John Balchandani, a 34-year-old resident of Castlemorton, a village in the English county of Worcestershire, has turned his house into a real jungle in a few years, where about 3,000 exotic plants grow safely.
Johnny Balchandani, 34, admits he spent £20,000 to fill his house with greenery. Johnny’s five-bedroom home in Castlemorton, near Malvern, has at least 3,000 plants purchased from around the world. Many of them cost Johnny very expensive. One rare variegated monstera adansoni plant cost Johnny £850 .
Johnny, whose main job is marketing director, said that his hobby comes from childhood: “When I was growing up, my mother planted a lot of outdoor and indoor plants. She was passionate about gardening, so I was always surrounded by nature.”
Now Johnny is greening his own house. “The hallway and two rooms are now filled to the brim with plants,” he says. – I buy plants from sellers and growers from all over the world; there are quite a few from Indonesia and South America.” Johnny’s partner Charlotte, 33, and their children Phoenix (age 3) and Talula (age 2) live in their own mini jungle. Johnny has no plans to give up his habit of buying greens, even if vines start to take over his own living space.
Every day I spend a couple of hours spraying the plants with pesticides, checking humidity levels, checking propagation in the greenhouse, removing dead leaves and doing general maintenance,” he says. – My jungle is getting bigger every week! I hope to build an extension in the form of a greenhouse to accommodate even more plants.”
Luckily, Charlotte is comfortable with plants. However, she admits that at first Johnny’s collection made a stunning impression on her. And Johnny himself hopes to continue to collect his collection and someday pass it on to his children. “The collection costs a lot of money and I can’t take care of it forever, so I would like my children to share my passion,” he says. As for his favorite plant in his collection, Johnny thinks it is a rare ghost orchid from Florida.
