From scale to systems.
Bound Beauty Studio is an exploration of how growth is built—and how it’s sustained.
Shaped by years working at scale in agriculture, sustainability, and organizational strategy, the Studio began as a personal counterweight to abstract ideas of growth. Over time, the distance between strategy and the realities of living systems became harder to ignore.
Founded by Lisa Humphreys, Bound Beauty Studio grew from a desire to reconnect growth to something tangible—something that could be seen, felt, and cared for.
our philosophy
Growth is often treated as something to accelerate, optimize, or extract. In organizations, that pressure can lead to scale without structure, motion without alignment, and burnout disguised as progress.
Bound Beauty Studio is grounded in a different belief:
Growth is healthiest when it begins with strong foundations, is shaped by intentional constraint, and is supported through ongoing care.
Living systems make this visible. Plants don’t grow because they’re pushed. They grow because conditions are right.
The shift
For more than two decades, Lisa’s work focused on scale, alignment, and outcomes—helping organizations navigate complexity and grow responsibly.
As the work became increasingly abstract, the language of growth drifted further from lived experience. Growth was discussed, measured, and optimized, but rarely felt.
Working directly with plants changed that relationship.
Seeing the parallels
Kokedama are plants grown without pots, shaped by hand, and held together through balance rather than excess.
The process requires stripping a plant back to its roots, rebuilding a stable foundation of soil, and binding that foundation with moss to protect and constrain it. Without a container to hide imbalance, everything matters: root health, proportion, timing, and care.
The parallels to organizational life became clear. Both plants and organizations thrive under thoughtful structure. Both struggle when scale outpaces foundation. Both respond better to attention than control.
Bringing it together
Today, Bound Beauty Studio brings these ideas into practice.
The Studio creates handcrafted kokedama plants for homes and workplaces, and designs and facilitates hands-on experiences for teams that use living systems to explore how growth, care, and structure actually work.
“This work is not about stepping away from business. It’s about reconnecting strategy to the realities of living systems… where resilience matters more than speed, and where growth is sustainable only when it’s rooted.”
LISA HUMPHREYS
Founder & Growth Facilitator, Bound Beauty Studio