Plant Guru Hilton Carter: How to Transform Your Home and Heart With Houseplants

The sunroom is Carter’s favorite room in his Baltimore home, for having the most natural light—and thus the most plants. Frank the fiddle-leaf fig, his first houseplant, stands tall right of center. Hilton Carter © CICO Books 2023

It started with Frank. Frank the fiddle-leaf fig, that is.

When Hilton Carter bought—and then named—his first houseplant in 2014, he didn’t know it was the start of a life-changing journey into indoor greenery. Now, Frank is the ceiling-brushing star of Carter’s Baltimore home of 300-some plants, and Carter, a fine artist and filmmaker by training, has fully embraced plants as his palette.