Why bespoke landscaper Michael O’Brien planted his first studio storefront on WeHo’s growing East Side

While the COVID pandemic forced most of the world indoors, it brought Michael O’Brien outside.

The global lockdowns had left his successful career in finance in limbo, and so the New Jersey native traded his tie for a pair of gloves and got to work. A decade in New York had separated him from the gardening he grew up around, but moving to Los Angeles seven years ago afforded him the outdoor space and the year-round sunlight to get his passion growing again.

“At that point, I was like ‘if I ever change careers, this is what I would do,'” O’Brien recalls. “I always thought I had to stay in a career that I went to college for.”

When the pandemic struck, he got the chance to prove that theory wrong. For the next three years, he ran his fledgling landscaping business out of his house. Things took off once he scored his first A-list client: The Osbournes. Since then, it’s been a steady ascent toward the large-scale installs and product sourcing that grew too big for his home yard.

Last December, O’Brien signed a lease for the unassuming storefront to open Hommes + Gardens Estudio at 7710 Santa Monica Blvd.

“This is the showroom. It’s always been a natural progression that clients, after we’re done with their exterior, they’re always asking for interior. It’s a place where those clients can come in and then they can actually see things in person without me having to take it over to a job site.”

The space allows him to showcase his signature upscale vegetable gardens, and he’s making use of the patio for events like the wreath-making workshop held for Jimmy Choo recently.

O’Brien has always loved the stretch between Fairfax and La Brea. Its proximity to his home and its mid-way location between his clients in Beverly Hills and Los Feliz made it the perfect choice for the showroom.

 

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He likes the community feeling of his neighboring businesses, and safety hasn’t been an issue. Security ambassadors were on hand to help the one time a homeless man wandered in.

“When we put window planters and everything out in the front, people were like, ‘Oh, you’re crazy,’ but I haven’t had any problems,” O’Brien said.

“We’ll see if this is a success, but at the end of the day, I had to run my business out of somewhere,” he said. “So, this place is where I can explore what the business becomes. It’s like my workshop. We’re out here doing shoots, sometimes shirtless, everything related to gardening because I have a big passion for it.”

Hommes + Garden celebrates its gay leanings, and O’Brien doesn’t shy away from using his physique to market the business.

“Before all this, I worked in a very straight world. I was out to people close to me at work, but not beyond that. I would go to many client dinners and fly all over the country. And when people talked about their personal lives, I didn’t feel like I had much to relate to them on. So, I would probably be quieter or steer clear of those subjects. Switching into this type of career, it’s all part of my identity and who I am in a very different way. It was just very freeing.”

“I was married while working at my previous company, my boss even attended my wedding. But I wasn’t really out there saying, ‘Hey, this is my authentic self, this is who I am.’ Now, in this place, I can do that and feel comfortable.'”

 

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