DARRYL: If the plants could tell you and scream at you like, “What do I actually need?” Light is the first thing. Of course you still have to water, but none of those things can work unless the plant is working.
CHRISTINE: I’m Christine Cyr Clisset.
CAIRA: I’m Caira Blackwell.
ROSIE: I’m Rosie Guerin, and you’re listening to The Wirecutter Show.
CHRISTINE: This episode is called Stop Killing Your Houseplants.
ROSIE: Caira, Christine, so obviously we’re talking about houseplants.
CHRISTINE: Yes.
ROSIE: I get the sense that Christine, you have a little bit of a green thumb.
CHRISTINE: I do.
ROSIE: A light green thumb?
CHRISTINE: It’s a light green thumb. It’s like I have a lot of houseplants, but I neglect them. But they somehow, I think, have enough going on that they can stay alive.
CAIRA: That sounds like a green thumb to me.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, I mean it’s not like I’m doing a lot to them. It’s just like they… I water them every once in a while and they’re fine.
CAIRA: I can never say that.
ROSIE: What’s your situation?
CAIRA: I used to have plants. Guess where they are?
ROSIE: I feel like they’re six feet under.
CAIRA: Yeah, and they’re not growing back.
ROSIE: They’re compost.
CHRISTINE: What about you, Rosie?
ROSIE: I have actually moved away from having houseplants, because I’ve gotten so bummed out over the years after killing so many. I want to do better.
CHRISTINE: I absolutely think this is a problem a lot of people have.
ROSIE: I do too, yeah.
CHRISTINE: A lot of people in my life have told me this. I just can’t keep this thing alive, or it’s just not thriving. Why do they not look like the beautiful things I’m seeing on Instagram? And this time of year is a really great time to be thinking about your indoor plants. You might be seeing some flowers budding outside, but the indoor plants, they need some care in the spring, too. And so this is a great time if you’re trying to figure out how to make your current plants look nicer. Or if you’re plant curious, you don’t really have plants but you want to bring some home, this can be a great time to do that.
CAIRA: Yeah. So our first guest today isn’t a Wirecutter journalist, but he definitely fits right into the Wirecutter ethos. His name is Darryl Cheng, and he runs the website and Instagram handle House Plant Journal. He’s a trained engineer who takes a very specific approach to growing houseplants. It’s very left brain. So he’s going to be sharing some tips for making your houseplants, you know, survive.
CHRISTINE: And a little later, we’ll talk with Wirecutter senior staff writer Rose Lorre about great ways to get new houseplants on the cheap which I’m very excited about. We’ll take a quick break, and then we’ll be back with Darryl Cheng of House Plant Journal.
CAIRA: Welcome back. This episode, we’re talking all about houseplants, and ways to make yours thrive. Our first guest today is Darryl Cheng, and you might know him from his very popular Instagram account Houseplant Journal. His latest book is the New Plant Collector, the Next Adventure in Your Houseplant Journey. And he’s just a wealth of knowledge on how to give plants what they need and how to diagnose problems your plants might be having. And the tips we’re covering today apply to all plants by the way, really universal guidance for helping plants thrive.
CHRISTINE: Darryl, welcome to the show.
DARRYL: Hello, thanks for having me.
CHRISTINE: I’m really pumped to have you here. I have followed your Instagram account for years, so I’m like very into all the plant inspo. I’ve been looking at your new book, and trying to diagnose plants in my living room with what’s going on with them. So I’m very excited for this conversation. Something I think is super interesting about you is you have an engineering background, you’re an engineer by training. How does that impact your approach to plant care?
DARRYL: I think it actually falls back to the story of how this all started, which is many years ago when I was still living at home with my mom, she said to me, “Hey Darryl, can you decorate the house with some houseplants?” And I said, “Sure.” But she added, “You need to figure out how to take care of them because I’m quote unquote bad with plants.” Well yes, we hear that a lot and we laugh about it. But I thought, wait a minute, mom, you taught me how to do outdoor gardening and you’re pretty good at it. What’s so different about indoor plants? But she went back to the narrative of oh, I have a black thumb, I kill everything.
So I did like any good millennial wood and bought a bunch of plants, and tried to Google the care tips and stuff. And what I found was a lot of vague, hand wavy type of things. If you try and google houseplant care advice, you’ll find a lot of just dos and don’ts. But as an engineer, I want to know how things work so that I can choose what action to take rather than be told.
So that’s really how it began. And engineers love to measure things, and so I realized that a lot of the very important growth factors for plants are never really measured. In the houseplant realm, we don’t often talk about any measurements, and instead we go to very vague things like bright indirect light or oh, it likes medium light. My engineering mind just said, “You know what? This kind of way of talking about plants doesn’t really work for me, and so I’m going to try and decipher it for myself and even come up with my own framework, if you will.”
ROSIE: So I think I probably am aligned with your mom, although I don’t even have the outdoor gardening skill. But I’ve historically considered myself to have a black thumb. I have a black thumb, but I also have a black thumb, and I’ve just had a really tough time keeping plants alive. But every time I’ve had to say farewell, I’m like, “I’m going to do this again. I can do it better. I know I can get this.” I’m curious for myself, but also for the folks who have had trouble in the past, what does it mean to get back to basics? If you really strip this all down starting at square one, what does that look like?
DARRYL: If we’re going to talk really, really right down to before you even buy a plant, what’s the mentality of owning a houseplant? And I think a majority of people believe that if I am able to quote unquote care for this plant correctly, then I should never ever lose a leaf and the plant should look perfect all the time. And right then and there, I will say that’s completely wrong, and let’s shift it towards the fact that every individual leaf has a limited lifespan. It doesn’t last forever if only you care for it correctly.
But rather the goal of owning a houseplant in the long term is that your growth outpaces the decaying of the older leaves. And the last point is that your plants will change. They’ll grow and they’ll keep changing, and there will be a point where you don’t like the structure of it anymore, and then you have to know what to do in order to reset that structure. And all of that should be an expectation of owning a plant for the long term.
CHRISTINE: That really resonates with me. I’ve had some monsteras that have gotten too big for their britches and I don’t actually like the way they look anymore. But I actually have more frequently had the opposite problem where it’s a failure to thrive. The plant isn’t getting big, and beautiful and lush, and I’m like, “Oh no, I don’t like the shape.” It’s like, “Oh no, the leaves are yellowing, or I’m losing you, you’re half the size of when I got you.” What do you think are the most important things that people miss in terms of when their plants are just not thriving?
DARRYL: At least when I first realized this, there’s another hit of reality, which is that the shape of the plant that you buy is what’s the result of growing in a nursery. And if you were to objectively measure the light in there, let’s just throw the numbers right out. It’s between 1,000 to 5,000 foot-candles of light hitting it for most of the day. You take that same plant and you bring it home. Let’s say you follow some Google advice that says, “Oh, it’s okay in low light,” and so you decide to put it far from your window. You measure the light far from your window, and it’s 50 foot-candles.
CHRISTINE: And the foot-candles, that’s a way of measuring light. Just to be clear, that’s how you measure the light that’s coming through the window?
DARRYL: Yes, that’s right. Ignoring the unit, just think of the number. At a nursery, you take out your light meter, it’s 1,000. In your house far from the window, you take out your light meter and it’s 50. So we’re dealing with even less than 10 times difference here. So what’s the result of that? Your plant is now having one-tenth the productivity. What is photosynthesis? It’s just the plant making its own food, which is a really amazing feat if you really think about it. Now its little engine is running at one-tenth the speed, and therefore pumping out carbohydrates at one-tenth the speed. It would show.
CAIRA: It sounds like you suggest that people really should have a light meter, and take it to the plant store where they’re buying the plant and use it in their own homes. Do you have any suggestions for people who don’t have a light meter? I imagine that most people who just want to buy a couple of plants for their house don’t really want to spend the money on that. So what can you do to gauge the light in your own home or when you’re going shopping?
DARRYL: Yeah, I’m not suggesting that everyone has a light meter. I’m saying if you have more than 10 plants or if you’re starting to spend in the range of several hundreds of dollars, I would hate for you to spend that much money only to be disappointed with what your plant looks like because you didn’t know the light levels in your home. So let’s say, yeah, you just want to get a few plants to decorate your space, you don’t want to use the light meter? Then my advice is the plants have to be right in front of the window. Not 10 feet away, right in front.
CAIRA: Got it.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, I feel like I see that in New York City. You’ll walk by people’s apartments, and you’ll just see the windows are full of plants. And I fight with that in my own apartment, because I want the light to come in and hit the humans in the apartment, not just the plants. But like you’re saying, it is really just that you got to get them as much light as possible.
DARRYL: Yeah. And the second part is, don’t expect your plants to grow as nicely as somebody who has simply larger windows.
ROSIE: Right, so it’s really expectation setting. It’s understanding that wherever your plants came from was likely more of a conducive environment for growth than where you’re taking them. Unless you’re really setting up the conditions in which your plant can thrive, by which we mean placing them somewhere in front of a lot of light.
DARRYL: I have a funny saying, where I say anybody who you think has a green thumb probably just has exceptionally large and unobstructed windows.
ROSIE: Okay, so I love that. Let’s talk about that though. Explain it to me like I’m in preschool, the difference between direct sunlight, indirect sunlight. How do I know that what I’m being told is true in terms of someone selling me a plant that needs indirect sunlight, and I go home and I put it where?
DARRYL: In my mind, telling someone bright indirect light, telling someone high, medium and low. I actually think that whole system should be just put to the trash.
ROSIE: It seems very subjective.
DARRYL: It is completely subjective. And another often stated system is saying, “Oh, it’s an east window, it’s a north window, south window.” That doesn’t make any sense. Nobody’s windows are exactly the same size. Nobody’s windows have the same obstructions outside. The way that we talk about temperature outside is to tell you what you should wear outside, obviously so you know if you need a parka or if you can just go with a windbreaker.
But if we were to say high, medium and low temperature, that doesn’t make any sense. We all need to have the actual degrees Celsius or degrees Fahrenheit in order for us to make a judgment about how to go outside. With light, saying bright indirect light and high, medium and low is actually completely useless. It’s either you use the numbers, or you just have to put it right in front of the window and hope for the best.
CHRISTINE: Okay, we’ve talked about how important light is. It’s get those plants right up to the window if you can. What if you are dealing with a situation where you really love houseplants, you want to have this lush, beautiful houseplant garden in your home, but you don’t have optimal light. What are some options for people who just don’t have great light?
DARRYL: Well, the great news is nowadays, we have white LED lighting, so you can use that type of light to grow most houseplants. Pothos, ZZ plants, snake plant, monstera. These kinds of plants have much more modest light requirements. And I’m so sorry, going back to measuring again, because I’ve seen thousands of people’s questions who show me hey, why is my monstera doing so badly even though I use a grow light? And then I say to them, “Show me a picture of how you’ve actually set this up.” And the grow light is pointing at the monstera five feet away. If you measured it, you would see the number is a 100 foot-candles or whatever. Every inch that you move a grow light closer will change the number dramatically on a light meter.
So my saying about grow lights is this. If you’re using a grow light without measuring it, it’s like you’re using an oven without knowing what temperature you’ve set it at. Sure, you could just turn it on and hope for the best. But what I’m saying is I’ve seen enough examples of it failing that it’s not worth the failure.
ROSIE: What is the percentage do you think of times you’re answering people’s questions with get a light meter?
DARRYL: I would say it’s 50 and 49 of two different issues. One is the light, poor lighting, and they’re not aware that it’s poor lighting. And the other 49% is the expectations. Like, “Oh no, this leaf is yellow, what am I doing wrong?” Your plant is fine. It’s always supposed to lose that lowest leaf.
CAIRA: This is so interesting. I don’t have any plants right now because… Well, I always thought that I had a black thumb. But I’ve also historically always lived in apartments with pretty terrible lighting, including right now. I basically live in a basement. So what are some good species for people to consider if they have this issue? Well, what do you think is pretty dummy proof?
DARRYL: I actually don’t like calling it that, because then it implies that you are incapable of taking care of a plant. Whereas really it’s just am I going to be happy with how this plant looks in one year’s time? And that’s more of a subjective thing that you could adjust in some ways and not make it totally based on just your own skills, so to speak.
The ones that you will notice the least change is snake plant, ZZ plant, pothos. You should buy one of each type of those plants, and two of them keep them right in front of your windows and one of them put them wherever you want. And then two months later, switch it out. Switch out the one that’s in the decorative position, and then put that other one back to the window so that it doesn’t starve.
CHRISTINE: So that would work even in like a windowless room.
DARRYL: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.
CHRISTINE: So I have a question around pets and plants.
DARRYL: Yes.
CHRISTINE: I have a geriatric cat who loves to go munch on my plants, and it’s a constant struggle. What’s your advice for people who have pets?
DARRYL: I don’t have any pets right now, but I took care of my friend’s two cats for about two weeks. And one of them was quite munchy, and I’ve learned that with cats, if you say no to them, you have to give them a yes right after that.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, they’re like children in that way.
DARRYL: Yes. So what I did was I quickly grew some cat grass, which is the actual grass that they should eat a little bit of, moved the plants out of the way so that they’re not so inviting. But then right where I had those plants before I put the cat grass, so that that way when the cat came up to it, it was allowed to eat it and it was fine. And really, all it was is what it just wanted to munch on something leafy.
CHRISTINE: Right. Okay, I love that.
CAIRA: Well I had a question about… Earlier, you talked about how a lot of people don’t think of indoor plants as having seasons like an outdoor plant would.
DARRYL: Yes.
CAIRA: But it is spring now, and to that end, what should a plant parent really be doing differently now versus other times of the year? And does that even depend on where you live, like the outside climate?
DARRYL: So in an indoor setting, the temperature change is not nearly as dramatic as for outdoors. So interestingly enough, there’s a misinterpretation that, for example, winter has “Less light.” Yes, if you’re outdoors in the middle of an open field, there is less light. But the sun’s angle is much lower in the sky. Plus, there are no leaves to block the sun. So in fact in the winter, the sun peers into my living room longer than it would in the summer.
People say, “Oh, water less in winter.” Well, not necessarily. If you’re getting more sun, plus the air is drier in the winter, then everything is actually evaporating faster and being used up faster. So you could be watering more frequently in the winter, which is why I say if you’re observing your soil dryness as your cue to water and not just the rote schedule, then you won’t be affected by the changes, and rather just observe how the soil dries.
CHRISTINE: I really love that, because it really brings the thing that outdoor gardeners do in their gardens but it’s this real attunement with nature. I think the thing with plants for a lot of people is they see these beautiful pictures on Instagram. They see these beautiful lush spreads in magazines, and plants for a lot of people are this part of decor. In your most recent book especially, you talk about some reasons you should think beyond that for being a plant parent. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that. Why do you think that someone who is approaching taking care of indoor plants should think about these plants as more than just decor?
DARRYL: I call it the ABC of houseplant appreciation. A is for the aesthetic. So that’s the main part, which is like… Okay, yes, the first thing people think of is it looks nice, the plant looks nice and makes my space look nice. Which I’m not saying it doesn’t, it definitely does. But then beyond that there’s B, which is for biology. And that’s when you can appreciate how the plant grows, and even how… It’s very different than how humans live, because we can’t chop off a piece of our arm and have it grow another person. But the plant can do that.
And then the last part is C, which is companionship. When I have my monstera for a long enough time that you couldn’t simply replace it with another monstera, it wouldn’t be the one that I grew. So there’s actual companionship with this as a living thing.
CHRISTINE: Okay, Darryl, sometimes we like to do a rapid fire lightning round of questions at the end of an episode, so we thought that would be fun to do with you. We want to ask you for your plant recs for different spaces. Are you game?
DARRYL: Yes, let’s do it.
CHRISTINE: All right, answer the quickest thing that comes to your mind. Basement apartment with just a few tiny half windows, what would you recommend?
DARRYL: A ZZ plant.
CHRISTINE: I want plants in my windowless interior rooms. This is for me.
DARRYL: Fake plants. Oh, okay, sorry, sorry, sorry. Actually, you buy three plants, two of them in the window, one of them in the space, and rotate.
CHRISTINE: Okay. I live in the desert with barely any humidity.
DARRYL: Cactus.
CHRISTINE: Tiny apartment with big plant aspirations.
DARRYL: I think a pothos would be good. It’ll grow fast, you’ll have too much to handle in one year.
CHRISTINE: Sunroom with drafty windows, with freezing temperatures outside.
DARRYL: A freezing temperature. Okay, you got to start venturing into outdoor gardening. Hibiscus, for example. You keep it outside in the summer right in the sun, it can so-call overwinter. Even in a garage, it can still tolerate a cold room that’s bright. It’ll just defoliate for most of the time until springtime, and then it grows new leaves.
CHRISTINE: Lives alone and travels a lot.
DARRYL: I would also say cactus.
CHRISTINE: Okay.
ROSIE: Okay, so I just want to recap because I think the most important thing I’m taking away from this conversation is a reminder of how photosynthesis works from biology. You’re talking about light, light, light. If all else fails, understand that light is how your plants get fed.
DARRYL: Yes. If the plants could tell you and scream at you like, “What do I actually need?” Light is the first thing. Of course you still have to water. Of course I do all those things. But none of those things can work unless the plant is working.
ROSIE: And I think the other thing that is jumping out from what you talked about is setting expectations, understanding that these are living things, and that I’m not always thriving, let’s be honest. So why would my plants always be thriving?
DARRYL: So you do your best with the care, and you try to set up the environment as best you can. But nature is still going to happen, decay is still going to happen. If you wanted it to look the same or always perfect all the time, then that’s where the fake plant comes in.
ROSIE: Darryl Cheng is the author of the books: The New Plant Parent and The New Plant Collector . Darryl, thank you so, so much for joining us. Appreciate it.
DARRYL: Thank you very much.
CHRISTINE: Thanks Darryl, thank you. We’re going to take a quick break and when we’re back we’ll have Wirecutter senior staff writer Rose Lorre on to talk about the best hacks for getting houseplants on the cheap. We’ll be right back.
Welcome back. Before the break, we chatted with Darryl Cheng about how to keep your houseplants happy this spring. Hint hint, it’s all about light. And now we’re going to talk about how to get great houseplants on the cheap. I don’t know about you, but I find houseplants incredibly expensive. They really are plant shops, so I’m excited to hear about this.
CAIRA: Yeah, that’s right. I am so ashamed about all the money that I’ve put into houseplants that I killed immediately, but that’s why we’re going to talk with Rose Lorre, who is a Wirecutter senior staff writer. She’s written about how to find plants for a fraction of what you’d pay at a fancy plant shop, and she really does know how to find a bargain. She’s going to share strategies for where and how to shop, and even how to propagate plants yourself so you can just get it for free. Rose, welcome to the show.
ROSE: Thank you, it’s so great to be here. How are you all?
CHRISTINE: Good.
ROSIE: Good.
CHRISTINE: And we’re excited to talk to you about plants.
ROSE: I’m always excited to talk about plants.
ROSIE: All right, rose plants, pots, all the stuff involved. Let’s set aside for a minute. You don’t have a good track record of keeping them alive, even aspirationally, this stuff gets expensive. You have something like 57 houseplants in your home?
ROSE: Last I counted, yes.
ROSIE: That’s incredible. You got them for all about $50, total?
ROSE: From the best of my recollection, I think it cost me in the ballpark of $50.
ROSIE: Where are you finding these plants?
ROSE: Honestly, most of them I’m finding through some sort of local buy nothing or buy nothing like group. There’s a few that I belong to. Some are specific to plants, some are not. And I do a lot of buy-sell-swap trade of plants just from there. People, they want to trim their pothos plant. Those trimmings become new pothos plants, they give them away. A lot of people, myself included, their plants get too big for their space. And unfortunately you have to know that it’s time to say goodbye to that plant, because you just can’t care for it the way it needs to or should be cared for. So yeah, it’s not a strict one-to-one trade, but like it’s a community of folks that you know are up for helping each other out.
ROSIE: What are some other reasons you would want to swap or re-home a plant?
ROSE: Sometimes a plant just doesn’t thrive in your air, in your environment, and it can be tricky sometimes to pinpoint why. And then you just… It’s the same thing where it’s like, “Well I just have to see if someone else wants to try and take this on. I can’t figure out if it’s a light issue, or a humidity issue or whatever the case may be.” So I think that’s the reason a lot of people… Or it’s just like, “I have too many plants.” I have to admit that I’ve done that too. I’ve downsized from time to time.
CHRISTINE: It’s time to purge. Can I ask, when you’re looking for a buy, sell or buy nothing group in your area, what are you doing? Are you Googling Facebook Marketplace plants? If somebody’s just curious, they want to find-
ROSIE: It’s a keyword search.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, what is the keyword search?
ROSE: I think you hit… If I were starting from scratch, I would search on Facebook, I would look plant, buy, sell, swap, trade, local. I would put my town name in. Gardening, that’s another thing that I’ve noticed that even if you find it hard to find plant communities, meaning houseplant communities locally, try gardening next. And there are people who garden who will also like have indoor houseplants, and so you can find people that way too.
CAIRA: I’ve also seen it all over Reddit. It’s very easy to find your local subreddits for plants.
CHRISTINE: Ooh, a little subreddit community.
ROSE: I didn’t even think about that. That’s a great idea too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
CHRISTINE: What about, I’ve sometimes seen the botanic garden close to me doing plant sales. Did you ever hit up local plant communities in that way?
ROSE: I do, I do. In fact, you just reminded me that I forgot a prop I was going to bring because I thought you guys would get a laugh out of it. So the town next to mine in New Jersey has a garden club, and every spring they do a huge three or four day sale. The prop I was going to bring was they send me a postcard every year to remind me, and the postcard is good for $1 off a purchase of $10 or more. And I just think, but like I will take that dollar, thank you very much. That’s how cheap I am. So I do find that gardening clubs, botanic clubs, botanic gardens, definitely check those out.
ROSIE: To be fair Rose, you did bring a couple of props including your shirt. What does your shirt read for folks that-
ROSE: My shirt says easily distracted by plants.
ROSIE: Love it.
ROSE: Which is true.
ROSIE: And then also there’s a prop on the desk here. What do you have?
ROSE: Rosie, this is not a prop, this is a gift.. Y’all can have some snake plants to take home.
ROSIE: Oh, I love this.
CAIRA: Oh my god. So this is a cutting, it’s not a whole plant, right?
ROSE: Correct. Well, more or less, yes. This is most snake plants that you would see potted, there’d be more stalks than what I have here. But it could be.
CHRISTINE: Rose, I’m very curious about how you go about finding good, healthy plants. When you’re kind of looking on Facebook marketplace or other places online, how do you kind of gauge whether something is healthy and worth your time? Have you run into any issues with unhealthy plants when you get them off of Facebook marketplace?
ROSE: I did once get a plant years ago that slowly looked like it was flagging, dying. And I did ultimately investigate, meaning I de-potted it, and there were ants in the soil. That’s the only time I’ve ever had that problem. But also, I got that plant for free. That’s one of the reasons that I… I’m a natural cheapskate. But one of the reasons that I like doing plants for free is some plants die. You’re not going to have 100% success. And if I didn’t pay anything or next to nothing for the plant, then it stings less. That’s all.
CAIRA: Don’t you run the risk of bringing basically a sick plant into your environment though, and then it can affect the others?
ROSE: The way that it can affect the others is if it has some sort of an infestation. Something like fungus, gnats, mealy bugs, spider mites. Very small bugs that live either on the leaf, often the underside of the leaf, sometimes where the leaf meets the stem, sometimes in the soil. Now it would have to be a very severe infestation to actually kill a plant, but it’s certainly not ideal and it’s not always pretty to look at. And yeah, you definitely want to avoid it.
So yes, when you get a new plant, look at it real close. You want to look for spider mites. Honestly, you should have a magnifying glass or an app on your phone that works as a magnifying glass. If you look at the guide to buying plants online, you can see a couple examples of this. Sometimes you can’t really see the spider mites, but you can see their strings. They just look like very thin white threads. So you should definitely inspect your plants when they get home.
One of the things that I try and do as much as possible, and you do need to have the space for this in your home. You should quarantine any new plant that comes in, no matter where you get it from. If you can quarantine it in a room where it’s the only plant in the room, great. If you need to just make it a corner of a room. The most you can do, you should do for about a week.
CHRISTINE: Okay, so let’s just do a quick recap so far. You don’t need to spend a lot (if anything) on new plants. Try to find local buy-nothing groups and garden clubs, make plant friends who can give you cuttings, and dial-in your plant keyword search on Facebook Marketplace. And when you do bring home a new plant, it’s a good idea to quarantine it for about a week to make sure it’s healthy and won’t spread anything to your other plants.
CAIRA: We wanted to ask you, because you did test how to shop for plants online last year, and I have a two part question for this. First of all, why are people shopping for plants online? Because it just seems like there’s a wealth of options in most local areas. And then if you do want to do that, is it worth it?
ROSE: That’s a great question. So the first part, I honestly would say that an online plant purveyor should be your last option. It’s good if you want to send a gift long distance. I live by snake plants and pothos plants. I like my bread and butter plants. But I also like plants that have pink in the leaves, I’m a real sucker for that. I just got a cloche, a glass dome. I got it from a garage sale, of course. I’ve always wanted to grow a plant under a cloche, because you can create a little micro high humid environment. And so I’m thinking for that, since there are specific plants I would want to grow in that, I might splurge on a dot com type plant purchase.
But yeah, for the most part that to me is like your last option. I would look for neighbors, I would look for garden sales, I would look for local plant shops. Everyone’s probably got a big box store near them. Home Depot has a section, and Lowe’s usually has a section. They’re not expensive, but they’re usually not in the greatest shape. They just don’t get the attention that they need. But you can probably rescue from there if that’s your best option. Online plant purveyors to me are for gifts, or special plants that you’re… I want this plant, I’m willing to splurge over my usual.
CAIRA: And you think that they travel well? I just imagine plants coming in a box and I’m like, “Wouldn’t that kill it?”
ROSE: Right. A good plant purveyor will either include for free when necessary or they’ll ask you to spend like another five bucks on a heat pack, which is just the ones that you break and put on your sore leg or what the case may be. And we found that those can work pretty well. And they should be packed very, very well. We actually timed how long it took us to open each package, because between the dirt, and leaves getting bruised, or bent, or damaged or snapped off, there’s a lot of reasons why this thing really needs to be packed well. It should have a lot of signage on the outside. We counted up how many, like this side up live plants inside all those sorts of stickers.
So for the most part, the delivery was not as bad as you might fear. There was one snake plant that did meet the worst possible fate it could have met. It did not have a heat pack, and it arrived. The leaves were soggy and spongy, and flopped over. It was dying. It took all of what, two, three days in transit to basically kill this thing in a cold snap. But for the most part, the plant will survive those two or three days.
CHRISTINE: But by and large, just go local.
ROSE: Oh, yes.
CHRISTINE: Just go local if you can, and skip them.
ROSIE: Unless you’re trying to buy a rose that you can put under a cloche like in-
CAIRA: Beauty and the Beast?
CHRISTINE: Like in Beauty and the Beast.
CAIRA: Okay, Rose. Well before we wrap, we usually ask our guests one final question. What’s the last thing you’ve bought that you’ve really loved?
ROSE: First of all, I have been trying to buy less in 2025, just in general. But there are things that you have to buy like toilet paper, and I have been trying to find ways to bring less plastic into my home and into my life. So I-
ROSIE: I’m terrified of whatever this is going to be.
CAIRA: This is a real setup.
ROSE: It is? All right, well the punchline is I bought Who Gives A Crap toilet paper. That’s the punchline.
CAIRA: I love Who Gives A Crap.
ROSE: I bought the Who Gives A Crap.
CHRISTINE: And this is toilet paper we recommend, right?
CAIRA: Yes.
ROSE: Yes, it is. And that’s-
CAIRA: And it comes wrapped in this pretty paper. It’s almost like a gift.
ROSE: Very pretty paper. Okay, so you’ve used it?
CAIRA: Yeah, I love it.
ROSE: There’s one roll in the box that has a little label on it that says, “Open this one last,” and I haven’t opened it. I’m really curious to see what happens.
CAIRA: I’m not going to ruin the surprise.
ROSE: If anyone can make toilet paper fun, they’ve found a way. But yeah, the packaging, which is paper, is very appealing. It’s just fun, and there have been no complaints.
CHRISTINE: Is it really soft?
CAIRA: Yes.
CHRISTINE: What’s so great about it? Yeah.
ROSE: I think it is soft.
ROSIE: Thank you so much for joining us, Rose.
ROSE: You’re welcome, thank you.
CHRISTINE: Thanks, Rose.
CHRISTINE: All right. That was a lot of plant info.
CAIRA: It really was.
CHRISTINE: What do y’all think?
ROSIE: I loved it.
CHRISTINE: Yeah.
ROSIE: I feel empowered actually after that. I think the combination of Rose suggesting you can get plants very, very cheaply if not free, and Darryl reminding me about photosynthesis-
CHRISTINE: Yes, science.
ROSIE: … and how essentially light is how you feed plants.
CHRISTINE: I knew that, but I forgot that I kept thinking, oh, if I just give my plants more fertilizer, maybe they’ll perk up a little bit.
ROSIE: Totally.
CAIRA: Or water.
ROSIE: Water, yeah.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
CAIRA: Just over-watering, I think that was my problem before. And also I’ve always lived in apartments that just didn’t have much light at all. But I think if I really wanted to take care of another plant baby anytime soon, I think I would just get a pothos and hang it directly in the one window I do have and let it do its thing.
CHRISTINE: Let it do its thing, yeah.
CAIRA: And not expect it to grow into a big, huge flowing plant, it’s just going to be a little one.
CHRISTINE: Set your expectations, yeah. I also think I might want to get a light meter, because I think that I’m ready. I have maybe 20 plants in my apartment.
CAIRA: Oh, that’s definitely enough.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, maybe I’m ready to actually get a little scientific. And I would like to welcome some more plant babies into my home, so I think I’m going to keep an eye out this spring and summer for plant sales. Rose’s great advice around look for plant sales at garden clubs or locally. I don’t think that I have the patience for Facebook Marketplace for finding plants, but I would dip into a little plant sale.
CAIRA: Find your community.
CHRISTINE: That’s right.
ROSIE: As ever, if you want to find out more about Wirecutter’s coverage, head over to our website or you can find a link in the show notes.
CHRISTINE: And Rosie, if you would like to learn more about fake plants, we also have a fake plant guide to the least terrible fake plants.
ROSIE: I love that. I prefer faux because it makes me feel-
CHRISTINE: Because it’s classier.
ROSIE: Yeah, it makes me feel a little bit better, but I’m going to check that out. Darryl Cheng’s two books, the New Plant Parent and the New Plant Collector are available now. And you can check him out @HouseplantJournal on Instagram. That’s it for us.
CHRISTINE: See you.
ROSIE: Bye. Bye-bye.
The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by me, Rosie Guerin, and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddie Mazziello and Nick Pittman. Today’s episode was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Alicia Byetu and Diane Wong. Wirecutter’s deputy publisher is Cliff Levy. Ben Fruman is Wirecutter’s Editor in chief.
CAIRA: I’m Caira Blackwell.
CHRISTINE: I’m Christine Cyr Clisset.
ROSIE: And I’m Rosie Guerin. Thank you for listening.
[BLOOPER]
CHRISTINE: Botanic, botanic.
ROSIE: Botanic.
CHRISTINE: Botanic.
CAIRA: Rose, sometimes I see the local botanic garden close to me has no-
ROSIE: Still no.
CAIRA: I’m not saying it right, I’m sorry.
