LIZ CARLSON
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Global lockdowns hit hard for travel writer Liz Carlson, known to her more than 200,000 followers as the world-travelling Young Adventuress, but she did not sit idle. She put her passport away, and opened a designer houseplant shop called Node in Lyttelton, Christchurch. Carlson, 34, also took the opportunity to write a justreleased book, Houseplants and Design. She is now based in Wānaka.
LIZ: I moved back to Wānaka after my partner and I split. I’m living in a one-bedroom flat in one of the new subdivisions in Hāwea.
I was living in Rāpaki, Christchurch, for a few years, but I’d been in Wānaka on and off for 10 years.
Node was meant to be a pop-up, but it became massive. I think that’s because houseplants are trendy and popular, but there were no stylish shops like you’d see overseas.
My partner and I split a year ago, and I did that sad bouncing around friends’ houses, house-sitting thing, went back to the United States for a bit. I’m from Northern Virginia, just outside of DC.
I hadn’t been able to get back for three years, so it was really beautiful and hard. I lost my stepdad who was basically my dad at the beginning of the pandemic, so it was big to go and spend time with my family.
After university, I moved to Spain to teach English. I’m a fluent Spanish speaker and lived all over Spain for a few years.
I was blogging just for fun about what it was like to live there as an expat. And I thought: “Who are all these people reading this who aren’t my mum?”
I learnt that travel blogging was a thing: you could get famils (familiarisation trips) and free trips. So I built my website and started strategically thinking of how to turn it into a business. That was Young Adventuress. It took less than a year. Before that I worked for a company shipping train engine parts to South America, like in a cubicle nine to five.
At night, I’d come home and work on my blog, build a following, set goals and stuff.
I’d been travelling for years and years before – Croatia, Egypt, Peru … I backpacked through Europe a few times – and I started digging through my past and retelling those stories.
I’m from Winchester. It’s cold, just on the edge of the Appalachians, bible thumpers, Trump America. DC is modern but as soon as you’re out of it, it’s the opposite. I always dreamed of seeing the world. I used to rip out the pages of brochures for travel and National Geographic. As soon as I could, that’s what I did. I’ve been doing it full-time since 2013. Until Covid I was doing 100 flights a year around the world.
I came to New Zealand in 2013 on a working holiday visa. But I was already running my own business and I could live and work anywhere. I was that first influencer, professional travel blogger. Nobody was doing it here.
Because my work is very transitory, the idea of home is really important. I’m a homebody introvert. I got to a point in 2017: I was so burnt out, up until Covid I was depressed with severe anxiety. I look back and think I’m surprised I’m alive. I wasn’t sleeping. I’d be flying and having panic attacks on the plane.
It was probably due to the fact I had very little work-life balance in a very competitive industry. Travel is amazing. I don’t regret it, but you’re working 20-hour days.
I started buying fresh flowers. One day I bought an orchid, and then a peace lily. Planting stuff in my flat was a beautiful way to balance my hectic digital life.
I sink my fingers into the dirt, forget about that stuff, watch something grow, nurture it. It’s like having a pet or a child but with a lotless responsibility.
In 2019, when I moved to Lyttelton, I dialled back my work a lot and decided to chill. That’s when I really got into plants. I had 350 at one point.
Since starting the shop, I sold off most of my rare collection. I’ve sold lots of plants or cuttings for more than $1000. That’s how intense it was. Prices have come down a lot now.
I miss Lyttelton but most of my friends are in Wānaka. When you’re healing from a break-up, you need your people. I don’t know what I’ll do next. I want to write another book. I’ve got five, mostly nonfiction, in the planning. I have a curious brain.
Even my plant book is about mental health and mindfulness and learning to look after yourself in a crazy world. That’s the stuff I care about.