Six plants that survive a genuinely busy person

Every plant guide assumes you’re home to mist things. I am not. I forget, I travel, I overwater out of guilt and then underwater out of forgetting. So this is a list for the rest of us — plants that have survived a year of my genuine, well-documented neglect.

A pothos that has forgiven everything. A snake plant I water roughly monthly. A ZZ plant in a dim corner that has no business looking that healthy. The trick wasn’t a green thumb, it was choosing plants matched to how I actually live, and to the light a Singapore flat actually gets behind tinted windows and an HDB corridor.

There’s a small lesson in here about the whole home, really. Most of us fail at upkeep not because we’re lazy but because we choose things that demand a version of us we aren’t. Pick the plant for your life, not the life you imagine you’ll have on a Sunday. The same goes for sofas, schedules and most New Year resolutions.