Would you pay $2,900 for someone to style your houseplants?

Ms Maryah Greene (left), who runs one-woman firm Greene Piece; and Ms Lisa Munoz of Leaf and June.
Ms Maryah Greene (left), who runs one-woman firm Greene Piece; and Ms Lisa Munoz of Leaf and June.
Plant styling by Ms Lisa Munoz in the offices of Buck, a production company in New York.
Plant styling by Ms Lisa Munoz in the offices of Buck, a production company in New York. PHOTOS: NYTIMES

NEW YORK • Growing up in California, Mr Orion Tait used to watch his father's weekend housekeeping routine.

"Sunday was loud music - Neil Young - and my dad going around watering the plants," he recalled. "He had a deck of plants growing everywhere. It was a ritual."

Mr Tait, a creative director and partner at Buck, a production company, tried to carry on that tradition as an adult in his Brooklyn home, complete with the loud rock.

But he and his wife, Ms Amy Won, were too busy to care for their houseplants. They never got around to repotting them. Fungus gnats colonised.

"I was, like, this is New York City," Mr Tait said. "There's got to be someone we can hire."

That someone was Ms Lisa Munoz.

For US$2,000 (S$2,900), Ms Munoz will come fill your house with plants and make it look beautiful. You can spend more than US$2,000, but you cannot spend less. That is the minimum fee charged by her Brooklyn-based firm, Leaf and June.

That covers the design, plants, potting, delivery of plants and a detailed care guide, Ms Munoz said.

"You don't have to call an Uber XL to transport your big tree home," she said. "We do all the dirty work for you."

If Ms Munoz, 38, sounds practised at selling her services, it is because her job title - interior plant designer - usually requires explanation. It is an emerging career and she has been doing it for six years.

Nurseries and flower shops have long provided professional plant care for offices and homes.

Most billionaires of Park Avenue, one assumes, do not water their ficus trees. Ms Munoz offers such maintenance services to her clients too.

But her real role is in performing the job that a fashion stylist or art consultant might - to make aesthetic choices and sound investments on someone's behalf. Just about plants.

Ms Maryah Greene, who runs the one-woman firm Greene Piece, bills herself as New York City's "plant doctor and stylist".

She is the fiddle-leaf-fig whisperer for the rest of us: She charges a flat hourly rate of between US$125 and US$175. Her clients are largely renters who want to introduce a little greenery into their lives, but do not know a pothos plant from a bird of paradise, much less how to not kill them.

"A lot of what I do I like to think of as confidence boosting," said Ms Greene, 24, who has plant styled for more than a year and has met with about 50 clients so far.

The confidence they crave requires counsel: Will a monstera be happy by the radiator? Can sunshine-loving cactuses thrive in a light-starved apartment? What is the best pot to show off the pink and white leaves of the hoya carnosa?

MORE PLANT MONEY, MORE PLANT PROBLEMS

For one Brooklyn home owner, Ms Munoz put a schefflera tree in the kids' room, with rich, green foliage that droops like an umbrella. She paired it with a showstopper pot - a ceramic planter.

For another Brooklynite whose kitchen is flooded with light, she built a fibreglass window planter and filled it with herbs and leafy greens. That was a special case. Herbs indoors "need a lot of sun", Ms Munoz said, adding that in New York, "80 per cent of the time, the light sucks".

Those two clients came to her through Ms Elizabeth Roberts, an architect popular with the brownstone Brooklyn gentry who frequently brings in Ms Munoz for her projects. Ms Roberts works with gardeners and landscape architects to design outdoor green spaces.

"I wouldn't call one of our landscape designers to talk about potted plants we want to put on the mantel," she said. "Lisa is the first person we've worked with who can fill this gap."

One wonders why a plant stylist is needed in the first place. The library is still free.

Yet, in the age of the gig economy, where freelancers and consultants exist to fulfil every life need and hiring out a task can be preferable to learning to do it yourself, houseplant decisions are just another thing to outsource.

The plant stylists say most people's ability to properly choose and care for houseplants is woeful, even as the reported desire to live among them is high.

"One of the biggest questions I get from clients is, 'What plant can I get that would be good with no light?'" Ms Munoz said. "No light? That's not possible."

Mr John Fraser, a chef, hired her to rescue his neglected houseplants, which "were on death's door", and to create a potted greenscape on the balcony of his apartment.

"I wanted someone who could give me the answers that you probably learn over time," he said. "Because of travel and restaurant stuff, I'm not the best caretaker."

Meeting a plant stylist is "an intimate service," Ms Greene said, and thus caters to the still would-be plant parent.

"I can't provide you with the right plants unless I know who you are, what your work schedule is like and your history with plants."

NO DOCTORATE REQUIRED

A four-year degree in horticulture or botany is not necessary to style plants. Ms Greene was earning her master's in education and literacy and hanging around plant shops when she realised she could make money from her hobby.

In 2013, Ms Munoz earned her certificate in horticulture from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and began working part-time at plant shops to further educate herself. Her business was born in 2014.

She recently installed 115 potted plants in Buck's large, light-filled offices overlooking the Brooklyn waterfront, at the behest of Mr Tait and his partners. Soon after, she said, the company asked for a proposal to add more plants.

"I think people just want things that make them happy. And things that are alive," Ms Munoz said, trailing off.

She considered her curious role.

"I mean, have you ever heard of plants making people mad?"

NYTIMES

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on March 21, 2020, with the headline Would you pay $2,900 for someone to style your houseplants?. Subscribe