About this project

Heritage Houseplants began with a momentary burst of joy as a stranger noticed our founder’s houseplant was the same plant that their mother had grown in their childhood backyard over five thousand miles away.

For people who have grown up far from where their families came from, heritage can sometimes feel intangible — held in language, food, memory, and photograph. We believe it can also be held in a pot on a kitchen shelf. Tending a plant that grew wild in your grandfather’s country, or that lined the courtyards of a city your grandmother left behind, is a quiet and sustaining act of connection. It asks for care. It rewards attention. It grows.

Our goal is to give everyone — regardless of where they live now — a way to discover houseplants that are native to their country of origin or their family’s ancestral region. Whether you’re rooted in West Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, or anywhere else, we hope to help you find something green that feels like yours.

We also believe that celebrating the extraordinary diversity of the plant world pairs nicely with celebrating the diversity of people. The world’s flora is not uniform — it is staggeringly varied, shaped by geography, climate, and time. The same is true of humanity. In this sense, a map of the world’s houseplants is also, quietly, a map of the world’s people: their migrations, their cultivations, their love for living things. Heritage Houseplants is our attempt to honor both.