Photo by Caitlin Abrams
Shayla Owodunni
Shayla Owodunni is taking her plant-based side hustle to the next level with a new Northeast studio where she’ll host workshops and classes.
We’ve been following along with Shayla Owodunni since May 2020, when she turned her love of plants into pandemic passion projects: lifestyle blog The Plant Penthouse and Penthouse Concepts, an interior plant styling service.
Now two years in, her side hustles are bearing fruit. The Plant Penthouse boasts nearly 10K followers, and Owodunni’s colorful, eccentric-meets-global-bazaar aesthetic has garnered attention from big players like HGTV and Apartment Therapy. Now, she’s opening a new studio where she’ll host workshops and classes dedicated to sharing tips and tricks for breathing life into a space.
To up her own game, she enrolled in the Hennepin County Master Gardener volunteer program through the University of Minnesota. “I’m really excited to be able to share more of a science-based approach to plant parenting,” she says. “I want to be able to take the stress away around keeping plants alive, gifting them, or picking the right ones for your space.”
True to Owodunni’s style, the vibe of the studio has us green with envy. She’s enlisted local creatives A Spoonful of Faith to paint a whimsical and flora-inspired mural for her office space and Symmetrical Design and Build for the studio entryway’s tile backdrop—a wall filled with black, green, and blue monstera deliciosa leaves.
“I’m playing up vibrant color, print, and pattern while honoring the roots of the industrial warehouse space,” says Owodunni, who wants it to feel like you’ve escaped the city and entered a tropical oasis.
Future plans include renting out the space for small events, gatherings, pop-ups, and photo shoots—which means she’ll no longer have to field calls from people interested in shooting in her apartment! theplantpenthouse.com, @theplantpenthouse
