Shopper's Diary: A Love Affair with Houseplants at Pistils Nursery in Portland

Portland, Oregon remains a creative hub of the Pacific Northwest, but it's also experiencing a housing boom rivaling San Francisco's. Apartment blocks are rising rapidly, and small plant retailers like Pistils Nursery are reinventing themselves to serve urban dwellers with windowsills instead of gardens.

Mégan Twilegar founded Pistils in 2001, originally focusing on outdoor plants and homesteading—complete with chickens roaming the yard. Today, four- to six-story apartments surround the nursery, prompting an evolution toward indoor plants. "I didn't want anything to do with indoor plants when I opened," Mégan admits. "Now I have a love affair with all this indoor material."

The new solarium at Pistils, a light-filled haven for indoor plants and living art.

The crown jewel of this transformation is a stunning solarium that took two years to complete. It houses rare indoor plants, mounted staghorn ferns, curated terrariums, kokedamas, and wabi kusa (semi-aquatic plant arrangements in glass vessels). The space also hosts regular plant workshops led by Mégan and her nine-person retail team.

The solarium's interior features reclaimed materials sourced locally where possible.

A local architect designed the solarium using reclaimed materials. The floor comprises 3,000 bricks salvaged from a Southeast Portland house. The sink came from the nearby Rebuilding Center, and the central terrarium-planting table is a single slab of tropical hardwood from a local reclamation shop. "I looked at that sink for six weeks," Mégan recalls. "Finally I just went down and bought it—we made it work."

Salvaged bricks form the solarium floor.

The reclaimed sink and hardwood planting table.

The solarium floods the previously dark retail area with sunlight, enabling the nursery to grow sun-loving plants like cacti, a towering fiddle leaf fig, and carnivorous plants. "We always wanted unusual indoor plants but lacked the light," Mégan says. "Now we can grow so much more."

Sunlight streams into the retail space through the new solarium.

Cacti, a fiddle leaf fig, and carnivorous plants thrive in the solarium's light.

Mégan's personal favorite is an asparagus fern (Asparagus retrofractus) that evokes childhood memories of watering her mother's plant. "Those fleshy roots at the base fascinated me," she says. "After 15 years in business, getting this plant reminded me how much I loved it."

Mégan's cherished asparagus fern, a nostalgic favorite.

Despite the indoor focus, Pistils hasn't forgotten its roots. Chickens still roam the outdoor nursery when their coop is cleaned. "We can't teach them not to ravage things!" Mégan laughs.

The nursery's chickens enjoy supervised outdoor time.

For more Portland destinations, explore our guides to the Farmers' Market and Portland Apothecary.