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The training you’re receiving in Pickens Technical College’s Urban Landscaping and Horticulture program goes far above and beyond caring for a few simple houseplants. You’ll probably get so well-versed in landscaping and maintaining outdoor green spaces that you might think tending to houseplants is a little beneath you. But, in the “real world” outside the classroom, houseplants are all the rage. In some cases, they’re even “breaking the Internet.”

Creating outdoor spaces and building green, natural areas in urban jungles is part of what the Urban Landscaping and Horticulture program at Pickens is all about. You’re also learning about how to create welcoming indoor spaces in the Urban Horticulture program at Pickens, which is a more popular pastime now than ever before.

The Rise of the “Plant Influencers”

Being a social media “influencer” sounds like the best job in the world and is wholly imaginary. People travel around the world and highlight their trips on social media for a living! Recently, social media influencers have started to showcase their plants and indoor green spaces, which is sparking a new economic structure in which these influencers are now striking it rich with book deals, corporate sponsors, and hundreds of thousands of social media followers.

These influencers are feeding off the new houseplants craze sweeping through millennial social media pages. Thousands of pictures on various social media outlets detail elaborate indoor jungles featuring a large number of exotic plants arranged and planted in creative ways.

Morgan Doane, director of analytics for an art company in Florida by day, social media plant influencer by night, started the #monsteramonday hashtag on Instagram, encouraging IG users to post pictures of their monsters. Doane teamed with another plant influencer, Erin Harding, from Oregon, to build their own popular IG account, Houseplantclub, which now has 450,000 followers. The pair published their first book, How to Raise a Plant and Make It Love You Back, this year.

An Alternate Career Path

Becoming a social media and Internet sensation isn’t easy, and for every example of a successful plant influencer, there are probably hundreds of others who tried but weren’t successful. However, it’s clear that social media and the Internet make it easier to share your passions with the world. And who knows? Maybe there are a few hundred thousand followers out there who have the same passions you do. The key is to get a great start in horticulture and landscaping and get the grounding in landscaping, greenhouses, and interior plant design to set you up for success later. One thing these successful plant influencers have in common is that they know their plants and how to set up indoor spaces to help them thrive. No one wants to see pictures of dead plants on their IG feed.

Pickens’ Horticulture program is a great place to start for anyone interested in plants and how to care for them in many different settings. The new online plant craze is just one more opportunity for you when you complete the Horticulture program at PTC.