For Brian Williams, plants are a way of life.

My dad has always been into plants, and he started the nursery out of our backyard when I was a kid.

I kind of grew up playing in the backyard jungle with all these tropicals and stuff.

Today, he runs a business called Brian's Botanicals with his wife Sarah.

They sell rare house plants over the internet and out of their store in Louisville, Kentucky.

And they're constantly on the hunt for new and unusual plant breeds.

I remember Robbred does a new one called Colicasia Redemption,

and we were walking out through the field.

They were only maybe a foot tall,

and all of a sudden there's a big giant pink starbursts in the center of a black leaf,

and you run around thinking you're going to be a millionaire.

The Williamses have good reason to believe there's big money in house plants.

According to the National Gardening Association, sales of indoor plants and accessories

nearly doubled between 2019 and 2021.

House plants are now a $2 billion year industry.

And according to big shots in the plant world,

the competition to breed the next big thing has never been more intense.

Some of the breeders, when they come out with a new plant and they bring it to one of the local shows,

you know, they may be selling it for $10,000 or $15,000 because this is the only one of that plant

in existence right now.

For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is the economics of everyday things.

I'm Zachary Crackett.

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