HOW HOOK & VINE WAS CREATED: FROM ONE POTHOS TO A PATENT-PENDING PLANT HANGER

Every product starts somewhere.

Hook & Vine started with a giant pothos, a destroyed plant, and a question I couldn’t stop thinking about:

Why is hanging a plant still so unnecessarily difficult?

IT STARTED WITH A TEN-YEAR-OLD POTHOS

My pothos had been with me for ten years.

And it had gotten huge.

When it was time to take it out of its traditional plant hanger, my husband and I quickly realized we had a problem.

We were trying to maneuver this enormous, trailing plant out of a fixed macramé hanger without destroying it.

Vines broke.

Leaves got crushed.

Soil went everywhere.

We were stepping around leaves and vines, trying to untangle everything and clean up the mess.

And when we finally got the plant out, it looked like it had gotten a chopped haircut.

I remember looking at it and thinking:

There has GOT to be a better way.

I STARTED LOOKING

So I did what I always do when I can’t let an idea go.

I started researching.

I searched for plant hangers everywhere I could think of: handmade marketplaces, big retailers, different styles, different materials.

And I kept coming back to the same basic design.

The hanger was fixed.

The plant had to go inside it.

And nobody seemed to be approaching the problem from the other direction.

So I thought:

What if the hanger opened instead?

What if you could put the plant down first and bring the hanger up around it?

That became the starting point.

THE BOTTOM KNOT HAD TO GO

Traditional macramé-style plant hangers often have a knot underneath the pot.

But I needed my hanger to be completely open.

I needed to be able to lay it flat, place the pot directly onto it, and build the hanger around the plant.

So the bottom knot had to go.

That sounds simple now.

It wasn’t.

There were materials to test. Connections to figure out. Hardware to experiment with. Strength to think about. Strap lengths. Placement. How everything moved when a real plant was sitting inside it.

There were plenty of versions that didn’t work.

And then there were versions that almost worked.

Those were sometimes even more frustrating.

MORE THAN A YEAR OF FIGURING IT OUT

What started as an idea turned into more than a year of experimenting, failing, changing things, and trying again.

I played with materials.

I tested different hardware.

I changed proportions.

I reworked the connection.

I made prototypes.

Then I made better prototypes.

The goal was always the same:

Make it easier to hang the plant without making the hanger look like an afterthought.

Because I didn’t just want to solve the functional problem.

I wanted to make something I actually wanted in my own house.

I love vintage things.

I love texture.

I love unusual materials and objects that look like they have a story.

I didn’t want another generic plant hanger.

I wanted something substantial.

Something beautiful.

Something that could hold a big, unruly plant and still feel like part of the room. An anchor to a space.

THEN THE SYSTEM FINALLY CLICKED

Eventually, the pieces started working together.

Open the hanger completely.

Lay it flat.

Set the plant down.

Bring the straps up around the foliage.

Connect the top.

Hang it.

LAY IT FLAT.
SET YOUR PLANT.
HOOK & HANG.

That was the moment I knew I had something.

Not just another variation of a plant hanger.

A completely different way to approach one.

FROM PROTOTYPE TO HOOK & VINE

Once the system worked, I had another question:

What do I call this thing?

That’s where Hook & Vine came from.

The name felt like the product itself, a little unexpected, a little rebellious, and rooted in plants without being overly precious about it.

And eventually, the prototype became a real product.

Hook & Vine’s detachable-top plant hanger system is now patent pending, and what started as me trying to save one very large pothos has become something I’m building into an entire brand.

THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING

The Original Plant Hanger is the invention that started it all.

But I don’t want Hook & Vine to stop there.

There’s The Archive, where I get to experiment with vintage textiles, deadstock fabrics, unusual materials, limited editions, and one-of-a-kind pieces.

There’s The 100 Hanger Project, where I’m sending 100 numbered Hook & Vine hangers into the world, to 100 interesting people, spaces, and stories.

And there’s everything I haven’t thought of yet.

That’s probably my favorite part.

I didn’t set out to build a plant-hanger company.

I set out to solve a problem that annoyed me enough that I couldn’t leave it alone.

And sometimes that’s how the best ideas start.

You see something that doesn’t make sense.

You wonder why nobody has fixed it.

And eventually you decide:

I’ll figure it out.

That’s Hook & Vine.

Your plant shouldn’t have to fit the hanger.
The hanger should work around your plant.

Welcome to the tangle-free rebellion.