GARDENING : Green Thumbs for Hire : Interior plant-scapers add the finishing touch to a room. How much decorating they do depends on how much you want to spend.
For those of us who don’t already have a pool service, a gardening crew and a domestic staff to hold our lives together, the thought of someone bustling in once a week to sprinkle the houseplants might border on the absurd. But these green genies do exist, and ply their trade for ordinary folk as well as for the rich and famous.
Interior plant-scapers, as they’re called, not only water, prune, feed, rotate and polish the leaves of whatever indoor flora you might have, they’ll also bring in more of it, and arrange it all to suit the furniture. Many also do “pot-scaping,” supplying and tending container plants for patios and balconies.
Some, like Susan Fonstein, will deliver fresh flowers and centerpieces and even rent out plants for special events.
Often teaming up with interior decorators, plant-scapers contribute what Fonstein calls “the finishing touch for a room.” This can range from a couple of ficus trees flanking a sofa to an entire landscaped atrium: “shrubs, trees, flowers, dirt, rocks--everything but the birds,” Fonstein says.
Bruce Anderson of Burbank, owner of Anderson Environmental Design, is known in the field for dramatic, over-scaled creations that, in his words, “sweep the ceilings and umbrella out over the furniture.”
Arranging his trademark fishtail, kentia and rhapis palms in unusual baskets and Italian urns, he has designed indoor forests for the likes of Cher, Goldie Hawn and Richard Gere.
Among the most elaborate was Cher’s trilevel New York apartment, which required a “prehistoric jungle” of sago palms, exotic orchids and giant philodendrons to go with its faux limestone walls and crystal rock tables.
Although Anderson’s one-man operation concentrates on residential designs--which he maintains himself or, more often, refers to a maintenance company for follow-up care--other plant-scapers take on a full spectrum of services.
“We’ll go anywhere and do anything related to indoor landscapes,” says Fonstein, who, with her partner, has been in business 18 years and does design, installation and maintenance for commercial and residential clients.
Canfield and Persons in Westlake Village, a 15-year-old company with a staff of 18, offers similar services, and even has a showroom where knowledgeable salespeople help browsers choose their own specimen plants. Owner Alan Canfield, who counts musicians Janet Jackson and Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue among his clients, says that although people usually know what they like, they don’t always know how to care for it--or where to put it in their house.
For plants, these are life and death issues, explains Anderson. “You have to observe where the heaters are in a room,” he says, “what the light conditions and watering needs are. You don’t just come in and water everything the same.”
Crucial in protecting a major garden investment (installation and materials for a plant-scape can run from $200 to tens of thousands), maintenance is itself a costly proposition. For weekly or biweekly visits, the monthly bill ranges from about $75 to several hundred.
Luckily, those who install and maintain indoor landscapes generally guarantee their plants. What’s more, says Enzo Caserta, who runs an interior and exterior landscaping business in Northridge, greenery is still “a fairly inexpensive way to enhance any environment. You could spend thousands on a piece of art or a couple of hundred on plants.”
“Everyone loves them,” adds Anderson. “They soften the sterile, empty corners of a room and create enclosures for romantic settings. They add major drama and life.”
