A house with plants in it feels different to a house without. We have stopped pretending this is a styling choice and started drawing for it.
The plant is the thing in the room that changes. It grows over the year, drops a leaf, finds the light. Everything else in a well-built room stays put. The architecture is the score; the plant is the part of the music that is improvised.
So we draw the plant in. There is a corner that takes morning sun and is wide enough for something to grow tall. The skirting steps back at the foot so the pot doesn’t announce itself. The floor under the pot is honest stone or tile, not a finish that will mark under a watering can.
The fig in the picture is in a house we finished last spring. It moved in with the family. It has put on six inches since. The shadow it casts on the plaster shifts about thirty degrees over the course of a year. None of that was an accident.
People sometimes ask whether we recommend plants. We don’t. We recommend a room that can hold one if you want one. That is the same thing, drawn earlier.