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 I bred a new one called Cologasia Redemption and we were walking out through the field and they were only maybe a

foot tall and all of a sudden there's a big giant pink starburst and center of a black

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

The Williams' have good reason to believe there's big money in houseplants. 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, they may be selling it for 10 or 15,000 dollars because this is the only one of that plant

in existence right now.

For the Freak economics radio network,

this is the economics of everyday things.

I'm Zachary Krakett.

Today, houseplants.

Keeping plants inside the home is an idea that goes back at least a few hundred years. During the Victorian era, the bourgeoisie

turned their living quarters into veritable jungles of ferns and parlor palms.

...