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Darryl Cheng
Creator of House Plant Journal and author of The New Plant Parent, a Toronto-based houseplant expert known for his engineering approach to plant care.
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Jan 19, 2026
Grow Thriving Houseplants with Darryl Cheng
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2:19KevinHOST
And so could you kind of give us a little overview of your philosophy of houseplant care? Because it's quite different from other people.
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2:26Darryl ChengGUEST
Yeah, so the thing is I've probably been asked so many times to do interviews on, oh, why do you think millennials are really driving up the business of houseplants? Why do you think they're so obsessed with them, right? And the answers always sort of revolve around, well, we have smaller spaces.
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2:49Darryl ChengGUEST
And so all of these things put together – are kind of like saying, well, we have basically different reasons for owning houseplants than when they were first popular in the 1960s and 70s, when really they were just sort of like, oh, here's a trendy piece of decor that can really jungle-fy your interior, right? We still have that today.
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3:11Darryl ChengGUEST
We still love to see that today, which is why I think it's so popular on Instagram.
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3:17Darryl ChengGUEST
But I think if we If we have a really different reason for owning plants, then why are we using advice that was still drawn up from the philosophy that, oh, here's a piece of decor that you need to maintain, right? Right, right.
42 MINS LATER
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45:20KevinHOST
So
Stop Killing Your Houseplants
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4:13Darryl ChengGUEST
But I thought, "Wait a minute, Mom, you taught me how to do outdoor gardening and you're pretty good at it.
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4:18Darryl ChengGUEST
What's still different about indoor plants?" But she went back to the narrative of, "Oh, I have a black thumb, I kill everything." So I did like any good millennial would and bought a bunch of plants and tried to Google the- the care tips and- and stuff.
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4:36Darryl ChengGUEST
You know, if you try and Google houseplant care advice you'll find a lot of just, like, dos and don'ts.
7:27
You're- you're half the size of when I got you." What do you think, like, are the most important things that people miss in terms of when their plants are just not thriving?