How Eric Wareheim Went from Comedy Star
to Los Angeles' Plant Guru

For Eric Wareheim, it began with a heartbreak. After a particularly brutal breakup, the comedian turned to the earth.

“It opened me up to a new spectrum of life,” Wareheim says. In the wake of the split, he found solace in walking through forests, running his hands across leaves. He’d already been studying bonsai as a hobby for a decade. Post-breakup, that fascination led him to Japan and later to train under plant stylists in Thailand.

This morning, in a 16,000-square-foot industrial space in Boyle Heights, Wareheim is wandering through his eclectic assortment of 1,500 plants and sculptures, pointing out oddities and treasures he found abroad. His collection extends into a sprawling backlot and even to a satellite nursery in North Hollywood. “A lot of this stuff is from France. You can tell because it’s a little more formal, but once you get down south to Spain, it’s fucking Salvador Dalí time,” he says, gesturing toward an unruly ficus sprouting from a cement sculpture fashioned to resemble driftwood.

The space is home to Serpentine, Wareheim’s latest endeavor, which opened in July 2025 — a botanical and design studio that also happens to house the largest collection of the designer Willy Guhl’s pieces in the US. Over the past several years, Wareheim has scoured the globe for unusual antiques and plants — some dating to the age of dinosaurs — bringing them back here and pairing them with carefully chosen vessels. The resulting combinations are striking: equal parts sculpture, horticulture, and poetic design object.

This is what interests Wareheim most: When does a plant become art? “Some people call it plant art. Some people call it plant sculpture. Some people call it American bonsai. It’s based on the rules of bonsai — putting a big tree in a little thing — but in Japan they are very strict about how that should look,” he says. Serpentine follows a more avant-garde philosophy. “We freak out and do whatever the fuck we want, which feels like a very American thing to do,” Wareheim says. “It’s the Wild West.” 

The Wild West is familiar territory for Wareheim, whose career has seen him repeatedly venture into new creative terrain. As one half of the duo Tim & Eric, he created a surreal, genre-defying style of sketch comedy on Adult Swim that influenced a generation of internet humor. More recently, he immersed himself in the natural wine movement, co-founding Las Jaras. The common thread is his obsessive nature. “When I get into anything, I study it so hard. I became somewhat of an expert in wine,” he says. Likewise, “in comedy, you have to fully give yourself to it.”

That devotion is now centered on plants. In the backlot oasis, among hundreds of pots, Wareheim points out a disfigured draco tree, bending and twisting into the sky: Serpentine’s demented mascot. “It must have been pushed over when it was young,” Wareheim explains. “That’s the coolest thing in the world. But other people will look at it like, ‘Oh no, that’s a reject.’” 

Wareheim can relate. “I never could do anything conventional. I just resisted,” he says. “It’s the same kind of punk energy, of wanting to be different. I see things on a different spectrum.” 

To shop at Serpentine, you first need to email and book an appointment. Its clientele ranges from creatives and Wareheim’s friends to rare plant enthusiasts from around the country. Just recently, Warheim worked on a design project for the actress Sharon Stone. The plants themselves range in price from a couple hundred dollars to thousands, depending on the value of their vessels. 

Wareheim has worked hard to make Serpentine a community-driven space. For his 50th birthday this past April, he threw a rebirth-themed celebration at the space, and in September, artist Jonathan Cross will present a show featuring 300 vessels and 300 plants. He’s met dozens of growers who are “doing things the right way,” he says: specialists who source and sell ethically. Last year, he invited several of them to an art show at the LA-based contemporary design gallery The Future Perfect that incorporated their plants. “They came to this fancy studio in West Hollywood, and they couldn’t believe that this tree that I bought from them was living like this,” he says. “I love that part.” He plans to bring Serpentine to new audiences through pop-ups in Miami, Paris, and eventually the rest of the world.

Last September, while hosting the LA Design Weekend kick-off party at Serpentine, the comedian cooked up a prank, informing guests over email that several tree snakes had gotten loose on the premises. Concerned emails came flooding in. “So many people did not think it was a joke,” he says, mentioning that distressed guests were scanning the premises for snakes.

The “loose snakes” might have been a bit on the nose, but in fact, the name for the space came to Wareheim in the spirit of overcoming fear. “In our DNA, we’re scared of spiders and snakes,” he says. “This whole project is about breaking through that.” His comedy partner and best friend of 25 years, Tim Heidecker, sensed the bigger picture when he visited the space last year. “He came here and was like, ‘Dude, I understand you. I see what you’re doing now. It’s fucking amazing,’” Wareheim says. “I almost cried because he’s never talked to me that way.” 

Wareheim explains that his time among the plants has given him a new sense of sentimentality. “I feel like I am in touch with the inside of myself,” he says. Before, “I went through life not even looking at trees. Now, I can’t even walk down the block without pulling out my phone and snapping a photo.”