Yoko Mori works from a second-floor studio in a converted machiya in central Kyoto. She makes, by her own count, "too few pots" per year, and keeps, by our count, forty plants in the same room where she sleeps.
We met on a Tuesday morning in late March. The room smelled faintly of wet stone.
On the philosophy of a full windowsill
ELLISON: You have a famously crowded windowsill. Is there a rule?
MORI: No plant sits directly next to a plant that needs the same thing. Two sun lovers touching is an argument. So the Aloe is next to the Asparagus fern. The fern is next to the Ceropegia. The Ceropegia is next to another Aloe. Nobody competes.
On drawer composting
ELLISON: You compost in a drawer?
MORI: In Kyoto, an apartment drawer is not so different from the drawer my grandmother used to salt fish. It is a closed, dark, cool space. I keep a small ceramic box with a tight lid, and a handful of dry leaves from the garden downstairs. Kitchen scraps go in. Leaves go in. Over a week, it smells of forest, not garbage.
Two sun lovers touching is an argument.
ELLISON: Is that odd?
MORI: My friends think I am strange. But the plants are fed, and my drawer is fine, and the forest smell is pleasant.
