This weekend, we are bringing the conversation back to PLANTS with the oh so lovely Maryah Greene aka @greene.piece. Maryah (she/her) is a Japan-bread but New York based plant stylist & doctor. Growing up in the suburbs of Japan, Maryah became enamored with the way the Japanese culture admires, cares for, and honors indoor spaces. When she moved to New York in 2017, Maryah started to cultivate green in her own spaces and due to popular demand, began the platform that we now know as Greene Piece. Today, Maryah has solidified her position as one of New York’s go-to plant stylists being featured in The New York Times, Vogue, Good Morning America and more. 

Green Piece aims to match the right plants for right spaces, the right plants for the right person, all for the right price. The goal is to prevent the average millennial from falling for inflated prices, ensuring everyone has access to creating a green space - because everyone is entitled to an affordable, functional, green space.

Maryah: I grew up in Japan. My dad was in the Navy so right after 9/11 we moved to Japan and we were there for 9 years. I turned 16 when I moved back to the US. So 6 to 15 I spent time there and then I moved back to the outskirts of Philadelphia and I attended high school there. It was a very different space for me in that I felt culture shock when I came back to the US. I absolutely hated my parents for that. It was rough. I wrote a senior thesis for my undergrad and it was basically about the concept of me not knowing that race existed or at least I didn’t experience it yet. I experienced differences between nationalities. I knew that I was American and that my friends were Japanese but I didn’t know what it meant to be black until I came back to the US. That had a really strong bearing on how my high school experience was. I remember my first day going to sit with the Asian kids because we had something in common but that was like “why are you sitting here?” I think that I experienced a really intense crash course on racial dynamics within the US very quickly at a very impressionable age. So I attended high school outside of Philly and then went to college at George Washington in DC. Stayed there for 4 years. I knew that I wanted to be a teacher at a certain point so then I started looking for programs that had to do with education. It was too difficult for me to change my major at the time so I thought “okay, you can’t really do anything without a Masters”. I started looking for a grad program and I saw that the top education program was in New York called the Bank Street School of Education and I got in there. I just graduated in May. So I’m done with that. 

I moved to New York to go to that grad school. I got my first real apartment outside of college. It was really the first time I had my own space that wasn’t a dorm room or at my parent’s house. So I thought, okay, I’m going to really make this space nice. I remember buying at least 15 plants and almost 95% of them dying. I was like, what is going on? They sold me crappy plants. A couple of them were in Ikea, so whatever. I had no friends and nothing to do because it was the summer before school started so I went to these plant shops and nurseries and asked why these plants were dying in my space. I had light. I just didn’t get it. I just started talking to people and then I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t even about the plants. It’s about the right plants for your space. I thought, oh I just don’t have a green thumb. I’m just not good at this. Some people are, some people aren’t. But it really was just my space and the fact that I was facing north but had a lot of plants that needed direct light. A green thumb is a myth. It isn’t something that some people have and that some people don’t. It’s about the right plants for YOU and YOUR SPACE. After I did my space, a couple of my friends were like, “can you do ours? You seem to know something that we don’t.” 

You know when you get heavily involved in something and you don’t realize that you have more knowledge than the average person until they’re like, wait you know more than I do. And so, a friend of mine who was an entrepreneur sat me down and was like “you have something here. You should just start charging people”. I think for my first client I was charging $20/hour. I broke even. I rented a Zip Car and drove out to Long Island to buy cheap plants. I think I was in a hole of $500 but I wanted to start somewhere.

Nicole: What was your experience monetizing plants and making that a business? 

Maryah: I really struggled with it initially. When I first started, I wanted my business to be about doing something good. I came to New York to be a teacher. So I thought monetizing the idea of plants and giving people something in their space doesn’t seem right to me. My slogan per say is “affordable and accessible plants for everyone”. So if I’m charging you $175/hour that doesn’t make sense. How am I making things affordable and accessible? It takes me a while to understand that you can either go to a plant shop and buy a plant and hope that it stays alive and if not buy another one or you can hire me in one go and I can set you up and make sure you’re good. So I had multiple talks with my boyfriend and friends to justify the cost value. But I also think in terms of being a woman and in particular a black woman, I feel like we are often taught to just be grateful. You’ve made your way into the room and so that’s it. You have your own business, that’s awesome. But I really wanted to get into the business of it and it took me a while to get here. So I tell myself I want to do more than just be grateful, I want to get it right. I want it to be better this time and the next time and the next time. For me, it wasn’t just that I have my own business and I’m selling plants or my services for X amount. It is how do I make this better each time and to not always go with the first offer? There’s something about the first offer that doesn’t sit right with me.

Hashika: That’s so important. I wanted to ask about space you think your business takes up in New York? In your opinion, what is the average relationship a New Yorker has with plants?

Maryah: It’s tough. I initially thought I was doing regular average sized apartments in New York. It was after Good Morning America, New York Post and the Cut that I started getting those huge lots down in Soho. I was doing these massive spaces and making a lot of money but I felt that I was drifting further away from the goal of bringing plants back to spaces that they should be affordable and accessible to. I kept being driven back to the idea of why is it that The Sill and all these cutesy plant shops exist in the most gentrified neighborhoods but not in Bed-Stuy where dwellers have been watering their own plants and have their own gardens. It didn’t make sense to me and I wanted to bring some light and value and restore agency to people that have been doing this. I’ve had to sort of change my mindset and think: you have to play chess. You should go do all these massive publications and these huge apartments where you feel like you’re not bringing any real value, you’re just helping a rich person out with all of their plants. But, what’s the long game here? The long game here is I want to go back into teaching. I always just thought during these past couple years that one day I’m going to be able to use my degree that I will be teaching again. But I know there’s something with plants. I’m not sure yet but then I heard from Penguin House Publishers and I realized, it’s a children’s book. *don’t know if we can include* I had to get all this credibility in order to be able to walk through the doors I want to walk through. I feel like I’ve restored value back to my work. I think the guilt has sort of drifted away that I have only been working these massive apartments because I needed to check off all those boxes and enter all those rooms and feel uncomfortable at a table that is not for me in order to create my own table. That’s what I think this book has ushered me into.

Hashika: How was your process shifting your business into a virtual mode and in what ways have you had to adapt to everything that’s going on right now?

Maryah: I think it was in March, I was like I’m done. I’m done doing everything. I am exhausted. Looking back at my calendar, this February was the busiest month of my entire adult life. I couldn’t look at a plant without feeling anxiety. I didn’t enjoy being in this space at all. I would cringe or get so upset every time that I read an article about plants and self care. When it’s your job, you don’t feel that. I think I started to resent my work because I was working with these clients who didn’t really feel a connection to their plants. They just wanted that massive fiddle leaf fig near their skylight and I couldn’t relate to that. I didn’t really feel like I was helping anyone so I took a break and then I stayed in Seattle for two months at my boyfriend’s parents house and then I came back and I did a fundraiser with friend Bri (@eargardn). We raised all that money for that plant class we did. It was the first time in a long time that I felt that I was working with and teaching regular people who had a relationship with their plants. I felt restored by all the work that I had done. So from there, it inspired me to ask myself, how can I restore the business to work with everyday people and how can I make it affordable and accessible? So I started virtual consultations and I’m still doing that. Not really doing anymore in-person stuff because I don’t think the risk is worth it and I introduced a sliding scale on Juneteenth and that was to make sure prices were affordable to everyone. So at the bottom of my emails, there’s a blurb that says “pay what you want”. And I think it’s been going really well. People who can afford to pay the bigger prices do and people that want a break just say that. I think for every person that pays a smaller amount, there are 5 or 10 people that pay the larger amount. So it’s really really nice.

Hashika: How do you maintain a good relationship with plants and also build a space with plants around you? How do you maintain that love whilst running a business all about plants?

Maryah: Like I mentioned, back in March, I was burnt out and hated it. Since then I’ve learnt that if you love something you have to protect it. There were times when I needed to water a plant, I would pick up my phone to record it because that's the content people want to see. But now anything in here, when it comes to maintenance or watering day, if I need some content, I’ll shoot one of them and carve out a day for that when I’m working. And then, tomorrow, I’m completely off. I’m watering my plants, I’m wiping them down and no one’s going to see that because that’s my time and these are my plants. So it was really just drawing a line between what’s work and what’s content and then what’s my personal peace. And me getting challenging plants that I know I won’t keep alive but just playing with things and testing things and seeing what will happen if I put my cactus all the way in the back. It’s going to make me better at my job but it’s also me playing around with what I love. 

Nicole: God I just love all of your answers. You are so lovely, it’s wonderful. Honestly this is more of a personal question…

Maryah: Lay it on me

Nicole: I kill all of my plants.

Maryah: You’re the reason I have a job .I love people like you. I need you around!

Nicole: I think the conversation needs to shift from “self-care” to I don’t know… maybe “treating yourself.”

Maryah: I mean it's also how I market plants right, if you want to care for yourself…. But yeah and I think the other side of self-care for me is, I think I have an issue with it or it doesn’t sit well with me because self-care is a luxury to some. Self-care for a mom of four might be stepping outside for five minutes to smoke a cigarette. And I don't think that it is fair that self-care is marketed as this “moment of luxury”. I don't want to go as far as saying that it's tone deaf but I think that the room needs to be read a bit better when it comes to using “self-care” for marketing campaigns. What does self-care mean if it's only a luxury to some?

Hashika: I know a lot of people say to talk to your plants. What's your take on it? 

Maryah: I am not for or against talking to your plants, if it works for you it works for you. My mom doesn’t talk to hers, I talk with mine. I think of this room as “the bad girls club” and it very much is. There is a lot of energy here, I know when they are talking shit. I know when they are not. I'll come in and check on the girls… but some people don't. And that is fine. There are some days when I walk in here and I see them as inanimate objects and other days I'm like, “hey are you talking shit?”