I’m not much for gardening, although I have to tell you a quick story about it.

Early on in my marriage, I challenged my wife to a tomato-growing contest. (Competitive much?)

We lived in a small apartment with a very sunny balcony. We bought two tomato plants at a nearby garden store. We transplanted them into pots and started caring for them.

My wife took one, and I took the other.

She did the organic thing: no chemicals, picking off worms with her fingers, etc.

I went with Miracle-Gro and a bunch of other chemicals. I poured everything I could find onto that plant. I spent a small fortune on various potions.

My tomato plant grew like a weed. It blossomed, and tomatoes started growing.

Her plant was lame.

I was the clear winner. I’m still talking about it 24 years later. My tomato was awesome!

However, what’s good for a tomato isn’t necessarily good for other plants.

My tomato prowess doesn’t apply to small ficus trees and the other green stuff that inhabits our lobbies and conference rooms.

Unfortunately, most of our office plants struggled to stay alive when I was responsible. Over time, I tried delegating the task to the receptionist, paralegals, and even an allegedly green-thumbed associate.

The result? Leaves all over the ground as the plants slowly died.

Why Your Plants Matter

Who cares? Other than plant lovers, of course.

Actually, clients care. They see a dead plant and make assumptions about you.

If you can’t take care of a plant, how can you take care of my case? That’s what they ask themselves (they really do: I heard one say it one time while waiting for a lawyer in our lobby as she sat next to a dead plant—seriously).

How to Eliminate the Dead-Plant Problem

You’ve got lots of options, but here’s what we did.

First, we hired a plant maintenance service. They took the few plants that were still alive and nursed them back to health. Then they bought us some new plants and kept them watered and fertilized. The plants stayed alive. Over time, however, we had to deal with deciding which plants needed replacing and what kind of plant to buy. The service worked, but it wasn’t entirely hands-off.

We wanted something simpler. We wanted something green that we didn’t have to talk about, deal with, touch, etc. We wanted someone to just deal with the plants and keep us out of it.

We tried plastic plants. They got dusty and dreary looking.

We tried silk plants. They looked odd. They looked like fake plants. I always had this odd sense of cognitive dissonance about the plants. Something—something subtle—was wrong with the picture. Fake plants are . . . fake plants.

That’s when we discovered the plant-leasing service. It leases us lots of plants. It deals with everything related to the plants.

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It buys them, put them in nice pots, waters them, cares for them, moves them around the space when required, relocates them to new office space, replaces them when they look less than perfect, and does everything required to keep us looking like we’re capable of keeping a plant alive.

We pay a fixed monthly fee, and it does the rest. We never have to think about or touch a plant. We’ve been using the same service for more than a decade. In fact, I have the service provide and take care of the plants in my home.

Look around your office. What’s the state of your plants?

Is it time to outsource the plants? Is it time to focus on the law and let somebody who loves taking care of plants take care of yours? I’ll bet you a tomato that it is.