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Miguel Nelson of Woolly Pocket

The path to a better world isn't through pavers but via plants, says artist and Woolly Pocket founder Miguel Nelson. "I love architecture but I think if everyone was gardening instead of building, things would be better. I think we were put on Earth to garden."

woolly pockets miguel randy portraitSlideshow

A self-described "late bloomer" when it came to finding his green thumb, Nelson watched his wife learn to garden and when it came time to cover the walls of the event spaces he owns in Los Angeles with his brother, Rodney, they created pockets in which to grow plants and hang on the walls. "So many people came to the spaces and kept saying how much they liked them and would like to have some," he says. "One day, we realized that we had invented a product and should probably start selling it."

The brothers founded Woolly Pocket in January 2009 and launched the online store a few months later in May. Since then, Nelson has teamed up with School Nutrition Plus to install edible gardens in public schools throughout Los Angeles and is working with the city to create community gardens in blighted areas of L.A. and to green the downtown core. Dwell associate editor Miyoko Ohtake spoke with Nelson about the company's products and projects.

What prompted you to establish Woolly Pocket?

It happened organically. We have these event spaces that are converted buildings and invented the Woolly Pockets for ourselves, to cover the walls. So many people came to the spaces and kept saying how much they liked them and would like to have some. One day, we realized that we had invented a product and should probably start selling it, so my brother, Rodney Nelson, and I started the company in January 2009 and started selling them online in May.

What were you doing before you launched the company?

I’m an artist and see Woolly Pocket as an extension of my art practice. I think of plants as sculptural mediums and this is one that inspires other.It's like when an artist makes tools for other artists. My goal is to inspire others who don’t even know that they’re artists to be creative, to garden, and spend more time playing with plants.

What’s behind the name Woolly Pocket?

We wanted something descriptive and humorous, something that you could think of in a lot of different ways. They’re pockets that feel like wool but instead they're made of felted strands of plastic from recycled plastic bottles.

WoollyPocketWeeWoolly.jpslideshow

The Wee Woolly is the smallest Woolly Pocket, measuring in at just 12 inches wide, six inches long, and six inches high.

What are the advantages of gardening in a Woolly Pocket?

The most important part is their breathability, something that horticulturists have known about for years but few products have taken advantage of. When a container breathes, it allows excess moisture to evaporate out the sides, helps the soil aerate, and reduces the need for drainage.

The second thing is that when plants are in hard containers, their roots are programmed to go around the side of the container when they hit them and they often become rootbound. When the roots hit air and a flexible surface, like the side of a Woolly Pocket, they are programmed to stop growing in that direction. We can grow trees really well in the bigger pockets.

What prompted you to start your edible school playground program with School Nutrition Plus?

I‘d read about Alice Waters’s edible schoolyard and loved the idea of children working with plants and learning through gardening. Gardening is one of the greatest human activities. I’m a late bloomer—-I have not been a gardener all my life, my grandmother was and I watched my wife become a gardener, which inspired me to try it—-but I think that we were put on Earth to garden. I like to fantasize about a future where we live among plants. If we can start at ground zero in the elementary schools and have kids garden at a very early age then maybe they’ll be gardeners all their lives. I think it’s easier to start it at younger ages.

We met nutritionist Emily Burson, who founded School Nutrition Plus, and because she already has relationships with a couple hundred public schools in Los Angeles, we said that we’d really like to partner with her and create edible schoolyard programs. Schools have a lot of barriers to entry—-they don’t have any money or space and even the best schools are mini-bureaucracies that are nervous about liabilities—-so we created a really simply program so it’d be easy for schools to approve, afford, and install the gardens. It’s a short-term commitment for the school even though the pockets are durable enough to exist for a long time.

woollypocketschoolyardportrait.jpgslideshow

This school had a dilapidated garden that would have been expensive to restore to gardening conditions. By hanging Woolly Wall Pockets on the staircase in the parking lot, which also acts as the playground and place the students eat their lunches, the school was able to create an instant garden wall in one day.

Photo by Suthi Picotte

What does it take for a school to have a Woolly Pocket garden installed in its schoolyard?

We’ve streamlined the Woolly Pocket system so that it can be installed in less than a day and we have our own people who will go out and install it. We don’t make a profit; we only charge the cost of labor and give the schools the pockets at half price. If we were a bigger company and not a tiny family startup we would give them a better deal but as it is, we’re not making a profit on this and we’re providing our time and energy to get the gardens going. We also bring in local gardener Christy Wilhelmi to help train a person at each school to be the master gardener and to advise on what plants will grow best at the location.

How many edible school gardens have you created?

Five so far since we founded the company, which is really fast in educational situations. It usually takes a couple years to do something like this. What we’ve done is to find the path of least resistance at each school. One school had a defunct garden from ten years ago that had really bad soil and sun exposure, its sprinkler system was broken, and it was going to be an expensive job to recreate so we were able to come in with the pockets and set up a garden for pretty much nothing. The school had someone in the cafeteria who was interested in being the master gardener and decided to take on the second graders and reinforce their education in the garden, work it into the curriculum.

There was another school that actually had a gardening club, but all they had was a parking lot that also functioned as the playground and the place where they eat lunch. However, it also had a staircase with a perfect southern exposure. In one day, we were able to install pockets for 100 students, just a hair more than the number of kids in the gardening club. Now, more and more kids want to be in the club. Each school that has come on has discovered a different way to use the gardens. We’re not implementing a program that the schools have to buy off on but are giving them a flexible system that they can figure out how best to use.

You’re also working with the city of Los Angeles on community gardens. When will those be up and running?

The city of L.A. called me and said they had two goals. One was related to the city composting they already have set up: They want to inspired the people who already come to get the compost for free to do edible gardening on blighted areas of the city--places with old fences or old walls--and have the produce that’s grown in those areas go to homeless shelters. Because it’s a bureaucracy, it will probably take a year to get that started. The second goal is to add green space to the downtown core, since there’s really no space for parks and trees take forever to grown and their root systems wreak havoc on the sidewalks. The city is setting up an incentive program for businesses to garden on their walls so we’re working with them to help people put up vertical gardens.

WoollyVagabondHandbaginhand.jpgslideshow

Woolly Pocket's newest product is Woolly Vagabond, a pocket that can be carried as a purse, placed on a table, or hung from the ceiling.

You've also just launched a new product, Woolly Vagabond.

It's a living, breathing handbag. It’s sort of a ridiculous idea but at the same time, a great idea: It’s a Woolly Pocket that you carry with you with a handle made out of reclaimed leather, scraps leftover form other projects. There’s no place to put your money. You can think of it as competition for the Chihuahua as an accessory. It’s the type of thing you might take to a great party as a conversation piece but would also look really good on your desk or coffee table or hanging from the seeing. I’d love to see people walking around with their plants.

To see more Woolly Pockets and images from the School Nutrition Plus-Woolly Pocket edible gardens, view the slideshow.

  • Published: November 5, 2009

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