There are people who own a few houseplants, and then there are people whose houseplants have quietly negotiated permanent residency in every available square foot. Angela Alba belongs firmly in the second group. Her Brooklyn home holds more than 60 plants, and “holds” may be underselling it: greenery appears in the bedroom, hallway, on dedicated shelving, and even on a shower caddy hanging from the shower head.

It sounds like a botanical takeover, but Alba’s apartment offers a surprisingly practical lesson in small-space indoor gardening. A tiny home does not necessarily require a tiny plant collection. What it requires is thoughtful use of light, vertical surfaces, humidity, plant size, and the increasingly valuable urban resource known as “that empty six inches above the bookshelf.”

Her indoor jungle is also a reminder that successful plant parenting is less about buying the trendiest rare specimen and more about learning the personality of each plant. Some want bright indirect light. Some tolerate darker corners. Some enjoy bathroom humidity. Others would prefer you keep them as far from that steamy shower as possible.

Meet the Brooklyn Plant Parent Behind the Indoor Jungle

Alba lives in Brooklyn with her boyfriend, her cat, and a plant collection numbering more than 60. She began collecting plants in her early 20s after a friend suggested finding something she could care for. That modest idea eventually developed leaves. Then more leaves. Then shelves of leaves.

Today, her collection ranges from relatively familiar houseplants to unusual specimens, including a Cinnamon Cactus, Agave americana, Maple Leaf Begonia, ponytail palm, variegated Monstera, and an especially striking Philodendron billietiae. Her hallway is particularly useful because a skylight provides natural illumination for a cluster of plants.

The arrangement works because Alba does not treat every room as interchangeable. Instead, different parts of her home become microclimates.

A Shower Caddy Becomes Plant Real Estate

The most memorable location is undoubtedly the bathroom, where one plant lives on a shower caddy suspended from the shower head.

It is funny because, well, most shower caddies are expected to hold shampoo. But horticulturally, the idea is not completely outrageous.

Bathrooms can provide warmer, more humid conditions that suit certain tropical houseplants, provided there is enough usable light. Ferns, pothos, philodendrons, bromeliads, air plants, and other humidity-tolerant species are frequently recommended for bathrooms. The important caveat is light: “low light” does not mean “no light.” Even adaptable houseplants still need energy for photosynthesis.

In Alba’s bathroom, one of the stars is her Philodendron billietiae, recognizable for its dramatically elongated leaves. It turns an ordinary functional room into something closer to a miniature conservatoryalbeit one where someone may occasionally be trying to wash their hair.

How Do 60+ Plants Fit in a Small Apartment?

The secret is not discovering a hidden room behind the refrigerator. It is learning to think vertically.

Floor space disappears quickly in an apartment. Walls, shelves, cabinet tops, windows, hanging locations, and unused corners offer considerably more opportunity.

Alba’s most straightforward advice is to designate furniture specifically for plants. Rather than squeezing another pot between a stack of books and a coffee mug, she uses shelving whose primary job is supporting greenery.

Use Vertical Space Before Sacrificing Floor Space

Hanging and trailing plants are particularly effective in compact homes because their foliage can occupy vertical space instead of valuable walking space. Elevated shelves, hanging planters, wall-mounted systems, and tall plant stands can turn otherwise unused areas into growing zones. Better Homes & Gardens and Garden Design both recommend vertical or elevated displays as useful strategies for increasing greenery without covering every horizontal surface.

Good candidates include:

• Pothos
• Heartleaf philodendron
• Spider plant
• Peperomia
• String of hearts
• Satin pothos
• Small ferns

A trailing pothos on a high shelf can create several feet of visual greenery while its pot occupies roughly the footprint of a dinner plate. That is excellent real-estate efficiency by New York standards.

Create Plant Zones Instead of Scattering Random Pots

Grouping plants also creates a stronger decorative statement than placing one lonely pot on every available piece of furniture.

Try creating zones: a bright-window group, a humidity-loving bathroom group, a low-light corner, a propagation station, and perhaps a shelf reserved for prized specimens.

Grouping plants of different heights and leaf shapes can produce a layered look instead of the accidental appearance of a garden center waiting for checkout. Decorative guidance from Better Homes & Gardens similarly suggests mixing plant heights, widths, foliage forms, and growth habits to build visually balanced arrangements.

The Standout Plants in Alba’s Collection

A collection of more than 60 plants inevitably produces favorites, troublemakers, and at least one specimen that receives suspiciously preferential treatment.

The Most Treasured: Maple Leaf Begonia

Alba identifies her Maple Leaf Begonia as a particularly treasured plant. Begonias are loved for foliage that can rival flowers in visual interest, with dramatic textures, colors, and patterns.

In a crowded apartment garden, foliage plants like this are especially useful because visual variety can come from leaf shape and color rather than sheer plant size.

The Plant She Would Come Back As: Ponytail Palm

Her bedroom contains a ponytail palm, or Beaucarnea recurvata, a plant Alba jokes she would choose to be if reincarnated as greenery.

It is easy to understand the appeal. Ponytail palms have swollen trunks and long cascading leaves, giving them a personality somewhere between miniature tree, fountain, and botanical rock star having an excellent hair day.

The Pricey Members: Variegated Monstera

Alba’s more expensive plants include variegated Monsteras, including a Thai Constellation. Variegation has made certain Monsteras highly desirable among collectors because sections of their foliage develop contrasting pale patterns rather than uniform green.

Rare plants can add excitement to a collection, but they also introduce an important rule: expensive does not automatically mean suitable for your home. Light conditions, mature size, care requirements, and available space matter considerably more than social-media popularity.

The Tricky One: Cinnamon Cactus

Every experienced plant parent eventually acquires a plant that refuses to read its own care instructions. For Alba, her Cinnamon Cactus has been among the trickier members of the collection.

That experience is useful because a large indoor garden is never perfectly behaved. Even knowledgeable collectors lose plants. Alba’s first Agave americana did not survive, for example, so she eventually replaced it.

Plant parenting includes casualties. The goal is not botanical immortality. It is learning what happened before buying another plant and confidently announcing, “This time will be different.”

Light Is the Real Currency of a Small Indoor Garden

When decorating with dozens of plants, available light should determine placement before aesthetics do.

The brightest spot may deserve the plants with the strongest light requirements, while more adaptable foliage plants can occupy locations farther from windows. Supplemental grow lights can help when natural illumination is insufficient.

University horticulture guidance consistently emphasizes matching plants to their environment rather than expecting plants to adapt indefinitely to unsuitable conditions. Insufficient light can produce weak growth, leaf problems, and soil that remains wet longer because plants use water more slowly.

That skylight in Alba’s hallway is therefore more than attractive architecture. It is valuable growing infrastructure.

Bathroom Plants: Humidity Helps, but Don’t Build a Swamp

The shower plants deserve special attention because this idea is both clever and easy to misunderstand.

Many tropical houseplants appreciate higher humidity. Iowa State University Extension notes that numerous tropical indoor plants perform well around 40% to 50% relative humidity, while particularly humidity-loving plants may benefit from even more localized moisture.

But your home has needs too.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends keeping overall indoor relative humidity below 60% and ideally around 30% to 50% to reduce the risk of mold and excess moisture.

So the goal is not to transform the bathroom into the Amazon basin.

Use the exhaust fan. Allow surfaces to dry. Avoid leaving water pooled beneath pots. And remember that plants sitting directly in a shower may receive far more water than their roots actually need.

Drainage Matters More Than a Watering Schedule

One of the fastest ways to turn a plant collection into a collection of decorative compost is chronic overwatering.

Instead of watering every plant every Sunday simply because Sunday has been declared Plant Day, inspect the soil. Plants in different light levels, pot sizes, temperatures, and growing media dry at different speeds.

University of Georgia Extension guidance warns that oversaturated soil encourages root rot and recommends ensuring drainage holes remain open rather than letting containers sit in standing water.

With 60 plants, individual observation becomes much more reliable than one universal schedule.

Living With a Cat Changes the Plant Plan

There is another important character in Alba’s apartment: her cat.

Plant collectors with pets should research species before bringing them home or decide where potentially hazardous plants can be kept securely out of reach.

The ASPCA lists several extremely common houseplant groupsincluding pothos, many philodendrons, Monsteras, ZZ plants, peace lilies, and certain Dracaenasas toxic to cats if ingested.

Pet-safe choices can include options such as certain peperomias, prayer plants, parlor palms, and spider plants, although individual species should always be checked rather than relying solely on a common name.

A hanging planter may conserve apartment space, but when pets are involved, it can also provide useful separationassuming your cat has not completed an advanced degree in aerial acrobatics.

Why the Collection Feels Personal Instead of Cluttered

Sixty plants could easily make a small apartment feel chaotic. Alba’s home avoids that impression because the plants are not merely objects filling empty spaces. Many have stories.

The Agave americana connects to her earliest period of plant collecting. The Maple Leaf Begonia is treasured. The ponytail palm reflects her personality. Other plants represent challenges, purchases, experiments, or milestones.

This is one reason plant-filled interiors can feel different from rooms stuffed with conventional decorations. A plant changes. It grows toward a window. It produces a new leaf. It needs pruning. It may become a cutting that eventually lives in someone else’s home.

The collection becomes biography written in chlorophyll.

Plant Parenting Can Be Social, Too

Alba has also described the plant community as an important part of the hobby. Conversations about plants through social media have developed into friendships, even when she has not met the other collectors in person.

That social element helps explain why indoor gardening expanded into a full-fledged lifestyle for so many people. One plant leads to a second plant. Then someone offers a cutting. Then you discover propagation. Soon you are discussing soil amendments with a stranger online at midnight and somehow this seems perfectly normal.

How to Build Your Own Small-Space Indoor Jungle

You do not need to begin with 60 plants. In fact, please do not.

A more sustainable strategy is to add greenery gradually while learning which conditions your apartment naturally provides.

1. Map the Light

Observe which windows receive direct sun and which areas stay dim. Watch how this changes throughout the day and across seasons.

2. Start With Adaptable Plants

Pothos, spider plants, philodendrons, peperomias, and other relatively forgiving foliage plants can make better early additions than high-maintenance collector specimens.

3. Shop for Mature Size, Not Just Nursery Size

That adorable six-inch plant may eventually become furniture. Before buying it, research how large it can realistically grow indoors.

4. Go Vertical

Install sturdy shelves, plant stands, ceiling hooks where appropriate, or wall-mounted displays. Small houseplants are particularly useful on desks, shelves, windowsills, and nightstands where large pots would be impractical.

5. Leave Room for Maintenance

Do not arrange pots so densely that watering the plant in the back requires an archaeological excavation.

6. Keep Similar Care Needs Together

Grouping plants by light and moisture preferences makes a large collection easier to manage.

7. Quarantine New Plants

Inspect new arrivals for pests before placing them against established plants. A collection of 60 pots gives insects an impressive public transportation network once an infestation begins.

500+ Words of Realistic Small-Space Plant-Parent Experience

The First Lesson: Empty Space Quickly Stops Being Empty

One recurring experience among enthusiastic apartment gardeners is that plant collecting changes the way you see a room. Before plants, the top of a cabinet may look useless. After plants, it looks like premium south-facing development land.

You begin noticing window ledges, corners beside furniture, unused wall space, the gap above the refrigerator, and narrow shelving opportunities that previously seemed irrelevant. This shift is arguably the most important lesson from homes like Alba’s: successful small-space gardening depends less on square footage than on recognizing usable micro-spaces.

However, enthusiasm needs boundaries. A planter should not block a walkway, fire escape, ventilation grille, door, or usable work surface. The best indoor jungles still function as homes.

The Second Lesson: Watering Becomes a System

With three plants, watering can happen whenever you notice a droopy leaf. With 60, improvisation becomes dangerous.

A practical routine often develops naturally. Plants are checked by zone rather than all at once. Soil is tested before watering. Empty decorative cachepots are inspected for trapped runoff. Leaves are examined for pests while the pot is being handled.

Many experienced collectors eventually learn that watering less oftenbut more deliberatelyis easier than constantly adding small amounts of water.

A shower or bathtub can even become temporary maintenance infrastructure. Several pots can be moved there for thorough watering and drainage, assuming their care requirements are compatible. The important distinction is that using a shower to water plants is different from keeping every plant permanently wet.

The Third Lesson: Plant Placement Is Never Finished

A plant display is not static interior design.

Summer light changes. Winter heating dries the air. A vine reaches the end of a shelf. A Monstera becomes too wide for its corner. One plant develops a pest problem and needs isolation. Another grows beautifully and earns promotion to a more prominent location.

Successful plant parents become comfortable rearranging their homes.

In practice, a plant that looks perfect beside the sofa might eventually need to move closer to a window. A humidity-loving fern may perform better near the bathroom. A succulent that slowly stretches toward daylight is essentially filing a relocation request.

The Fourth Lesson: You Eventually Stop Taking Plant Death Personally

Almost every long-term collector has lost a plant that supposedly was “easy.” Sometimes the watering was wrong. Sometimes there was inadequate light. Sometimes pests arrived unnoticed. Occasionally a plant simply deteriorates despite reasonable care.

Large collections teach humility quickly.

Instead of treating every loss as failure, experienced growers usually examine the roots, soil, watering habits, light exposure, temperature, and signs of pests. The dead plant becomes information.

That mindset also makes the hobby more enjoyable. Plants are living organisms, not permanent decorative accessories guaranteed by warranty.

The Fifth Lesson: Your Favorites Will Not Always Be the Expensive Ones

Collectors may initially chase rare variegation or unusual species, but sentimental value frequently becomes more important than market value.

The inexpensive cutting from a friend can matter more than the rare Monstera that cost ten times as much. A struggling plant that finally produces a healthy new leaf can become strangely thrilling. A plant propagated from an older specimen may eventually feel like a family heirloom.

Alba’s attachment to particular plants illustrates this nicely. Her collection has expensive specimens, but the plants she highlights are memorable for different reasons: history, appearance, difficulty, personality, or emotional significance.

The Sixth Lesson: A Large Collection Makes You More Selective

Ironically, owning many plants can reduce impulse buying.

Eventually, every new plant must answer difficult questions. Where will it live? Does that location have enough light? Is it safe around pets? How large will it become? Does the collection already contain something similar? Will its watering requirements create extra work?

A mature plant parent may walk through a nursery, admire twenty plants, photograph five, and purchase none.

That may be the ultimate stage of indoor gardening enlightenment.

Conclusion: Tiny Apartment, Very Big Indoor Garden

Angela Alba’s Brooklyn apartment demonstrates that a serious houseplant collection does not require a suburban sunroom or enormous greenhouse. More than 60 plants can coexist in a small home when vertical space, natural light, dedicated shelving, bathroom humidity, and careful plant selection are used intelligently.

The shower plant may grab attention, but the bigger lesson is organization. Every available surface does not need a pot. Instead, plants should be placed where their needs and the home’s layout overlap.

Start with the conditions you actually have. Choose plants that fit those conditions. Build upward instead of outward. Leave room to live. Learn from the occasional crispy leaf.

And if your shower caddy eventually contains more foliage than shampoo, congratulations: you may have officially become a plant parent.

Note: Individual plant requirements vary by species and home environment. Check light, watering, drainage, humidity, mature size, and pet-toxicity information before choosing a permanent location for any houseplant.