According to Ellen Bennett, This Oil Is Like “Steroids for Your Plants”

Plus the unlikely material she’s loving right now.

By Esmé Stern

Updated on Oct 12, 2018

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While everyone was locked down in their homes for the past year, Hedley & Bennett founder Ellen Bennett got to work. Bouncing between her office, warehouse, and home, she and her team were able to sell and donate hundreds of thousands of face masks through their Wake Up and Fight initiative. But with mask demand winding down, Bennett is turning her attention to her next labor of love: her new book. 

“The title says a lot of it. It’s called Dream First, Details Later. I think so many of the leaps that I’ve made in life have led me to discovering things I never even knew were possible,” Bennett tells Domino’s editor at large, Jessica Romm Perez, on this week’s episode of Design Time (out today on Spotify and Apple Podcasts). “I really want people to feel empowered to not think that they have to have every single thing sorted out before they can try something.”

In their conversation, Bennett shares more about the evolution of her company, along with how to push out of your comfort zone and the 10 things inspiring her right now. Read on for a preview.

Design Heroes

I really love Charles and Ray Eames. Anything Eames is still awesome, maybe even more awesome today than when they first started [their company]. That is good design to me. It lives through the years; it doesn’t have an end date or an expiration.

Favorite Color

Yellow. I got a wedding dress that was yellow; my stove is yellow; half my book is yellow. It makes people smile, even if they don’t like color. I love that. It brightens people’s days. It’s the sun. It’s energy.

Material of the Moment

I love a good duck canvas. It’s just a fabric that, if you think about it, is timeless. It’s been around forever. It’s a workhorse. It can take so many shapes and forms, from a tote bag to a sail mast to an apron. It can evolve and shift, but at its core it’s still durable and trustworthy.

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Photography by Mark A. Paulda/Getty Images

Dream Destination

I am dying to go to Italy. I just want to go to every farmers’ market and explore everything. I also really want to go to Israel. So those are two places that are very much on the top of my hit list.

Current Craving

There are two restaurants that I’m dying to go back to. One is Via Carota in New York. And I’d love to return to Mexico City and eat tacos from this one place called El Califa, which I’m obsessed with.

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Courtesy of Via Carota

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Courtesy of Condesa

Hotel Hitmaker

I rarely stay in hotels, but if and when I do, Condesa is just amazing. It has a warm place in my heart.

Bedside Read

I just finished Untamed by Glennon Doyle. It was so good; it’s 333 pages. I finished it yesterday, and I started it the same day. It’s inspiring and very much like, screw it, just do it. It’s very dream first, details later.

Plant Parenting Trick

If you put salmon fish oil—there’s a kind I get from Amazon—in your plants’ soil, they grow with such enthusiasm. It is wild. It’s the best fertilizer you could ever use. All of our citrus trees look like they’re on steroids right now.

Go-To Vintage Source

I really like 1stdibs. It’s a great spot to find things that were expensive that are now a little less expensive.

Wind-Down Routine

Reading, because I’m so active and constantly going in all directions and typically multitasking to a fault. When I’m reading a book, that’s all I’m doing, which is really good for me. When you can put your phone down (unwinding is not scrolling through Instagram!), you get to do something that stretches the muscles in your mind in other ways.