I built a greenhouse in my backyard instead of an ADU. It earns $24,000 a month and I don't have to work full-time.

Leela Rea custom-designed this greenhouse she built in her backyard. Courtesy of Leela Rea Leela Rea wanted to use her property to earn more income, but didn't want to build a tiny home. She built a greenhouse instead and started renting it out for small events and photoshoots. It's turned into a full-blown business, and in most months she earns an average of $24,000. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Leela Rea, 37, who built a greenhouse in her California backyard. She now rents it out for small events and photo shoots, earning an average of $24,000 a month. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Our family would always drive by this beautiful house in Vista. It had 100-foot trees, eucalyptus, smilax growing down the hills, and hydrangeas. It didn't feel like it belonged in Southern California, but more like the middle of the European countryside. My oldest daughter would always say, "Mommy, that's the princess house," or, "It's the Christmas house." It just had so much character. In 2024, we saw that the home was up for sale. Even though we were a week away from a European vacation, I told my husband, "We're absolutely buying this house." We closed escrow while we were in Switzerland and bought the house for about $1 million. Its interest rate is nearly 8%, and our monthly mortgage payment is about $7,000. A couple of years earlier, my husband and I had sold our wedding-venue business. Living in Southern California is expensive, and we owned multiple properties, including a home in Carlsbad, which was our primary home at the time. We wanted a way to increase our income without having to return to work full time. For a while, we rented out our Vista home, along with the lawn and backyard, on Airbnb. We also considered building an accessory dwelling unit on the property to rent out. We consulted a contractor, who gave us a quote for a three-bedroom, two-bath accessory dwelling unit (ADU). All in — with permits and construction — he told us to budget between $500,000 and $600,000, with room for error. I was like, "There's no way this thing is going to cost me $600,000 to build, and I'd be earning like $3,500 a month." I have three young children, too. Would I even be able to trust them to run around with a stranger living on our property? My background in the wedding industry gave me an idea Instead of an ADU or tiny home, my husband and I decided to build a greenhouse in the backyard. I'm not going to pretend that I just landed on this idea. I knew what I was doing. I previously worked in the wedding industry and have a pretty good idea of what people are looking for. In Southern California, there are many beautiful venues, but not a lot that are small and intimate. For example, there's a beautiful wedding venue about 15 minutes down the street, and it's an insane property. But they do four or five weddings a day there, and their food-and-beverage minimum is probably around $50,000 to $100,000. If you're having a rehearsal dinner or a baby shower, you're not going to want to spend $50,000. That's where we come in. We're like, "We'll meet you right here." Rea has applied for a patent for her greenhouse's design. Courtesy of Leela Rea/ Natalie Wade I've had greenhouses on my Pinterest board for 10 years. We almost went with a company from England to build ours, but the quote was way over our budget. So I sketched out my own idea, and I reached out to a friend who's a welder. I have applied for a patent for my greenhouse design. It cost us almost $200,000 to build, including electrical work, flooring, and a fireplace. To help finance construction, we sold a couple of our real-estate properties, though not our Carlsbad home. All in, it took about 10 months to build. The greenhouse brings in about $24,000 each month. Courtesy of Leela Rea/ Natalie Wade We live in such a social-media, content-creation world. You give something a bomb aesthetic, people are going to come, and they're going to pay — especially with the rise of AI, people are craving something real that stands out. Our house is on a hill, and the greenhouse is down below. There are two seasonal creeks on each side of the greenhouse. When it rains, they get really full. There are massive trees everywhere. On one path, we have a lavender field with about 150 French lavender plants, and you just kind of walk into the greenhouse. It's so sweet. The business has taken off We've done a lot of proposals, and photoshoots are our bread and butter. But our highest revenue events are the intimate ones, like rehearsal dinners, bridal showers, and baby showers. A lot of the time, guests get married at the courthouse and then have a stunning little 20-person reception in the greenhouse. I think, in this post-COVID world, people are more attracted to intimate events with their nearest and dearest. Nobody really wants a Taylor Swift wedding. You can't splurge when you have that many people. With smaller events, you have mone