Me Hello Charrisa! Can you introduce yourself, like your age and what do you do on your day job?

Charrisa Okay so I'm 29 this year and I'm actually working as a civil servant within the cybersecurity space.

Me Oh! So your job has nothing related to your hobby whatsoever?

Charrisa

Yes, they are completely separated.

Me

Okay then let's start with the first question. So what has inspired you to start collecting plants?

Charrisa It is mostly because of my father he has always been growing plants from a young. We always had balconies or we always had a lot of space for his plants. Some of them are probably older than me even. So I grew up alongside a lot of greens and plants.

When I got married I moved out to a rental space I decided to get my first plant to decorate the space. There were actually a few florist shops outside the International Plaza near my workplace at Tanjong Pagar. My first plant was a Peace Lily actually then of course what I had to learn after killing plants. You know when you buy some and you kill them is that putting the Peace Lily out on the balcony and then going for two honeymoons wasn't exactly the smartest thing to do. So when I came back these leaves were totally droopy but of course, I've rectified that by giving a lot of water and then it perched back up and soon after it recovered quite well. I think that was just before COVID.

After a while, the balcony was running out of space and it didn't make sense to have the Peace Lily in an outdoor environment, so I brought it back to my office to water. I think some plants are actually able to survive in office environments because the constant gentle light in my office will be on compared to the harsh direct sunlight from my balcony.

A year and a half in, I moved back into my parents' to wait for my BTO and now my collection is combined with my father's.

I am more towards ornamentals while my dad is more towards edible, cacti, succulents, basically everything and anything. You name it and he will try.