I once killed a fiddle leaf fig in thirteen days. Not because I forgot to water it, but because I had nowhere to put it. My apartment has a total floor area of forty-two square meters, which means every piece of furniture earns its keep or gets tossed. The sofa bed in my living room pulls double duty as a guest bed and a plant staging area, with a slatted frame underneath that lets me slide pots into the shadows without losing floor space. That small gap, barely fifteen centimeters high, became the difference between a lush corner and a sad, brown skeleton. You see, I needed the couch for sleeping guests, but the plants needed somewhere to breathe. The trick was making the two coexist.

The problem with small space plant keeping is that you run out of flat surfaces fast. Windowsills fill up with succulents. The coffee table becomes a nursery for propagating pothos cuttings in mason jars. And then someone wants to sleep over.