Garden Diaries: In Growing an Urban Jungle, Hilton Carter Found More Than a Love of Plants – He Discovered a Better Version of Himself
Hilton Carter says tending to plants taught him how to care for the people he loves
There was one moment a little over a decade ago, when everything changed for Hilton Carter. Back then, he wasn't the houseplant guru and interior stylist we know and love today, giving us indoor plant expertise in his trademark punchy formats and scroll-stopping plant rants.
He was an exhausted filmmaker, working freelance in LA directing commercials, hustling and trying to forge a path in a gruelling industry. The effort of being creative in an energy-zapping space was taking its toll. Then he walked into a greenhouse café in Pennsylvania, where he was shooting a campaign, and something shifted. All his stress disappeared. The energy, the light, the greenery – it put him in the moment, and the clouds began dissipate.
Finding The (Literal) Light
I left Los Angeles in 2014 and moved to New Orleans, to a space in the French Quarter that had really big windows. I had already understood in that moment in Pennsylvania that this transformation was about the light.
As someone in filmmaking, I understood that light is important. And it's just as crucial in plant care.
It was time to bring some plants in. I bought a fiddle leaf fig, thinking this would start that process I felt in Pennsylvania. I was trying to recreate that feeling in my home.
Slowly, I realized it wasn't just the act of bringing in plants that would create that moment for me. When that fiddle leaf fig started to die, I realised I needed to do more and learn how to care for these plants. Just like I made that promise to myself in Pennsylvania, there in New Orleans, I took on the challenge.
I said I would dedicate my time, my effort, to making sure I nurtured this plant. I even gave it a name: Frank. And that challenge, I believe, is the thing that changed who I was mentally and spiritually.
I started seeing these small nuances, these small changes and shifts in the foliage. A color that wasn't prevalent before was now right there in my face. I was taking note of these things, working through the process.
The Secret Lesson I Learnt from Plants
Before I found plants, my career was number one on my list. I could only focus on myself, and this took a toll on my relationships with others.
I started tending to plants, not thinking that this process was linked to people. But it was the secret lesson plants were teaching me. Through that process of nurturing plants, I think I, without knowing, became a steward in understanding how to tend to the other living things in my life.
That was the aha moment. It is the patience and the understanding and the note-taking and the listening that I was doing with plants. And that note-taking in that space helped me be better for the other individuals in my life.
It slowly changed me into being more considerate and patient with myself and my career. Patient with how relationships develop. That slow unfurling of a leaf isn't going to happen at the speed you might want it to. Any difference in temperature, in light, in hydration, and watering of plants can change the way a new, developing, fragile, unfurling leaf develops.
The idea of talking about how the care of plants is parallel to how you tend and nurture other individuals was always so woo-woo to me in the past. But it was proven to me that there can be a real difference in who you are if you can look at it that way.
Memory and Meaning – Plants as Time Machines
When I work on styling spaces, whether mine or other people's, I think about how a particular thing is going to spark a feeling. Whether that's joy, happiness, or some wonderful memory. For me, when I started to bring more plants in, I thought about the moments in my life where I was the happiest. And what that environment would look like.
Ultimately, for me, it was when I was surrounded by a bunch of plants, on some sort of vacation. Whether that was in a beautiful conservatory here in Baltimore, maybe one in Chicago, maybe the Huntington in Pasadena, California. Those moments always felt like they were surrounded by greenery.
So I tend to think about that in my own space. How does a particular plant, wherever it's going to be placed, reflect a memory of when I was the happiest or a wonderful moment in my life?
A lot of the plants here are plants from moments of being with my wife. Tulum is where we got married, and some of the tropical plants here were purchased to reflect or remind me of those moments.
I remember that monstera there, that palm there, seeing the dappled light dance around the walls, the floor there in the jungle. Trying to recreate those moments in my home has been one of my main goals in styling my own space.
It's one of the reasons we purchased this home and why we poked so many holes in the walls to create more windows and light.
When I was in that jungle space in Tulum, when you looked out any window or in any direction, there was just so much greenery and goodness. Here, we needed to replicate that in some sense.
Another of my favorite plants is a Monstera 'albo' that was gifted to me right before my daughter was born. At that point in time, it was mid-2021, and this plant was rare.
They were selling for $2,000 for such a small plant. A cutting of one leaf was going for hundreds of dollars. People were losing their minds over it. I was tending to this plant like it already was my child. It had its own humidifier. I would go over daily and say all these really sweet things to it, even give it affirmations.
Daily Plant Rituals
My go-to morning plant care ritual (after coffee) is misting. While it isn't going to provide a lot of humidity for your plants, it provides a lot to me. I'll mist my more humidity-loving plants that absorb moisture throughout the week, and I get a real sense of joy out of wiping down the foliage. Every day, I'll take a moment to wipe down a particular plant.
If you stay on it and wipe a plant down, it's going to help you see whether you have any pests. But I also think it's that moment where you're spending time tending to something; grooming it in some sense.
I spend that time with the plant. They say you shouldn't have a favorite child, but some plants get a little bit more talking to, especially if you've gone through it with them.
Frank, my fiddle leaf fig, he's in my office now. When I'm in my office working, he and I have a heart-to-heart about how far we've come and how different we are in our age. The changes that have happened have made us who we are.
I tell people: you buy a plant when you see it at a plant shop based on that moment you saw it. You're like, 'I love this plant'. But be mindful that the plant looks the way it does for that moment in that space.
Who knows how long it had been in that space before it came from that grower, in some beautiful, humid greenhouse. Now you're going to take it and put it in your home.
So let it become its true self for you. Let it drop those leaves, turn and bend that way, do those weird things where it gets a little brown on the tip here and there. Now it's yours. Now it's its true self.
The shift and the change will happen, and that doesn't make that plant any less appealing or less beautiful. It still is beautiful for what it is in your space. When I'm moving through watering or wiping down plants or rotating them, I always give that plant some love.
I say, man, I've done what I'm supposed to do here, but you've also been resilient enough to keep going and growing and being part of the space, part of the home, part of my life, part of my family's life. It's giving it that gratitude.
The Nurture that Nurtures You
The nurturer nurtures you. That's another thing I always say. I think that's the give and take. As much as I provide them, they provide me. It's a beautiful balance every single morning and night. That's a good way to live your life in some sense.
I don't know if I would be where I am now, who I am now, if I hadn't gone to that plant nursery in Pennsylvania. Maybe I needed that moment at that time.
I'm just very thankful that it was the thing that led me here because there is no better place for me to be than the spot I'm in right now.
One thing you learn when you surround yourself with so many living things is that life is fragile. You need to give yourself a little grace, especially when you're trying to tend to so many things at once. You're not going to be fully successful one hundred percent of the time.
I allow the plants to become who they are while still making sure I give them what they need. If something's not working, I don't let it suffer and die. I troubleshoot. Oh, you need more humidity? Let me bring a humidifier into this part of the home. Let me change this out. Let me keep trying.
It's been my cheap version of therapy. And really it all started with light. Light coming through greenhouse windows in Pennsylvania. Light that made me see – really see – for the first time in a long time.
Hilton's book, Living Wild, available from Amazon, has so many more tips and advice on how to grow and style an indoor jungle.
Garden Diaries is our series where we share inspiring stories of designing and cultivating a stunning garden space. We explore how creatives, designers and tastemakers have grown a deeply personal space, inviting creativity, learning and happiness in their gardens, and how they live in these spaces.
