
Subscription services for plants - jonbaer
https://www.wired.com/story/on-demand-economy-brings-us-something-useful-nature/
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apacheCamel
I am not entirely sure how I feel about everything becoming a "subscription".
On one hand, it is great for people new to an area to just jump right in, on
the other, do we really need to pay someone to ship us plants every so often?
Not just plants, but other things too. It is getting harder and harder to find
something you can't get in subscription form.

I guess if it is working, keep at it. If anyone has the resources, a list
outlining all these niche subscription services would be neat to see.

~~~
elliekelly
I’m sure this list isn’t exhaustive but My Subscription Addiction[1] has 97
pages of available boxes. There’s everything from the aptly named “The Opulent
Box”[2] a luxury jewelry subscription at the very unaffordable price of
$25,000/month, to just about every “Dollar ____ Club” you could dream up. And,
of course, everything in between.

[1]
[https://boxes.mysubscriptionaddiction.com/](https://boxes.mysubscriptionaddiction.com/)

[2] [https://boxes.mysubscriptionaddiction.com/box/the-opulent-
bo...](https://boxes.mysubscriptionaddiction.com/box/the-opulent-box)

~~~
RandomBacon
That's sad and funny. Props to you for finding a way to make a buck in that
market without creating yet another box. Though you might be the best person
to see there's not a subscription box for something, and create it yourself
and start your own subscription box company.

~~~
elliekelly
Thankfully, it's not my site - the name just happens to be "My Subscription
Addiction" and I suppose I'm more of a hate-follower than a fan. Like many
other women in their early-20s I subscribed to Birchbox when it first came out
~2012. Eventually I cancelled and told friends that it kind of felt like low-
stakes beauty sample gambling. Of course they thought I was nuts so I googled
"subscription box gambling addiction" and stumbled upon this site.

None of my friends still have Birchbox subscriptions but following along on
MSA I do think the boxes "target" a certain type of people/part of the brain.
I get the impression there are a small number of people who spend a lot of
money on several boxes as more of a hobby or entertainment than a convenience
thing. They subscribe to a handful of boxes but only for 6-12 months before
switching to a new box.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I bet a subscription box of random
subscription boxes would actually do really well...

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Sholmesy
This seems silly?

a) Plants need to be carefully picked for their habitat/location/which room in
the house etc

b) Plants need varying amounts of care

c) 1 a month quickly scales to unwieldy numbers if you are able to keep your
plants alive, unless this is aimed at the disposable "fast fashion" part of
plants?

That being said, indoor plants are the best. I can't help but feel like this
is the equivalent of those fake/plastic plants though.

~~~
nerdponx
_1 a month quickly scales to unwieldy numbers if you are able to keep your
plants alive, unless this is aimed at the disposable "fast fashion" part of
plants?_

I've recently come to believe that most people are really bad at taking care
of plants.

Those cute little tropical things at the garden center? If well-cared-for,
they will grow into 8-foot-tall (a little over 2 meters) monsters that live
for decades. There's no way there's a big market for 8-foot jungle plants.
Even those tiny little Haworthias and Echeverias will start to outgrow their
cute little nursery pots within a few months.

People must be keeping them in small pots, over/under-watering them, and never
re-fertilizing the soil.

Case in point, when I broke up with an ex and she moved out, she took the
Cycas because it was "hers". It had just started sprouting a new set of
fronds. Those things are really easy to take care of -- just give it some
water like every 2 weeks, give it light, don't let the cats chew on it. Within
3 weeks she had somehow managed to hurt the thing to the point where the new
fronds had gone totally brown and soon withered away completely. My guess is
she thought it looked dry and overwatered it. I eventually took it back and
it's made a full recovery since then.

~~~
abricot
I hope you got full custody.

------
Gys
SecondHome in Lisbon is a coworkspace famous for having many plants
everywhere: [https://secondhome.io/lisboa](https://secondhome.io/lisboa)

~~~
plmpsu
Looks nice.

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lb1lf
This has been a thing for a while here in Norway, at least - at a former
employer, there was an almost absurd desire to outsource anything and
everything; I quipped to a colleague that they'd probably do the office
greenery next - only to be told by the janitor that the plants were indeed
leased already.

Sigh. We had someone come by once a week to water the plants and restock the
coffee machines.

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tengbretson
This is nothing but an advertisement.

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rdtwo
Honestly I think orchid subscriptions is the way to go. Send them out when
they are just sprouting a flower stock then exchange them in a month or 2
after they are done and before the new owner kills them.

~~~
bcbrown
Someone's already doing something like that:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/this-
florist-s...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/this-florist-
started-babysitting-ailing-orchids-on-the-side-hes-now-
boarding-13000/2019/04/03/e5bc550e-3ba1-11e9-a2cd-307b06d0257b_story.html)

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Qworg
The moralizing about people's inability to keep plants alive seems strange to
me - do they not deserve plants?

~~~
carapace
I don't know about moralizing, but to me it definitely seems like some sort of
strange deficiency in those who can't remember to water a plant.

And yeah, if you routinely kill plants you don't deserve them. That's my
opinion though: plants are incredibly kind and generous and they don't hold it
against you if you forget to water them. They are so sweet and gracious. We
should all try to learn from plants.

Thinking about it, no human _deserves_ a plant. They don't need us at all, but
we depend on them utterly, even for the very oxygen we breath. We take them
for granted, kill them without regard, treat them as things, ignore our duties
and responsibilities. No sir, no human _deserves_ the kindness of plants. How
could we? Their love and care for us, their willingness to support us even in
our darkest hour, is a pure gift, a gracious mercy, undeserved.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Anthropomophising is cute, but not a great argument. How about "Plants try to
kill us with poisons, toxins, by clogging our drains with their roots and
uprooting our foundations. They are vicious, antagonistic life forms. Torture,
kill them at your leisure!"

Not as cute, but just as valid.

~~~
carapace
Nah...

If you're being poisoned by a plant you're obviously eating the wrong part,
eh?

And when they tear down our works they are but reminding us of our folly.

There are no "vicious, antagonistic" plants.

(Fair warning dude, you might not want to engage with me in re: plants, et.
al. I'm a weirdo that believes in human-plant telepathy. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Plants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Plants)
...or don't, eh? To be sure some of what's in that book is BS, but not IMO the
parts about communicating with plants. YMMV. Cheers.)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Agreed - there's no point at all in anthropomorphizing plants, for good or
ill.

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larrywright
Interesting idea, and nice to see my hometown represented in the very first
sentence.

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overcast
That's all we need, a disposable plants service. I guess it's great for people
who can't keep them alive longer than a month.

