The rise and fall of the houseplant
A Philodendron pink princess was $500 at the height of our obsession, now they go for about $20, writes Amy Wright.
For Bruce Nolan, it started with some little plant cuttings his wife brought home from work. The Christchurch dad wasn’t sure exactly what to do, but decided to pop them into water. For two months, they sat without doing much.
Then one day, he noticed they had finally grown roots. That was it, he says. The love affair was born.
‘‘It became like a nurturing thing. Getting the light right, getting the conditions that they liked. Just seeing these things come to life. It started to snowball from there.’’
It was 2020, and like the rest of the country, Nolan was stuck indoors during the pandemic. Houseplants were getting a lot of attention, and he feels he got swept up in the craze.
He spent weekends visiting plant stores and nurseries. Facebook Marketplace was also awash with cuttings at that time. He gathered up dozens of plants and found joy and satisfaction in caring for and viewing his collection.
Wa¯ naka woman Liz Carlson was experiencing the 2020 national plant craze from a different angle. She opened her designer houseplant store Node in Lyttelton, Canterbury, in the winter of that year.
‘‘Everyone was stuck at home, no-one was travelling, in general spending on your home increased massively,’’ she says.
‘‘We just found that people became house plant-obsessed, we would release a new plant and it would sell out immediately. I managed to get pink princess philodendrons before anyone else from a private grower, and I sold them for $500 with a standard markup. That wasn’t me price-gouging. I sold them all out in a day, it was wild.’’
Pink princesses are an excellent example of how things have changed in the indoor plant market. From $500 in 2020, you can sometimes now find fully established pink princesses at the supermarket for around $20.
Carlson recalls spending $700 on her dream plant – a
Philodendron gloriosum in 2020.
‘‘That was for only three leaves too. Now I can’t even sell a rooted plant for $50.’’
Ruby Topzand, spokesperson for auction site Trade Me, says the houseplant market has certainly cooled on the site. Trade Me experienced a 27% drop in the number of indoor plants sold onsite this February, compared with February last year.
Topzand contrasts the drop with the fact that indoor plant sales on Trade Me have still increased by 207% in the three years since February 2019.
Carlson feels several factors are affecting the indoor plant market this year.
Demand first started to drop when people resumed travelling and going overseas when restrictions eased.
‘‘It also looks like we are heading into a recession, and people are tightening their purse strings on extra expenses.’’
At the time of the 2020 craze, nurseries could not keep up with demand. Due to strict biosecurity laws, it can take up to a year to bring new plants into the country. But now there is an oversupply and Carlson suspects the market has become saturated.
With private buyers able to sell cuttings from their plants, specimens were once considered rare are now widely available.
She also wonders if some wholesale nurseries may have become greedy during the craze and if their mark-ups were higher than they should have been. ‘‘A new plant would be released at a high price, then after a month it would be on special for a quarter of the price because it was overproduced.’’
While Carlson can see the market has changed drastically, she feels it is now more steady and settled. ‘‘Looking at our sales and trends, it’s definitely not what it was before. But I think there is still a steady supply.’’
The shift is to less collecting and more to buyers being specific about what they like and that suit their space, she says.
‘‘We’re still selling the plants that look nice and are easy to care for – peace lilies, monsteras and golden pothos, trailing philodendrons. Unusual cactus and succulents are also popular.’’
Nolan feels that his plant craze peaked when he bought his home in August 2021. He filled every corner with plants, but finally had a moment of clarity last year.
‘‘I think I snapped out of it last year. You look around and your house is being overrun, every corner is filled with a plant. It’s an obsession but there is a life span to it.’’
He has reduced his collection to about 15 plants now, he says. With two small children, he no longer has the space.
Not to mention winter is coming, and his fireplace is covered in plants.
However, Nolan notes his obsession hasn’t exactly ended, more just shifted into a different direction.
‘‘My obsession has morphed into my garden, I now have a deep love for my garden plants.’’