We had the pleasure of interviewing one of our most unique and talented customers, Green Wallscapes. In the interview, Lindsay Burgess, “The Moss Boss” of Green Wallscapes shared with Michelle Rosenblum, Creative Director of SuperMoss, the story of how Green Wallscapes came to be, gave us an inside look behind the scenes, and also shared words of wisdom for beginner moss makers.

Green Wallscapes was created as a way to bring natural, positive moss art into a variety of commercial and residential spaces. They make moss walls, signage, art, and lettering for homes, offices, retail, and restaurants. All of their projects can be fully customized — you dream it, they build it!

The Interview:  

M: Thank you for taking the time to meet with me today. I’m going to be honest, this is the first showcase interview that we are doing!

L: Yay, thank you!

M: I’ve reached out to a few others and everyone has been interested, so you’re the first one. You’re going to set the stage for everyone else.

L: Our interview is definitely going to be the best, but that’s ok!

M: Yes, I can already tell this one will be great!

What is the story behind Green Wallscapes?

L: So, Green Wallscapes actually started by accident. We saw some work that we liked out of Europe on Pinterest that we thought was super cool, so one exciting Saturday night, me and my husband went to the craft store and bought some moss and glued it on a frame and we made this disastrous moss piece! I think it might have been SuperMoss that we bought from Michaels. Then we ended up showing it to someone and they were like “Oh, I want one” and then another person and we started showing people all these kinds of things.

My husband is on the board of the South Florida Fair and they asked us to do a logo for them. I didn’t really think it was a real thing to be very honest with you, when we first got started. It was just something we did in our garage.

Once it all started to pick up and people started finding us more, we started to get more logos, we started to get more lettering, we started to get more things organically and through word of mouth, and somehow people found us. Then we started doing stuff all over the country!

Someone said “There has to be some kind of magic involved. There’s no way that you just went from this little thing in your house with your husband for fun into this huge business”. I think that part of it is that I’ve been very lucky with who’ve I’ve actually been able to work with. My team is amazing — I’ve hired incredible artists who have a lot of vision and really love using this material to express themselves. Then we have a lot of clients that give us a lot of creative freedom so we are able to really do some very unique work with this material. It’s kind of that magical combination.

My background is in sales and marketing so I love branding, I love logos, I love doing green walls for big companies because for me it’s like they are putting something beautiful in their offices, but it’s also making their employees happier. People just feel more relaxed when they see it and they are really just blown away by how it looks.

We do a lot of stuff with SuperMoss, a lot of the big reindeer moss walls, because you guys are probably one of the only suppliers that can actually supply as much as we need. You know, we are doing hundreds of square feet. Hundreds and hundreds of pounds usually pretty quickly. (laughter)

M: Yeah, for sure.

L: …and so I probably drive your team a little bit crazy…

M: It’s all good!

L: Yeah, it’s good, they love it!

M: Keeping them on their toes.

L: They love it, they love it!

(laughter)

L: So, you know we’ve really been lucky in the sense that our timing is good. As I said, I have my background in sales and marketing, have a lot of contacts already in that market place, and also my focus on branding…  I really think those three things came together. I really love taking peoples brands and then interpreting them in this material. We have all of these different trends happening at the same time. Biophilic design is very popular. We also have people having to create home offices and making nice spaces for themselves at home in the short term.

What’s been great is that we’ve been seeing a lot of the commercial work come back, which stopped for a few months and we had to pivot into residential. Now we’ve gone back to about 80-90% commercial and a little bit of residential.

M: Right. That’s good to hear. You mentioned your team was busy, so it’s nice to hear that you are a moving, flowing business and keeping it all going during these tough times.

L: Yeah.

M: So, you were saying you were doing your first project, inspired by Pinterest, which is super cool, went out to the craft store and got some moss and, which, by the way, we are happy to be part of any project, whether it is your first disaster or your next masterpiece…

L: (laughter)

Before your first project, did you already consider yourself a crafter or a gardener, because we are kind of in this interesting niche of decorative gardening. Could you tell me more about that?

L: I would say that I’ve always been a drawer. But to be very honest with you, I’m not really the one who is very good at the implementation. I’m good at the handwork as much as my team is but I know what I like and I know the way that I want things to be. Luckily now my team is so awesome that they are blowing me away all the time, which is so great — bringing their own energy, their own design styles and things into this material.

What’s been great is that even when I’m consulting with clients, because I have that kind of visual mind, I can then help them translate what’s going to work best both within their budget and their scope. Because, when you are dealing with commercial projects it’s all budget and numbers, but then also to achieve where they want to go with this and what they want it to look like. We are always balancing between those two things. We are always value engineering, which is not the most fun thing in the world.

In terms of “was I a gardener?” No. “Was I a crafter?” Kind of.  It was really just… my husband and I have always felt, “Oh, we can make that” and frankly, when you start, you make what you think is a masterpiece and then you see it a year later and you think “Oh my gosh. That wasn’t so good”, you know what I mean?

M: Yes, you keep growing!

L: Yeah, you keep growing and keep refining and keep finding new ways of using material. We actually started to do 3D work and one of the girls on my team is a sculptor by training. She builds the moss up to make it 3D instead of just 2D.

M: That’s awesome!

L: We have really elevated this material from more of a crafty, cute thing, and there is plenty of crafty cute out there. Frankly, we don’t do that. This has elevated now to where it’s really amazing and beautiful art — really original. Recently we did a piece where we used probably every single color in your repertoire and one of my girls sat for about 35 hours doing a 3×3 logo for somebody hand placing the individual materials so that they would ombre properly and that’s the Garden of Life project.

M: I was going to say it m must be that one. Honestly, I was looking at that one and I was wondering, “I didn’t even know we had that color”.

L: Well, actually some of them we modify a bit because some colors just don’t exist in the line yet, so we will create them. We take the base of SuperMoss and then we will floral-spray it or do other things to it to elevate it even more as needed.

M: Oh, I love it. Great.

L: It’s just we are learning all the time and we are innovating all the time. One of the things that we do is we work with SuperMoss, but we also have nine other suppliers that we work with that we’ve curated for specific kinds of moss. We just take the best from each supplier that we work with. We have made it a curatorial experience so that the work is really elevated. Most people aren’t willing to do that. We really are trying to elevate this work to the next level and use the whole color variety that SuperMoss offers and all these different materials as we progress in our business.

We also do things with ferns and succulents and other stuff that have just come through clients requesting that work.

M: Your work really speaks volumes. You can just look at your Instagram and site. Every piece just stands out so much.

L: We have the best time. We really love this work. We really love innovating in this space. We feel that we’re beyond lucky that we get to work with clients that are truly wonderful humans and across the US and Canada. We’ve been really blessed that people are still looking for this and they have to have a moss wall, even in the middle of a global pandemic! (laughter)

You know what I mean?

M: We need moss walls now more than ever! What are you talking about? (laughter)

L: It’s true! Because this stuff… when people see it, they really feel like they are reconnecting with nature, reconnecting with self, it’s a Zen moment that it creates. We do a lot of sterile offices spaces where things are very corporate, very cookie cutter in a lot of ways, and this is something that they can add that really elevates the space, calms people down, and creates a sense and connection with nature.

Get a behind the scenes look at the creative process at Green Wallscapes in part two:

Green Wallscapes Part 2: Inspiration

Be sure to check out GreenWallscapes.com and their beautiful Instagram @GreenWallscapes.

Do you have a moss business or a big creative project that you would like to share? We’d love to interview you too! Email us at [email protected].