Are you a follower of fashion—houseplant fashion, that is—seeking out the latest variety that everyone’s after, perhaps the “it” plant that’s been splashed across social media? Or was each houseplant in your care carefully chosen because it’s a perfect match for the light and other indoor conditions you can offer it?

Whatever your criteria, emotional or practical or otherwise, how do you know what’s the right houseplant for you? It’s a question that today’s guest, August Laska, and his team at The Old Yew Plant Shops are asked all the time.

August and I are going to head inside today from the summer heat of the garden to talk houseplants. August didn’t exactly intend to end up with so many of them—not just the ones in his house, but two whole New York City stores full of them. Like a lot of people, the former corporate marketing coordinator got into plants during the pandemic … but I suspect few others got in quite so deep as to prompt an entire career change like August’s.

His two branches of The Old Yew Plant Shop, in the West Village and on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, offer retail and mail-order plants and pots and other gear, as well as design services and more.  

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