Growing Joy with Plants - Wellness Rooted in Nature, Houseplants, Gardening and Plant Care · Maria Failla- Happy Plant Lady and Author of Growing Joy: The Plant Lover's Guide to Cultivating Happiness

A Day in the Life of a Plant Consultant Helping Plant Parents Fight Pests (and the Scariest Scale on Plants Infestation You've Ever Seen)

·50 min·3 clips

Richard says a change in management at the plant shop led to him being laid off in December.

1. Growing Joy with Plants centers this episode on Richard, also known as Lord Fierce and Plant Daddy MD, as a New York City plant consultant. 2. Maria introduces Richard as a guest she met at PlantCon in New York City and says he built a full-time plant career from an unusual path. 3. The episode asks how a love of plants becomes paid work, especially in a city where house calls, management, and pest treatment overlap. 4. Richard says his earliest plant memory comes from his mother’s backyard garden, where she grew fruits, vegetables, and herbs after immigrating from Vietnam in the 1980s. 5. He describes the garden as half orderly like rice patties and half chaotic, where a rusty swing set and a mason jar became his first improvised terrarium. 6. He says his first major houseplant was a four-inch green pothos from The Sill in the Lower East Side, placed where he would see it first thing in the morning. 7. Richard explains that the pothos led to a snake plant, a spider plant, and eventually a jungle of houseplants behind him. 8. He says his first collection focused on the classics such as snake plants, spider plants, and monstera before he found begonias, especially a begonia escargot. 9. He describes the begonia escargot as swirl-shaped, fuzzy, and iridescent, and says it pushed him toward odd and unusual plants. 10. Richard says a coworker noticed how much he studied plant families, native ranges, and terminology around 2017 and suggested botany school. 11. Instead of taking on another degree, he looked up UC Berkeley, found a syllabus with recommended readings, and used the Brooklyn library to teach himself. 12. He says that self-education gave him enough foundation to talk taxonomy and terminology, but he still wanted hands-on practice with live plants. 13. Richard describes experimenting with his own collection by testing light, placement, and plant response, then passing those observations to other people. 14. He says friends and family began texting him plant photos for diagnosis, which helped build the 'plant daddy' nickname. 15. He moved from a corporate job into managing Little Shop of Soil in Bushwick, where he worked for five years and treated customers’ plants too. 16. He says the store had an ICU in the back for damaged stock and infestations, including mealybugs on aglaonemas, so the work stayed practical. 17. Richard says clients eventually asked him to come to their homes, which turned his advice into paid house calls. 18. He describes a December layoff, just before the holidays and a long-planned trip to Vietnam, as a painful break from the plant shop. 19. He says Vietnam showed him small-business entrepreneurship, creative plant setups, and a resilience that pushed him to open Plant Daddy MD in 2025. 20. Growing Joy with Plants feels conversational and personal, with Maria comparing Richard’s pivot to her own post-pandemic career shift and keeping the tone reflective throughout.

As heard by us

A practical plant-care story that turns store work, side-hustle help, and paid consults into an easy listen.

This episode follows a plant-care side hustle that turns into real troubleshooting. The guest talks about helping people with their plants, becoming the person friends and family call, and eventually charging for that help after time in a plant store.

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You want a plant story about turning hobby know-how into paid advice.

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