Eric Wareheim, Plant Dad
A Queensland bottle tree (Brachychiton rupestris) is not something you would typically find in the chaparral of Southern California. The cartoonishly stout tree would be right at home in a Dr. Seuss book, but it is native to the shrublands of Australia. Even so, one recent morning, a flatbed trailer cruised down the I-5 freeway, with two massive bottle trees secured in its truck bed, and pulled up to Serpentine—a plant-design studio (that is, a high-end nursery) in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, owned by the comedian and filmmaker Eric Wareheim.
Wareheim, who stands well over six feet tall and wears a trim beard and square-framed glasses, raced outside to meet the delivery. “Oh, wow!” he yelled, seeing the trees, each more than twenty feet tall, with bulbous trunks nearly nine feet in diameter. “This is the absolute holy grail for me.”
Wareheim’s botanical obsession began as a hobby after his divorce, in 2024. “Gardening is just so therapeutic,” he said. Somewhere between his day job of making movies and TV (“Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie,” “Master of None”) and a side hustle blending wine under a label called Las Jaras, he began collecting plants. Soon, they overwhelmed his house.
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“I started having to sell plants because I had no room,” he said. So, with a studio manager, Alexis Florio, he rented a loft, and they began potting desert plants in vintage vessels they sourced from around the world. They also shaped the plants into dramatic forms—sometimes by pruning, other times by leaning a plant away from the sun and letting it twist back toward the light.
Eventually, they outgrew the space, and they moved their wares into the loft’s parking lot—a wispy fifteen-foot dragon tree ($8,500) that evoked a ballerina mid-jump, a floss-silk tree ($7,500) with five trunks rising from a Willy Guhl saucer like a giant zombie hand coming up through the earth. Word of the oddball plants spread, and commissions rolled in—Martha Stewart, Kelly Wearstler, Flamingo Estate. “Buyers see them as art pieces, not just some green,” Wareheim said.
The bottle trees on the flatbed were to be the centerpieces of a celebration of Serpentine’s success. Gazing up at them, Wareheim said, “They put them in museums, stadiums, and zoos—that’s it.” Asked how much each one would go for, he answered, “I don’t know. What does it cost for me to spend two years befriending someone?”
That’s how long it took him to find the two trees, scouring nurseries all over San Diego County. “The whole game is to find that shape,” he said. He discovered this pair growing in the driveway of Hula Tropicals, a plumeria nursery in Bonsall. But the owner didn’t want to sell. Like Hollywood, the plant world is about relationships, so Wareheim spent months returning, buying increasingly larger plants, and gaining the owner’s trust. Finally, a deal was struck, and the bottle trees were dug up.
During the unloading at Serpentine, there was a hiccup: Wareheim had wanted to display the Brachychitons in a couple of huge limestone saucers that turned out to be too shallow. Plan B was two cement bowls, but they were too narrow. “So Plan C is the box, right?” Wareheim asked his team, pointing to a container made of what looked like Lincoln Logs. “We cut the box down a little bit to make it look nice for tonight.”
A forklift crane rattled to life and hoisted one of the two-ton Brachychitons. “This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen!” Wareheim said, watching the tree glide through the air like Fellini’s Jesus over Rome. “Look at that thing!” He stepped closer to the crane operator and said, “I’ll drive.” The operator cracked a smile. “The guys hate me,” Wareheim said. “My humor is so dumb.”
The crane maneuvered the tree into position. As it was lowered, team members quickly trimmed its roots so that it would fit inside the container. If they overdid it, they risked shocking—or even killing—the tree. “I can’t watch,” Wareheim said. It took almost an hour to get the first tree in its box.
By the time guests arrived (Nathan Fielder, Tim Heidecker), the bottle trees were tucked in discreetly among the nursery’s dozens of other weirdo plants. “The prevailing theory is, you have to show off your big thing right when you come in. But actually the classy way is to not do that,” Wareheim said. “You’ve got to work to find these. That’s the cool way to do it.” He priced the trees at fifty thousand dollars apiece. ♦