The Problem With a Glass Wall

My studio looks straight out onto my neighbours. Big panel of glass, no way around it. I liked the light. I didn't like the feeling of being on display every time I sat down to work.

The obvious fixes are both trade-offs. Frosting the glass kills the view along with the sightline in. Blinds or curtains do the same, just with an on/off switch instead of a permanent one. Neither actually solves the problem — they just choose which thing you lose.

So I didn't install a solution. I grew one.

Node is a small glass-mount holder for pothos cuttings in water — the kind of plant that roots and thrives with nothing but a jar and a sunny window. Mounted in a repeating grid across the glass, on 3M Command strips rated well beyond what the setup weighs, they break sightlines exactly enough to stop feeling watched, without a single leaf taking away the view of what's actually out there. The garden is the privacy, not a wall in front of it.

It's been running for 3 weeks now, no maintenance beyond topping up water. What started as a fix for one very specific window has ended up being the first real object in a direction I've been circling for a while — plants and water as design material, not just decoration. More on that soon.