Plant Influencers Rich List

It's no secret that surrounding ourselves with greenery is soothing for the soul. From the expansive botanical gardens from the Victorian era to the Japanese art of Shinrin-yoku – forest bathing – humans have sought a connection to plants and gardenscapes for thousands of years. During the pandemic in 2020, over 7 million people took up gardening in the UK and have reported that doing so helped with their mental well-being. This boom in gardening popularity paved the way for a new genre of plant influencers – also known as plant-fluencers – who began sharing inspiring content and valuable tips on how to care for your plants.

With the growth of this new age of influencers showing no sign of slowing down, Gardener's Dream has dug a little deeper to look into the most popular influencers in the plant-fluencer space to see who earns the most per sponsored post across Instagram and TikTok. We broke our findings down into two main categories; indoor plant-fluencers and outdoor plant-fluencers. Here's what we found.

Top Plantinfluencers Earners

Top Plantinfluencers Earners

When imagining gardeners, you're probably thinking along the lines of Alan Titchmarsh and Charlie Dimmock. But our top-earning plant-fluencers are much less Ground Force and a bit more Guerilla Gardening – breaking the mould of what we would typically expect from the world of plants.

There are more outdoor gardening influencers than those who focus on indoor plants and while all three of our highest-earners are on TikTok, the split between the top 10 is even between Instagram and TikTok. The combined total earnings for the TikTok-based influencers in the top 10 is £21,544 – an impressive sum but still only around enough to buy a variegated Monstera plant.

Alessandro Vitale isn't what you might expect from a gardening influencer but he's breaking the mould and bringing fresh, fun content to the plant-fluencer scene . He specialises in videos talking about urban gardening and making the most of your small garden as well as offering tips on how to be more zero-waste. He has 2.6 million followers and his vertical gardening video has over 15 million views. It's estimated that he earns £4,994 per sponsored post.

Joe from Joe's Garden speaks with a quiet authority in his videos. And with 22 years of gardening experience under his belt, we can see why. With 1.6 million followers, an absolutely enviable garden, and his biggest video raking in over 14 million views, it's no wonder why he earns around £3074 per sponsored post.

Ben Newell of @worcesterterrariums has 1.6 million followers and a passion for, you guessed it, terrariums. His passion for his craft has landed him interviews with the BBC and even contracts with Marvel (yes, THAT Marvel), and his success on TikTok brings in around £2687 per sponsored post.

Top 10 Highest Earning Indoor Influencers

Top 10 Highest Earning Indoor Influencers

Whether you have a garden or not, indoor plants are one of the best ways to bring some greenery into your living space. Indoor plants have been proven to improve air quality and mental well-being, so even if you live in a small apartment, bringing an indoor plant into your space can have excellent benefits. From bonsais to terrariums, there's an influencer doing it – and doing it really well, showing off how to care for your indoor plants in short, bite-size and easily digestible ways.

Two of our top 3 indoor plant influencers are most popular on TikTok. Of the two types of plant influencers, the indoor sub-niche is the newest and the entire concept of ‘plant parent' was born on TikTok, so it's no wonder that this platform – best known for its short-form videos – is the most popular for indoor plant care.

Ben Newell takes the top spot for indoor plant popularity. His expertise and obvious passion for terrariums spurs his popularity. His viral video featuring critters in his terrarium eating a slice of cucumber gained over 67 million views – and we can attest that it's very satisfying. He has done interviews for publications talking about his small business, expertise, and viral videos and was even approached by Disney's Marvel to create a terrarium based on the Quantum Realm for Ant Man: Quantumania.

We've all visited a supermarket or garden centre and found at least one plant that needs a little extra TLC. Well Sarah Gerrard-Jones has turned plant first-aid into an artform – all in an attempt to help save plant waste. She has won multiple awards including the gold medal during the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2022 for her Plant Clinic booth. You can find her sharing tips, tricks, and news with her almost 400k Instagram followers, making an estimated £1372 per sponsored post.

Just Plants is a TikTok plant enthusiast who grows and experiments with all kinds of plants. He is well known for his avocado bonsai plant, accumulating tens of millions of views on the 41-video playlist alone. But the rest of his videos are also popular, his fun and playful approach to growing plants from vegetables and mounting them on unique items like rocks making his content accessible to anyone wanting to give his creations a try for themselves. He boasts around 670k followers on TikTok and makes around £1200 per sponsored post.

Top 10 Highest Earning Outdoor Influencers

Top 10 Highest Earning Outdoor Influencers

In a time of recession, a cost-of-living crisis, and food becoming more and more expensive, it's no wonder that people have started going back to their roots and are becoming more interested in growing their own food. Outdoor plant-fluencers up and down the country have seen a boom in popularity as more people are turning to their own gardens to help bolster their weekly food shop. Just as with the indoor plant influencers, the outdoor plant-fluencing world has become dominated by TikTok as a method for searching for bite-sized information on growing fruit, vegetables, and other plants.

The tattooed Alessandro, known as SpicyMoustache on TikTok, has risen to the top of the ranks of outdoor plant-fluencers on the platform. The self-described urban gardener focuses on low-waste living and shares gardening tips for growing fruits and vegetables in a small space. His dedication and clear passion for what he does is truly inspiring .

Joe's Garden is the second most popular plant-fluencer on TikTok. It's easy to see why – his gentle nature coupled with his obvious passion for growing his own food is contagious and his 22 years of experience is apparent in every video he makes. He even has a book about gardening so this gardener-slash-author is really one to watch.

Paula Sutton is the living embodiment of the phrase “cottagecore”. Her vintage-inspired style and obvious joy draw you into her world – a stunning manor house in the heart of Norfolk – but her passion for gardening and flowers keeps you scrolling. She started her account in 2013 and shares photos, tips, and tricks for growing a blossoming garden at her rural retreat. She boasts 560,000 followers and is estimated to make around £2,115 per sponsored post.

On Which Platform Are Plant Influencers Having Most Success?

TikTok is the home of plant-fluencers. It dominates both the indoor and outdoor plant niches with the majority of plant-fluencers showcasing their skills on the platform. With its ability to upload multiple images in one post, making it the perfect place to showcase tutorials, how-tos, and before-and-after transformations, Instagram comes in second place.

Craig Wilson, co-founder of Gardener's Dream says “Tiktok has become the go-to destination for plant enthusiasts, with creators, sharing short, digestible content on how to take care of your plants, with its popularity evident in the success of the top influencers on the platform.”

“However,” he goes on to say, “when looking at the top 5 earners from both platforms, it was interesting to see that each sub-niche found success on different platforms.”

"Instagram was the most lucrative platform for indoor influencers with an average earning of £1,101 per sponsored post, compared to an average earning of £1,041 for the top earners on TikTok. Whereas, TikTok was the highest paying platform for outdoor influencers with an average earning of £2,317, whilst the top influencers on Instagram earn an average of £1,519. This highlights how the success of the two sub-niches has split into two different platforms. As social media continues to evolve, it's going to be interesting to see how each sub-niche of the plant-fluencer continues to grow on both these social media platforms.”

Methodology

Gardener's Dream looked at the most popular influencers in each category which were selected from reputable articles of the best influencers to follow on social media, alongside the most prominent influencers appearing in manual searches on Instagram and TikTok. To determine which influencers earn the most from social media, we used the influencer marketing hub money calculators* and validated the numbers by consulting with an influencer marketer, to determine how much each influencer is estimated to earn, per sponsored post across Instagram and TikTok.

Please note, the money figures from the tools were given in US dollars, therefore we exchanged the figures into GBP using Google. All currency figures are correct as of 28/01/2024.