Get your fill of chlorophyll, when Mike Perrotti joins us to talk about his passion for plants. He shares how a therapist's recommendation to add greenery to combat seasonal depression unexpectedly spiraled into a tropical obsession. Mike describes how he catches himself coveting rare expensive plants and consciously redirects back to the meditative joy of caregiving and cultivation. He also reveals how managing a diverse collection in a low-light apartment requires the same constraint-driven creative thinking as design.

Guest Bio

Mike Perrotti (he/him) is a Product Designer at Datadog living in Brooklyn with an assortment of plants and reptiles, a cat, and a loving partner who tolerates it all. He spends his weekends in his lush greenhouse by day and on dark, foggy dancefloors by night. Before moving to New York in 2012, he studied art in Philadelphia, then fell sideways into UI design and frontend development. He later went on to become a major contributor to various design systems, including GitHub's Primer. Along the way he developed a pattern of picking up hobbies and going completely and shamelessly overboard with them. His houseplant hobby snuck up on him and (predictably) spiraled into an obsession.

Links

Mike on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-perrotti-81402572/

Mike on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mperrotti_

Credits

Cover design by Raquel Breternitz.