Hi. I’m Will. I’ve always been the plant person.
I grew up in Austin. I’ve spent 25 years working with plants — starting with landscaping as a teenager, progressing through every kind of growing environment, and spending the last decade becoming the person my friends, neighbors, and eventually strangers called when something was wrong with their plants.
For years, that was informal. Someone would text me a photo of a yellowing Monstera at 9pm. I’d tell them exactly what was wrong. They’d ask if I could come look at it. I’d go. Word spread the way it does in Austin — quietly, through neighborhoods, through dinner party conversations, through “you have to talk to my friend Will.”
Keep Austin Watered is the answer to a decade of those conversations. I built it to give Austin homes and businesses access to real plant expertise — not a generic service, not a box shipped from a warehouse, not advice written for a different climate. Me, in your space, with 25 years of knowledge applied to your specific light, your specific water, your specific life.
How a kid who loved plants became Austin’s plant person.
It started outside.
I started working with plants as a teenager — landscaping, outdoor work, learning what grows where and why. Austin’s climate will teach you humility fast. Something that thrives in April is dead by August if you don’t know what you’re doing. I learned by watching what worked and obsessively figuring out why what didn’t.
That obsession with the “why” — not just which plant goes where, but why it thrives in that spot and declines in the one next to it — is what eventually pulled me indoors.
Indoor plants. A completely different problem.
Indoor plants in Austin are their own challenge. The hard water — around 290 mg/L from the Highland Lakes for Austin proper, and even harder in the Hill Country where customers draw from the Trinity Aquifer — is unlike most of the country. Our AC systems drop indoor humidity to 20-30% in summer, which is close to desert conditions for tropical plants. The light in a south-facing Austin window in July is intense enough to burn plants that would thrive in the same window in January.
None of the generic plant care advice accounts for any of this. I spent years developing plant knowledge that actually applies to Austin conditions — which plants handle our hard water, which survive our AC environments, which ones need adjusting seasonally. That’s still the core of what I know that most people don’t.
Everyone suddenly wanted plants. Almost nobody knew how.
The pandemic plant boom was real, and in Austin it was intense. People were home, their spaces suddenly mattered in a way they hadn’t before, and they were buying plants from Home Depot and watching them die within weeks. My phone started buzzing constantly. Friends. Neighbors. Neighbors of neighbors.
I was making house calls every week — sometimes several a week — diagnosing problems, repotting, advising on placement, saving plants people had given up on. I wasn’t charging for most of it because it didn’t feel like work. It felt like what I’d always done.
Keep Austin Watered is the formalization of something I was already doing.
I built Keep Austin Watered because the informal version had gotten too big to sustain without structure. There were too many people, too many spaces, too many plants — and they deserved better than “I’ll try to swing by when I can.”
The service I’ve built is the exact thing I’d want if I were hiring someone: a person who knows what they’re doing, shows up consistently, tells me the truth about what my plants need, and doesn’t make it complicated. No contracts. No strangers in my home. No generic advice that wasn’t written for Austin.
That’s what Keep Austin Watered is. And I’m still the one who shows up.
There’s a phrase I like for what this work actually is: plant therapy. Plants do something to a room — and to the person living in it. After 25 years, I’ve watched a struggling client become a different person once their space filled with living things. Call it biophilic design if you want; I just call it what it is. That’s why I keep doing it.
The knowledge you can’t get from a YouTube video.
Austin water, Austin conditions
I know Austin’s water intimately — Highland Lakes hardness around 290 mg/L for Austin, even harder Trinity Aquifer groundwater for Dripping Springs and Hill Country customers, how it affects soil chemistry over months, which plants handle it and which silently fail. I’ve been dealing with Austin water for 25 years. The fix is almost always simpler than people think.
🌿 I believe in plant therapy
Plants do something to a room — and to the person living in it. After 25 years, I’ve watched a struggling client become a different person once their space filled with living things. Call it biophilic design if you want; I just call it what it is. Plant therapy is the whole point.
280+ plant varieties
I source from a network that gives me access to over 280 plant varieties — including things you’ll never find at Home Depot or even most Austin nurseries. When I select a plant for your space, I’m choosing from a much bigger menu than you’d have on your own.
A real kill-proof collection
Some clients travel constantly. Some have killed every plant they’ve ever owned. I keep a curated roster of genuinely kill-proof species — plants I’ve personally watched survive Austin homes through neglect, blasting AC, and forgotten waterings. It’s the default for plant gifting, and it’s the right answer when the recipient isn’t going to remember to water anything.
Exotic doesn’t have to mean difficult
A lot of the unusual plants I source — variegated Monsteras, fenestrated rubber trees, serrated philodendrons — look exotic but behave like any other tropical. “Hard to find” doesn’t have to mean “hard to keep.” I match the right unusual plant to your light and your maintenance willingness, so what you end up with is interesting AND alive.
He can read a struggling plant
Yellow leaves, brown tips, root rot, mystery pests, stunted growth — after 25 years, I diagnose plant problems faster than most people can describe them. I’ve made enough house calls on struggling plants that pattern recognition kicks in within minutes. I usually know before I even touch the soil.
Terrarium care & planting
Will plants and maintains terrariums you already have — he doesn’t build the glass. An empty vessel or one that’s gone swampy: he’ll plant it right, balance the moisture, and keep it thriving.
The eye for a room
Plant knowledge alone doesn’t make a space look great — it’s understanding scale, sightlines, how a plant reads from the entry point, what the room is missing and what would fill it. Will’s spent years developing this instinct. It’s why spaces he’s styled look intentional, not decorated.
“I’ve never walked into a space and not known what it needed. That’s not bravado — it’s 25 years. The plants tell you, if you know how to listen.”
Austin is a particular place. The water, the climate, the way the sun hits west-facing windows in October — it rewards local knowledge and punishes generic advice. Everything I’ve learned has been learned here, for here.
I’m not going to scale this into a franchise or hire a team of strangers. The whole point is that it’s me — that you know who’s coming, that I know your plants, that nothing falls through the cracks because there are two of us. Keep Austin Watered stays small so it can stay good.
“Most plants die from overwatering, not neglect. The instinct to water more when something looks wrong is almost always wrong.”
“The most common mistake in Austin homes is putting plants near AC vents. The second most common is south-facing windows in summer. Both are fixable in five minutes.”
“A space with the right plants — selected for that specific light, that specific room — looks completely different from a space with plants that were just bought and placed somewhere.”
“The best plant services are the ones where the client doesn’t have to think about it. That’s the goal — a space that looks incredible and costs you zero mental energy to maintain.”
The consult is free. Will comes to you.
Will visits your Austin, Dripping Springs, or Lakeway home or business, looks at your space, and tells you exactly what he’d do. No charge, no commitment, no sales pressure. Just honest plant advice from someone who’s been doing this for 25 years.
Or read more: How it works → · Why store plants die → · Austin plant guides →