How Much Would You Pay for a Houseplant?

As I have seen from the Chelsea Flower show green gardens are currently in, so it makes sense to see this trend for houseplants too.

It is so odd to me that this article, in its answer or why we love plants so much, fails to mention that we all evolved because of plants. We owe our lives to them, and the complex life forms that were able to evolve once plants propagated they earth, creating more oxygen. I think the explanation in the article is so shallow and lacking in the obvious reason for our love. Read EO Wilson’s Biophilia hypothesis. We love these things because we are family.

You do not need a lot of money to have a lot of plants. At all. Get cuttings from people and many are easy to root. I have a room full right now. They live outside in summer and get me through the winter. There are social media groups that share plants locally. Most Philodendron are not wildly expensive. I give away cuttings all the time. I worship plants. Endlessly gorgeous beings with consciousness. I am reading The Emerald Planet, on plant evolution and climate. Fascinating book. Please read it. It’s time we elevate plants in our culture and remind ourselves of where they belong in evolution, and how the made us possible.

Individual specimens were always around when I was a kid, and some grew under my care to make outsized memories. I got into houseplants more seriously in my first house, facilitated by movers abandoning theirs curbside around my 'hood. It went as far as wall to wall propagation, staining floors, sales paying off the baking trays & restaurant racks. Then came a re-focus, to simply pursuing the "edible", and now that collection, propagation, distribution, and cultivation effort leads outdoors to 00's of varieties in homesteads & orchards. Although commercial consumerism can get over-wrought, horticultural producerism is often a transcendental opportunity.

Enjoyed this article. Great comments too. Good to know that there others who have kept house plants for decades and still enjoy them. A plant does not need to be rare to make us happy.

I'm not saying we need to eat the rich, but when they are spending thousands on house plants, it certainly makes me consider it.

Nice to know that young people are connecting w nature in their apartments. In the past few yrs, my orchids and other houseplants have been extremely happy w these 2 plant foods that I am happy to recommend. One is Organic Neptune's Harvest Brand Fish and Seaweed Fertilizer and the other is common Epson Salt which is magnesium sulfate. Neptune is pricey about $18 for 32 oz, but you only use a half capful in a gallon of water and so even though I have many plants it lasts me almost 2 yrs. As for epson salts...a bargain.. use one tablespoon in a gallon of water. I use Neptune every week and then the epson salts every 4 -5 weeks. I use both occasionally in the summer in my potted plants in the garden as well. All my plants are happy w these 2 foods. Some are ecstatic and taking over. My indoor bird of paradise is about 9 x 9'. She doesn't flower because she needs to outside, but we can't get her through the door. My monstera is taking over my studio , and some orchids have up to 20 blooms. BTW: Trader Joe's sells very healthy orchids.

Now that the surprising (to the uninitiated) value of Enid's stock has been thoroughly publicized, hope she has good security around her property.

I don't know why this article bothers me so much, but mostly I think it's the incorrect formatting/scientific nomenclature. The lower case genus (e.g. monstera adansonii) and even grouping genus with a single species (e.g. "So are philodendrons, anthuriums and tetraspermas") really gets to me :'( I get that it's not scientific literature, but you wouldn't say escheria coli. It would be Escheria coli. And you wouldn't say Ford, Toyota, and Civic. It would be Ford, Toyota and Honda.

I like house plants but I have what can only be described as a brown thumb. I don't know where to put them for optimal light and often forget to water them. They invariably succumb. But there is one plant that someone gave me 12 years ago. I call it the cockroach plant because I'm sure it would survive a nuclear winter. It's a Hoya. Mine sits in a lonely corner that gets a bit of northern light and every once in a while I'll think "when was the last time I watered that thing?" And yet it puts out new leaves periodically and just keeps on keeping on. I don't think I'll spend $1000 on a Gucci plant. I like my working-class Hoya. Maybe I'll go water it.

We have a 40 year old lemon tree that lives in a pot. We put it outside in the summer. In the winter, it is near a window and it likes artificial light. This tree grew from a seed from a regular lemon. It might bloom and bear lemons if there were two and more light. It has thorns. It smells like furniture polish. The leaves are big. It is 9 feet tall and 9 feet across.

My mother planted some green coffee beans into seedlings more than 25 years ago. I have one of the plants in my kitchen near south and west facing windows in upstate NY. It is a tree now, more than 5 1/2 feet tall. This year, I had over 200 berries, made Madras coffee, planted some berries and have 20 seedlings - my mother died in 2008. I feel happy every time I look at her grand plants them.

my houseplants aren't exotic but thriving, having each survived a move from manhattan to ulster county 25 years ago and having to become accustomed to different views. my ficus benjamina, from gedney farms in white plains in 1976, occasionally makes a pea-sized fig or two. i have learned to put clear plastic over it when the painters are here: moved, it will throw nearly all its' leaves away. my arrowhead was from a club cutting. my christmas cacti [one into four] from the flower district in the city, is now 42. in a 2-window unheated corner, it's already starting to bud. my spiders need repotting again, the dracenas preening. don't lose a chance to have some in your place, and make it a home.

I just love to buy tiny plants for $5 and then watch them grow. Yes, I talk to them and give them the love. They all respond! My price plant was years ago, a rubber plant. It started with 6 leaves and when I saw it last it was a rubber tree of almost 10 feet high. It was in the stairwell of my old building and everybody who lived there took care of it. I love it when a community does something together, like something as simple of taking care of a plant. It just takes loving and caring, money has no place in it.

I still have guilt pangs for the 2 or 3 bonsai trees I killed many years ago (not particularly aged or trained trees, lest I cause anyone else pain at the thought of it). I probably paid no more than $100 for any one of them. I don't want to think about the responsibility of a plant like those in this article. I never had kids either, for pretty much the same reasons.

Can you say "invasive species"? Things have a way of getting out of the house into the environment. My recommendation is to not import plants if possible.

“With orchids, you have to be patient for it to flower,” said Anat Scham, 25… Not true. Many orchids are prized solely for the size, shape, color, or patterns of their foliage. These orchids are not found at Home Depot but at annual shows put on by local orchid societies, such as the one just held by Massachusetts Orchid Society, vendors with an online presence, and, of course, eBay.

I'm hybridizing Haworthias which are small South African succulent plants and in the past 5 years collectors have gone nuts over their beautiful "windowed" forms. Choice plants on eBay have gone for over $4,000. It's like tulip madness. A renown propagator recently sold part of their collection for over a half million dollars....

Reminds me of a certain tulip craze a few hundred years ago.

Silly us. We are in perpetual "fear of missing out" FOMO. run quickly get that tropical plant and pay a bundle for it. You will feel really really good..for half a day!

LOL! Tulip mania any one?

Not sure why $2,600 (2,700 -100 for a regular plant) spent to alleviate homelessness, fund someone’s education, or protect a neighborhood park wouldn’t bring the same amount of joy, but I sure am glad to see the wealthy have something new to waste their money on. Wouldn’t want all that money to go to use.

I'm a millenial who bought a few leafy houseplants and herbs just for the aesthetics and then was pleasantly surprised by how much of an emotional attachment I have to them now. My husband and I desperately want a dog but both of us work too much and it'd be cruel to leave a dog home alone for 60+ hrs a week. So I bought a fiddle leaf tree from Home Depot. It's quite fussy and three out of twelve total leaves fell off in its first week at my house. I was secretly hoping it would just die quickly so that I could get a new, more robust one...but imagine my surprise and delight when I saw a tiny leafling poking through a brown branch nub one day. I treasure these overnight surprises and rather enjoy having a reason to get some dirt under my fingernails. I've become a full-on "Plant Mom".

I grew up in the tropics, and having tropical plants in my room makes me feel a lot less sad about being far away from home. I also love being able to care for something. I would also go as far as saying that caring for plants has taught me a lot about trauma and resilience, which has helped me in my place of work as well.

Great essay. Keep this stories coming.

Yes, stockpiling imperiled plants inside one’s Brooklyn apartment "is, at the very least, keeping them on the planet." But it may also lead to their extinction in the wild, as collectors dig up the remaining specimens.