Are you looking to spice up your home with some greenery? Or perhaps you want to raise and cherish a leafy companion? Marisa Vassallo, a Pine Bush resident, recently opened the perfect business for these longings: Planty Things, a new store located at 110 Center Street in the hamlet that specializes in common and exotic house plants.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Vassallo grew house plants as a new hobby. She initially stored her floras in a dedicated plant room, but as she continued growing more of them, she expanded her collection to her basement and dining room until moving everything to a personal greenhouse. After receiving numerous compliments from house visitors, Vassallo decided to pursue this passion full-time, leaving her previous job in healthcare to start her own house plant business. She and her husband Michael began selling plants last March and signed a lease for their store’s building in September; the shop officially opened last Friday, November 1.

“During COVID, I started growing house plants like crazy. I had a plant room, then I grew to the basement, then I grew to my dining room, and then my husband was like ‘I think you need a greenhouse,’” Vassallo said. “So we built a massive greenhouse that I was letting people visit, and then I started doing pop-up events here like Harvest Fest.”

“Everyone was like ‘Your house plants are beautiful, you should start selling these,’ and I never really thought about it. I used to be a cardiac stenographer, but I wanted to do something different that I really cared about,” she continued. “So I left my job and I started growing more and more to sell them.”

Planty Things offers over 200 varieties of houseplants, many of which Vassallo collected during her travels around the country and world. She grows all of her plants through tissue culture and propagation; after cutting off a small piece of a plant’s node, she can create an identical specimen in water. Of all her house plants, Vassallo loves hoyas, monsteras, and philodendrons.

“We travel a lot, and wherever we travel, I’ll bring plants back and make sure I have my permit for that country,” she said. “I did my inventory recently; my philodendron variety is over 50, my hoya variety is over 50, and I easily have over 200 different varieties.”

For opening day, Vasallo hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony with her husband and friends, providing visitors with refreshments, music, free plants, and a raffle for a rare plant. She is ecstatic to operate her own business in Pine Bush and she looks forward to sharing her passion with residents.

“I’m very attached to Pine Bush, it’s a very small hamlet and we have lots of friends and family here,” Vasallo said. “I’m very passionate to be a part of this community, and I’m so glad I can start my own business and open something unique where I grew up.”

Planty Things is located at 110 Center Street in Pine Bush; the store’s hours vary weekly. For more information, call (845) 513-9862, visit the store’s website at planty-things.com/, or visit its Facebook page.