minko Photo 404.512.2933 www.kalaminko.com IG @kminkophoto