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 from the Edwards Aquifer — running around 400 parts per million — 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.
The knowledge you can’t get from a YouTube video.
Austin water, Austin conditions
Will knows the Edwards Aquifer intimately — ~400ppm hardness, how it affects soil chemistry over months, which plants handle it and which silently fail. He’s been dealing with Austin water for 25 years. The fix is almost always simpler than people think.
He brings a light meter
Not a guess. An actual light meter. Will measures foot-candles at every potential plant position in your space. This is the difference between plants that thrive and plants that struggle for reasons neither of you can figure out. Real data, applied to your specific windows.
280+ plant varieties
Will sources from a network that gives him access to over 280 plant varieties — including things you’ll never find at Home Depot or even most Austin nurseries. When he selects a plant for your space, he’s choosing from a much bigger menu than you’d have on your own.
He can read a struggling plant
Yellow leaves, brown tips, root rot, mystery pests, stunted growth — after 25 years, Will diagnoses plant problems faster than most people can describe them. He’s made enough house calls on struggling plants that pattern recognition kicks in within minutes. He usually knows before he even touches the soil.
Custom automated terrariums
Will designs and builds custom planted terrariums — fully automated, self-sustaining ecosystems with proper drainage, humidity management, and curated plant communities. These aren’t craft projects. They’re engineered living pieces for homes, offices, and gifts.
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 →