On Instagram, Houseplant Sellers Turn Likes Into Green Thumbs

“I am running the Instagram account more as a gallery, including what is happening in the larger landscape of indoor planting,” he said.

According to Mr. Sabharwal, nearly all of the company’s plants are imported from Florida to nurseries on Long Island that distribute them. “Time is money for most of these growers,” he said.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, nurseries are also eager to profit from the rise of plant sales on social media.

Hirt’s Gardens, a plant seller in Ohio that has been in business for 105 years, has experienced a 30 percent increase in profits over the last decade because of social media, said Matt Hirt, one of the company’s owners.

Mr. Hirt, 42, said that the strong sales were in spite of buyers who take advantage of propagation, the ability of certain plant species to spawn new plants from cuttings. (He can tell when someone buys a plant to “love it,” he said, as opposed to buying it simply with a plan to propagate it and sell it forward.)

“It doesn’t take away from my profit,” Mr. Hirt said, adding that his internet sales for 2019 were around $1.5 million — nearly double the previous year’s.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/12/style/instagram-plant-sellers.html?emc=rss&partner=rss