In 2017, Leena Pettigrew was gifted her first houseplant — a golden Pothos, notoriously easy to care for — and killed it.

Five years later, she tried again. She and her husband Marquise were redecorating their home in Houston, and they needed to fill its empty corners, she says. She drove to Lowes and bought a couple of succulents.

The hobby blossomed into an obsession, and then a side hustle: After her home became "overrun" with 8-feet-tall Monsteras, she looked for ways to sell her extra houseplants online. She found home décor marketplace website Palmstreet, and started auctioning off her plants on livestreams there last June, she says.

From July 2023 to July 2024, Pettigrew brought in nearly $148,600 in revenue, or an average of $12,380 per month, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. She stores up to 1,000 plants at a time in her garage, she says.

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Pettigrew, 44, works about 20 hours per week sourcing, selling and shipping the plants — in addition to her full-time IT job, where she makes roughly $90,000 a year, she says. She also is a paid consultant for Palmstreet, where she helps train new sellers.

The side hustle is profitable enough to replace Marquise's former full-time income, they say. The couple now runs the Palmstreet side hustle together, along with five contract employees, from their garage-turned-greenhouse.

Here's how Pettigrew built and maintains her lucrative side hustle:

Growing a houseplant side hustle

To develop her green thumb, Pettigrew spent a lot of time on YouTube, she says: She and her husband would lay in bed on their phones, watching plant-care and bass-fishing videos, respectively, before going to sleep.

Selling her houseplants proved more of an administrative process, she says. As she unloaded her extras, finding local buyers on Facebook, she realized she enjoyed the interactions. But creating an actual business — sourcing and buying inventory, keeping organized track of each customer sale — took time and effort.

"I spent hours and hours tracking every purchase and expense in spreadsheets," says Pettigrew.

At PlantCon Houston, a fair for houseplant enthusiasts, she met another seller who convinced her to try Palmstreet, which was called PlantStory at the time. The platform, which promised to take over much of Pettigrew's administrative work, offered two options: a traditional online store and a livestreamed auction system, where she could sell plants on camera in real time.

Pettigrew listed a couple plants on her online store, but taking photos and writing descriptions for each one took time. She tried the livestream feature, and her on-camera presence felt awkward and stiff — until Marquise, who was arranging plants next to Pettigrew, started making jokes.

He made Pettigrew laugh, which made her appear more at home to the livestream's 55 viewers, the couple says. That auction lasted about four hours, and sold 53 plants, according to a Palmstreet spokesperson.

Two months and several successful livestreams later, the couple sat down to develop a more comprehensive business plan, says Pettigrew.

Reorienting life around a side gig

Today, Pettigrew sells roughly 100 houseplants per livestream. With an established audience and reputation, she can sell larger, more expensive plants, she says: starting at $30, rather than her old starting price of $5. Her Monsteras go for upwards of $115 each.

The extra income allowed Marquise, who now occasionally hosts his own livestreams, to mostly step away from his full-time job: running an auto repair shop co-owned by the couple. He still works about six hours per week there, largely for friends and family who "coax" him to take their appointments, says Pettigrew.

Running the auto shop full-time was stressful, Marquise says. Employees were dependent on the couple for their livelihood, and customers were often unhappy — concerned about their car, the bill or when they could get back to work.

In contrast, managing contract workers for Pettigrew's side hustle — she started hiring people this past spring — is a less stressful experience, she says. The workers only rely on them for part-time work, so the business' success doesn't feel life-and-death. The job is less labor intensive, and the customers are largely easier to work with, says Pettigrew.

Together, the couple has five streams of income: Pettigrew's IT job, Palmstreet selling and consulting, the auto shop, and a virtual mechanic gig Marquise picked up with his spare time.

The money helps keep the auto shop open. It's also recently funded a couple weekend trips around Texas to preserve their sanity, they say: When you both work from home, with your side hustle in your garage, it can be hard to unplug.

If the side hustle ever outpaces her full-time salary, Pettigrew wants to sell the auto shop, move to Florida, open her own greenhouse and hire enough staff for her and Marquise to only need part-time work. It could happen within the next year or two, she says.

They'd spend their remaining time on other passions, like volunteer preaching work, adds Pettigrew.

Clarification: This story has been updated to reflect that Pettigrew says her reputation on Palmstreet helps her sell more larger, expensive plants.

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