Plant Corner

Plant Corner started out of the corner of my apartment during the pandemic. I was growing my plant collection and was getting into rare plants, which are often expensive and difficult to find, and I found out that my cousin in Thailand (where I’m from) actually grows them as a hobby. He had lost his job during COVID, and we thought, let’s do this together! I started importing the plants and taking care of them. I'd had maybe three succulents before , but soon that grew to two hundred plants all in the corner of my apartment! Then, I saw this space open up two doors down from my apartment with these big, flow-through, East-facing windows, and I thought, this is perfect.

If it’s a watering day, it's a lot of watering. I probably have a couple thousand plants in here. We spray our plants with insecticide, fungicide, and bio-protectant once a week. A lot of the time in the day is also spent chatting to customers. I wanted to build a store where people can come in, take a seat, and just chat about plants. I wanted to build that family and community. People often come in to ask me for advice and don't even buy plants – and that's okay, too! Oh, and it’s also a lot of paperwork and unpacking and ordering, and also running the website and Instagram, too.

You do need to research your plants. Most people hope that they can just water a plant once a week and then the plant will be good, but you have to know your plants. Even if you only have one or two plants, you should know where they're from and what their natural environment is. That's the only way to keep your plants healthy and happy. But it's a learning process, and if you kill a plant, that's also part of your learning process.

There's an Indian restaurant that's really good on 122nd and Malcom X Blvd. It's called Indian Summer. We also usually go to a Mexican place on 113th and Malcom X called Los Tres Charros.