There’s a new trend sweeping the nation, and Peggy Anderson, a Rory Meyers School of Nursing alumna, has taken it to a whole new level: she is raising three succulents as her own.

“At first, I just wanted to have succulents so I could post cute pictures of them on Instagram,” she said. “But after learning they only had to be watered once every two weeks, it seemed just like real motherhood to me.”

Anderson has since moved out of NYU graduate housing and found herself a two-bedroom apartment.

“Am I paying an additional five thousand dollars a month? Maybe,” Anderson said. “But Bobby, Tina and Arielle need space to flourish. I’m saving up for when they go through puberty and need their own rooms.”

Unbeknownst to Anderson, succulents stay their miniature size —  a part of what makes these plants so appealing. Anderson’s concerned friend, Dina Williams, has tried to explain this to her to no avail.

“She’s already saving up for their college educations, which has been stressing her out,” Williams said. “She thinks she’s putting the money in a college savings plan, but I’m redirecting it to pay her tuition bills. She’ll thank me later.”

Anderson’s family also reached out, worried that Anderson was taking her experiment too far.

“It started with her bringing them home for the holidays and keeping them on the bookshelf,” Anderson’s mother, Carol, said. “But now it’s gotten out of hand. She brings them home in one of those strollers for triplets and excuses herself from the dinner table to go breastfeed.”

Anderson’s father, Robert, shared his wife’s concerns and expressed confusion at the logistics of the situation.

“Now, I have nothing against breastfeeding,” Robert said. “But I don’t really understand how Peggy does it. These are cactuses.”

Despite their apprehension, the Andersons are giving their daughter the time and space she needs to figure out this new chapter in her life.

“Gramma and gramps are being as supportive as they can be — they even promise to babysit when I have my night classes on Tuesdays, and it has been a lifesaver,” Anderson said.

“We only agreed to babysit because Peggy threatened to quit NYU if we didn’t,” Mrs. Anderson said. “We didn’t drop $48,000 so she could raise some godd-mn cactuses!”

Before wrapping up our interview, Anderson insisted on showing me all 646 pictures of her succulents in the family scrapbook she handmade.

“I saved clippings of their first buds,” Anderson said. “Arielle’s didn’t come in until she was nine months, but it was worth the wait. She has my eyes.”

Other pages included fragments of their first pots and baby footprints where Anderson dipped the bottom of the succulents in paint and pressed it into the page.

“If you squint real hard, it kinda looks like a human foot,” she said.

Once thought to be perfectly safe, succulents are now being flagged by the federal government as a potential Schedule I drug, next to heroin and ecstasy. The full effect of owning these plants still requires further research, but curious horticulturalists should exercise caution in the meantime.

Email Laura Rubio at [email protected].