Meet Howard and Beastie Bramble | specialty plant growers

We had the good fortune of connecting with Howard and Beastie Bramble and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Howard and Beastie, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
This whole thing started out as just a plant hobby – Beastie started with houseplants where Howard had the carnivorous plants. But then, we both found out we have very green thumbs, and soon the plants began to take over. But it got to a point where they were becoming extremely hard to keep up with while both of us had fulltime day jobs, cats to care for, a house to clean, and our own outdoor garden to tend. Also at this point, Beastie was experiencing burn out from yet another dead-end job where her passion went uncared for and her hardworking nature was taken for granted. Not wanting to repeat the process, we started to brainstorm what could fill the void while we still had debt to pay off. So, since we needed to be rid of some plants to make room for others, and in need of some income, we decided to open shop – but it wasn’t without a lot of encouragement from friends and family, especially Cronk Art & Curiosities without whom we wouldn’t have made it so far already. And with this sparked something a little more in us; wanting to share these plants and get them into rotation for everyone to have a chance to enjoy these wonderful life forms as much as we have. And with intention too, as many of these plants are endangered in the wild because of urban development, poaching, and climate change. So, in a way, this is saving the plants we care for from disappearing completely. We have even gotten to the point where we are making our own pinguicula hybrids and adding genetically unique, completely new pinguicula varieties to the pool, and we’re pretty proud of that.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Brambles Botanicals is definitely a different kind of small plant shop than most others. Mostly because we breed carnivorous plants but also that we don’t grow them, or any of our plants, in a greenhouse. We have grown these plants on metal shelves in our office/study and in the living room or bedroom of many apartments. But we do it successfully, and we want to share how to do such a thing with other growers, or could-be growers, as well as our love of these wonderful organisms. Though we have a strength in growing plants, that didn’t come without a myriad of failures; some with reason, others a mystery still. We had to overcome environmental changes from moving houses, and even states, struggling to have enough lights and space in dingy apartments, random pests that just showed up one day – the list of struggles can go on forever. And we had this plant craze well before the start of the pandemic in 2020. Being in lockdown we realized how much time, energy, and space of our own that the plants take up. They require a lot more than just water and light, but so do we. It became a challenge, one that we are still working on today – how to balance caring for all these plants, and caring for ourselves. It’s a real problem, having too much of a good thing, because it can really start to take over your life and switching to something new is a tedious task. We have had to ask ourselves “what are we okay letting go of?” and “is it still worth it?” just to be sure we’re not falling into old habits and being consumed. But we work it out, make sacrifices, try new ways, and take advice where we trust it. The set up of a business is the hardest part, just the time spent figuring out what works well and what to do next can be taxing. We had to realize that we both couldn’t have a fulltime job on top of this fulltime job – realizing that the plants had become a fulltime job was eye opening itself!
Even so, our passion for these plants won’t die out so willingly. We believe in being a one-of-a-kind plant shop where you can get the plant, the advice, and the community with it. And since we grow indoors, we believe our plants stand out not just in quality, but by being already acclimated to a more usual home environment – making them more available for beginners. We want to be able to be there for new growers, and to connect with other hobby growers in the community. A good plant community can be very nourishing; after all, we both had lots of help building our first collections from other growers sharing their plants and experiences, so doing this feels a lot like paying it forward in whatever small way we can.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Well, we have only been in the Springs for a couple years and hadn’t much time to explore too much, yet. But activities for a week of vacation, had we our way, would probably go like this; first get a coffee in Old Colorado City at our favorite spot, Carnelian Coffee, and take a wander around the fun shops there. Songbird Orchids is another of our favorite local shops and our second consignment spot; they have a friendly and knowledgeable staff, and it’s where we get all our birdseed from – can’t go wrong with a seed blend specific to the birds in your yard. You can’t leave OCC without a lovely bouquet and bath bombs from Sweetwater Flower Market, so be sure to stop there before leaving! The next day we would take a stroll down Manitou, and pop into Anna’s Apothecary for a candle or two, and maybe a new tea blend. This shop seriously feels like it’s out of a fairy tale, it’s dreamy. To finish off the evening, we would take a nice, meandering walk in the Garden of the Gods (which we live right next to) and take in the natural splendor of Colorado. Then, a busier day downtown dipping in and out of fun shops, but with a focus on visiting our friends at Cronk Art & Curiosities – and of course to see how the plants are doing! If we went on the right day, we might even be interested in a tarot card reading. On the way home, we would stop by Black Jack pizza for a pie and some cheesy bread. Following that, the next day would be more chill and we would grab some coffee again on our way to Westside Stories, our favorite local bookstore – we have found so many cool things here from posters and history books, to zines and enamel pins. You can totally spend an entire day in there! The biggest event on our itinerary would be a day trip up to the Denver Botanic Gardens. how could two planty people such as us pass that up? And on the last day of this vacation week, we would spend time out in our garden, admiring the flowers and watching our wild neighbors, enjoying the quiet of our tucked away neighborhood.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
We believe that Cronk Art & Curiosities deserves a shoutout! They were our first ever consignment spot, took us to the Oddity & Bizarre expo last April, and continue to have and promote our plants in their store. Without their encouragement and interest in us, we wouldn’t have gained the confidence to expand and really dive full-on into a small, home business. Thank you both, you wonderful humans!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bramblesbotanicals/

Other: Our online marketplace shop; https://carnivorousplantresource.com/vendor/brambles-botanicals/

Image Credits
Image credit for most is to Beastie Bramble The picture with the plants on the white tags is credit to Cynthia Trinh The pictures of us are credit to Andrew Cronk