“Knowing that you put care and love into something other than yourself and to see it flourishing feels amazing,” he says. “You take what you learn from these growing plants and then you apply it to the real world.” Caring for a living being and seeing it grow is a healing balm to the soul.

A Lesson In Empathy

Lending plants their own personality and a quirky backstory help us focus on things outside of the real world. One of the people who have taken up caring for plants as a type of self-care tells about her Tillandsia plants. Babs and Phyllis, are the “old busybodies who sit and gossip,” she says. Her cactus, named Dave, is a divorcee.

Plants With Character

And that’s never been more important than in these uncertain times. <div itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" dir="ltr">By
					Tori B. Powell		
	</div><div><time datetime="2020-08-21T11:01:33.162433Z">
											Aug 21, 2020
					</time></div><picture class=""><source srcset="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/flowersempathy-1597957514.png?crop=1.00xw:1.00xh;0, https://www.shondaland.com/live/body/a33657263/taking-care-of-plants-is-a-lesson-in-empathy/0&amp;resize=980:*" media="(min-width: 61.25rem)"><source srcset="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/flowersempathy-1597957514.png?crop=1.00xw:1.00xh;0, https://www.shondaland.com/live/body/a33657263/taking-care-of-plants-is-a-lesson-in-empathy/0&amp;resize=768:*" media="(min-width: 48rem)"><source srcset="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/flowersempathy-1597957514.png?crop=1.00xw:1.00xh;0, https://www.shondaland.com/live/body/a33657263/taking-care-of-plants-is-a-lesson-in-empathy/0&amp;resize=640:*" media="(min-width: 40.625rem)"><source srcset="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/flowersempathy-1597957514.png?crop=0.668xw:1.00xh;0.276xw, https://www.shondaland.com/live/body/a33657263/taking-care-of-plants-is-a-lesson-in-empathy/0&amp;resize=640:*" media="(min-width: 30rem)"><source srcset="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/flowersempathy-1597957514.png?crop=0.668xw:1.00xh;0.276xw, https://www.shondaland.com/live/body/a33657263/taking-care-of-plants-is-a-lesson-in-empathy/0&amp;resize=640:*" media="(min-width: 20rem)"><img alt="hand showering heart shaped plants with heart shaped seeds" title="Taking Care of Plants is a Lesson in Empathy" src="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/flowersempathy-1597957514.png?crop=1.00xw:1.00xh;0,0&amp;resize=640:*" width="705" height="469"></picture><div dir="ltr">
	Getty Images</div> At the start of 2020, Rashad Bigham, 31, moved for the first time ever from his hometown in Kentucky to one of the <a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/houston-tx-population" data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/houston-tx-population" dir="ltr">most populated cities</a> in the country, where he’d eventually face two serious car accidents, severe financial trouble, and a diagnosis for clinical depression that left him feeling lonely and with limited options. “Mental health is something that I always preach to my students, but I had not taken my own advice,” he says. “I attempted to take my own life.”<div>Advertisement - Continue Reading Below</div>The Texas Southern University professor has since recovered, finding a degree of peace in an outlet he never expected: gardening. Bigham allowed the plants to do the teaching, with lessons on self-care and empathy that he says the world could benefit from during such a chaotic year.<div role="heading" aria-level="2">
		Related Stories
	</div><img alt="" title="Plant Positivity: 8 Ways to Enrich Your Home With Plants" src="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/shondaland-thehorticult-35-1585929938.jpg?crop=1.00xw:0.706xh;0,0.0989xh&amp;resize=300:*">“Knowing that you put care and love into something other than yourself and to see it flourishing feels amazing,” he says. “You take what you learn from these growing plants and then you apply it to the real world.” Bigham isn’t the only one who’s tapped into the power of horticulture either. For centuries, physical nature contact has provided <a href="https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP1663" data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP1663" dir="ltr">clinically proven health benefits</a> like lowered blood pressure, better sleep, and improved mental health according to a study conducted by the Environmental Health Perspectives. These benefits are due to the antigens that many plants contain that naturally provoke the human body to create healthy antibodies. Aside from community gardens and online collectives that have existed long before the pandemic, there’s an entirely new wave of planters emerging as we spend more time at home. <div>Advertisement - Continue Reading Below</div>Since lockdown began in March, seed companies around the world have seen some of the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-gardens/home-gardening-blooms-around-the-world-during-coronavirus-lockdowns-idUSKBN2220D3" data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-gardens/home-gardening-blooms-around-the-world-during-coronavirus-lockdowns-idUSKBN2220D3" dir="ltr">biggest increases in history</a>. And as <a href="https://www.massgeneral.org/news/coronavirus/depression-on-rise-during-covid-19" data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://www.massgeneral.org/news/coronavirus/depression-on-rise-during-covid-19" dir="ltr">one-third</a> of Americans report clinical signs of anxiety and depression related to the pandemic, gardening for some has served as a way to soothe their nerves. “Buying a plant was such a needed relief for me,” Cartreze Tucker, 28, says while sitting on the ground and playing in mulch. The New York City actor was on the road performing in the Tony award-winning musical The Color Purple before COVID-19 ended the tour. His life abruptly switched from traveling and performing each night to quarantining in what, at one point, was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/nyregion/Coronavirus-new-York-epicenter.html" data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/nyregion/Coronavirus-new-York-epicenter.html" dir="ltr">an epicenter of the virus</a>.“I was totally in a rut — but these plants have definitely made me realize more things about myself than I ever could have imagined,” says Tucker, who, in watching a seed transform into a leafy organism, has learned how to be more compassionate and how to love selflessly. As the <a href="https://www.bea.gov/" data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://www.bea.gov" dir="ltr">US economy plummets</a> and COVID-19 deaths continue to multiply each day, Tucker says that compassion can go a long way and even solve some of the country’s current problems. And he may be onto something. <picture class=""><source data-srcset="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/woman-planting-royalty-free-image-1597950885.jpg?resize=768:*" media="(min-width: 61.25rem)" srcset="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/woman-planting-royalty-free-image-1597950885.jpg?resize=768:*"><source data-srcset="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/woman-planting-royalty-free-image-1597950885.jpg?resize=980:*" media="(min-width: 48rem)" srcset="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/woman-planting-royalty-free-image-1597950885.jpg?resize=980:*"><source data-srcset="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/woman-planting-royalty-free-image-1597950885.jpg?resize=640:*" media="(min-width: 30rem)" srcset="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/woman-planting-royalty-free-image-1597950885.jpg?resize=640:*"><img alt="woman planting a small pant in a garden" title="Taking Care of Plants is a Lesson in Empathy" src="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/woman-planting-royalty-free-image-1597950885.jpg?resize=480:*"></picture><figcaption dir="ltr">As one third of Americans report clinical signs of anxiety and depression related to the pandemic, gardening, for some, has served as a way to soothe their nerves.</figcaption><div dir="ltr">
	Guido MiethGetty Images</div><div>Advertisement - Continue Reading Below</div>A study from the <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3626841" data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3626841" dir="ltr">Social Science Research Network</a> found that American individualism has significantly restricted the United States from making substantial progress with COVID-19. Individualism is the long-running ideology within the country that provokes citizens to favor their own freedom of choice rather than any sort of collective control, which in this case is the United States’ federal response to the pandemic. By using data that spans over 200 years, their research shows that American individualism has minimized compliance with social distancing by 41% and has even hindered funding for the pandemic by 48%. So while the virus rages on with no clear end, gardener Janel Napier, 32, says that this period of isolation can allow society the ability to stop and truly listen to the world’s needs.The Atlanta designer says that we’ve progressed past the point of being able to simply go next door and ask a neighbor to borrow an egg. “Many of us don’t have that connection anymore,” she says. As working from home has allowed her the appropriate time to focus on community and the country’s lack thereof, gardening, on the other hand, has provided her an introspective look inwards to reassess her own deeper qualities and needs. “I never wanted kids ever in my life,” Napier says. “I didn’t think that I had that nurturing motherly gene inside of me, but as soon as I had the plants and I started to worry about them, it started to grow in me and I can now see myself with kids in the future.”For Napier gardening has served as a self-realizing form of therapy, despite the stigma around the term that she grew up internalizing.“It’s frowned upon to seek out a shrink or to look for help in the Black community — and it’s a problem,” Napier says. <div>Advertisement - Continue Reading Below</div><BLOCKQUOTE>I brought nature back into my life and it made me feel more at home.</BLOCKQUOTE>According to the <a href="https://ct.counseling.org/2020/05/the-historical-roots-of-racial-disparities-in-the-mental-health-system/" data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://ct.counseling.org/2020/05/the-historical-roots-of-racial-disparities-in-the-mental-health-system/" dir="ltr">American Counseling Association</a>, in comparison to the white population, Black Americans are less likely to receive mental health care; and if they do, they’re also less likely to receive quality care. This can be attributed to various systemic factors, such as how Black Americans often have <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK24693/" data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK24693/" dir="ltr">less access</a> to health insurance coverage.But as <a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/police-violence-physical-and-mental-health-impacts-on-black-americans#Police-violence-as-a-public-health-issue" data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/police-violence-physical-and-mental-health-impacts-on-black-americans#Police-violence-as-a-public-health-issue" dir="ltr">traumatic videos and stress-inducing news</a> consistently surface the media — especially around social and racial justice issues — chief medical director of Hope Health Systems, Jonathan Shephard tells The Undefeated that <a href="https://theundefeated.com/features/black-people-were-stressed-before-the-coronavirus-now-more-than-ever-we-need-to-ask-for-help/" data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://theundefeated.com/features/black-people-were-stressed-before-the-coronavirus-now-more-than-ever-we-need-to-ask-for-help/" dir="ltr">now is a critical time</a> for Black people to receive therapy in any form, even if it just means taking time to cultivate a flower or two. Plant-enthusiast Andi Marsh, 21, agrees, noting that mental health is valid and necessary to focus on considering the current global climate. The busy Oxford College student’s garden of over 50 plants has allowed her peace and the ability to further understand herself amidst it all. “It’s a great way to keep your mind active and hands occupied,” Marsh says. “It is also something you can take control over if you feel overwhelmed or that stressful matters are out of your hands.” She’s given each of her plants specific names with quirky back stories and personalities, all of which helps her focus on things outside of the real world. Her Tillandsia plants, Babs and Phyllis, are the “old busybodies who sit and gossip,” she says. Her cactus, named Dave, is a divorcee.<picture class=""><source data-srcset="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/close-up-of-potted-plant-on-window-sill-against-sky-royalty-free-image-1597951121.jpg?resize=768:*" media="(min-width: 61.25rem)" srcset="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/close-up-of-potted-plant-on-window-sill-against-sky-royalty-free-image-1597951121.jpg?resize=768:*"><source data-srcset="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/close-up-of-potted-plant-on-window-sill-against-sky-royalty-free-image-1597951121.jpg?resize=980:*" media="(min-width: 48rem)" srcset="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/close-up-of-potted-plant-on-window-sill-against-sky-royalty-free-image-1597951121.jpg?resize=980:*"><source data-srcset="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/close-up-of-potted-plant-on-window-sill-against-sky-royalty-free-image-1597951121.jpg?resize=640:*" media="(min-width: 30rem)" srcset="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/close-up-of-potted-plant-on-window-sill-against-sky-royalty-free-image-1597951121.jpg?resize=640:*"><img alt="close up of potted plant on window sill against sky in city" title="Taking Care of Plants is a Lesson in Empathy" src="https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/close-up-of-potted-plant-on-window-sill-against-sky-royalty-free-image-1597951121.jpg?resize=480:*"></picture><figcaption>“It’s a great way to keep your mind active and hands occupied,” Marsh says. “It is also something you can take control over if you feel overwhelmed or that stressful matters are out of your hands.”</figcaption><div dir="ltr">
	Sutthiwat SrikhrueadamGetty Images</div><div>Advertisement - Continue Reading Below</div>But Marsh’s love for plant-care runs far deeper than just unique scenarios and names. For her, horticulture is a way that connects her to her rural Jamaican heritage which considers some plants sacred to certain Caribbean religions. Gardening allowed Marsh to bond with her Nanny and Grandad who are from the Parish of St. Elizabeths and who are longtime gardeners too. She says that to this day, they use an allotment of land for growing plants. “I saw it kind of as a route to my roots,” she says. This was the case for new mom and gardener Zahira Garden, 29, as well. Growing up alongside her botanist grandmother, Garden says she took the plants around her for granted. It wasn’t until she moved away from her homeland in the Dominican Republic to Canada when she was 18-years-old and fell into a deep homesickness and depression that she tapped into the horticulture history of her family and began to appreciate plants.“I brought nature back into my life and it made me feel more at home,” Garden says. Now, with a new baby and the chaos of this year, tending to her countless number of plants has shown this mother that she’s more patient than she thought. It has allowed her to pause and bond with her daughter and partner during quarantine.“Every morning when we get up, we go to the garden and see how the plants are doing,” she says. “You’ll see my little daughter — who can’t even talk — waving at the plants to tell them good morning just like how my grandmother used to do.” She advises those who hope to start gardening for the first time to research any plant before buying, because no species is the same. But, ultimately, adding personal touches goes a long way to any gardener’s specific flora.Bigham, for instance, plays Erykah Badu songs to stimulate his plants’ growth. Tucker has a humidifier that makes his New York apartment resemble a jungle, and Napier puts on full-blown concerts for her indoor garden.Similar to how each person on this planet is different, with their own set of individual and unique needs, each plant is different too. Gardening is a dependent relationship between people and plants wherein both parties can help contribute towards each other’s growth. While plant growth may be literal, the act of taking care of leafy beings as humans is what can propel us forward emotionally by stimulating mental wellness and by igniting important and necessary conversations within ourselves. Embarking on the journey of figuring out how these potted organisms need to be cared for can be filled with lessons from the earth about community, compassion, empathy, and patience. In a chaotic world that seems to only get more bizarre each day, many people may need them.Tori B. Powell is a freelance writer and journalism student at American University in Washington DC. Find her on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/toribpowell" data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://twitter.com/toribpowell" dir="ltr">@toribpowell</a>. Get Shondaland directly in your inbox: <a href="https://www.shondaland.com/about/a12770960/subscribe/" rel="nofollow" data-href="https://www.shondaland.com/about/a12770960/subscribe/" data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://www.shondaland.com/about/a12770960/subscribe/" data-vars-ga-call-to-action="SUBSCRIBE TODAY" data-skimlinks-tracking="[utm_source|[utm_campaign|[utm_medium|[gclid|[msclkid|[fbclid|[refdomain|[content_id|8090c701-8fe8-4db9-a055-d8b8410bef24[content_product_id|[product_retailer_id|" dir="ltr">SUBSCRIBE TODAY</a> <div>
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And that’s never been more important than in these uncertain times. 

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

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Mental Health

And that’s never been more important than in these uncertain times.

At the start of 2020, Rashad Bigham, 31, moved for the first time ever from his hometown in Kentucky to one of the <a data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/houston-tx-population" dir="ltr" href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/houston-tx-population">most populated cities </a>in the country, where he’d eventually face two serious car accidents, severe financial trouble, and a diagnosis for clinical depression that left him feeling lonely and with limited options.

“Mental health is something that I always preach to my students, but I had not taken my own advice,” he says. “I attempted to take my own life.”

The Texas Southern University professor has since recovered, finding a degree of peace in an outlet he never expected: gardening. Bigham allowed the plants to do the teaching, with lessons on self-care and empathy that he says the world could benefit from during such a chaotic year.

“Knowing that you put care and love into something other than yourself and to see it flourishing feels amazing,” he says. “You take what you learn from these growing plants and then you apply it to the real world.”

Bigham isn’t the only one who’s tapped into the power of horticulture either. For centuries, physical nature contact has provided <a data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP1663" dir="ltr" href="https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP1663">clinically proven health benefits </a>like lowered blood pressure, better sleep, and improved mental health according to a study conducted by the Environmental Health Perspectives. These benefits are due to the antigens that many plants contain that naturally provoke the human body to create healthy antibodies.

Aside from community gardens and online collectives that have existed long before the pandemic, there’s an entirely new wave of planters emerging as we spend more time at home.

Since lockdown began in March, seed companies around the world have seen some of the <a data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-gardens/home-gardening-blooms-around-the-world-during-coronavirus-lockdowns-idUSKBN2220D3" dir="ltr" href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-gardens/home-gardening-blooms-around-the-world-during-coronavirus-lockdowns-idUSKBN2220D3">biggest increases in history </a>. And as <a data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://www.massgeneral.org/news/coronavirus/depression-on-rise-during-covid-19" dir="ltr" href="https://www.massgeneral.org/news/coronavirus/depression-on-rise-during-covid-19">one-third </a>of Americans report clinical signs of anxiety and depression related to the pandemic, gardening for some has served as a way to soothe their nerves.

“Buying a plant was such a needed relief for me,” Cartreze Tucker, 28, says while sitting on the ground and playing in mulch.

The New York City actor was on the road performing in the Tony award-winning musical The Color Purple before COVID-19 ended the tour. His life abruptly switched from traveling and performing each night to quarantining in what, at one point, was <a data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/nyregion/Coronavirus-new-York-epicenter.html" dir="ltr" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/nyregion/Coronavirus-new-York-epicenter.html">an epicenter of the virus </a>.

“I was totally in a rut — but these plants have definitely made me realize more things about myself than I ever could have imagined,” says Tucker, who, in watching a seed transform into a leafy organism, has learned how to be more compassionate and how to love selflessly. As the <a data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://www.bea.gov" dir="ltr" href="https://www.bea.gov/">US economy plummets </a>and COVID-19 deaths continue to multiply each day, Tucker says that compassion can go a long way and even solve some of the country’s current problems.

A study from the <a data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3626841" dir="ltr" href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3626841">Social Science Research Network </a>found that American individualism has significantly restricted the United States from making substantial progress with COVID-19. Individualism is the long-running ideology within the country that provokes citizens to favor their own freedom of choice rather than any sort of collective control, which in this case is the United States’ federal response to the pandemic. By using data that spans over 200 years, their research shows that American individualism has minimized compliance with social distancing by 41% and has even hindered funding for the pandemic by 48%.

So while the virus rages on with no clear end, gardener Janel Napier, 32, says that this period of isolation can allow society the ability to stop and truly listen to the world’s needs.

The Atlanta designer says that we’ve progressed past the point of being able to simply go next door and ask a neighbor to borrow an egg. “Many of us don’t have that connection anymore,” she says.

As working from home has allowed her the appropriate time to focus on community and the country’s lack thereof, gardening, on the other hand, has provided her an introspective look inwards to reassess her own deeper qualities and needs.

“I never wanted kids ever in my life,” Napier says. “I didn’t think that I had that nurturing motherly gene inside of me, but as soon as I had the plants and I started to worry about them, it started to grow in me and I can now see myself with kids in the future.”

For Napier gardening has served as a self-realizing form of therapy, despite the stigma around the term that she grew up internalizing.

“It’s frowned upon to seek out a shrink or to look for help in the Black community — and it’s a problem,” Napier says.

I brought nature back into my life and it made me feel more at home.

According to the <a data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://ct.counseling.org/2020/05/the-historical-roots-of-racial-disparities-in-the-mental-health-system/" dir="ltr" href="https://ct.counseling.org/2020/05/the-historical-roots-of-racial-disparities-in-the-mental-health-system/">American Counseling Association </a>, in comparison to the white population, Black Americans are less likely to receive mental health care; and if they do, they’re also less likely to receive quality care. This can be attributed to various systemic factors, such as how Black Americans often have <a data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK24693/" dir="ltr" href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK24693/">less access </a>to health insurance coverage.

But as <a data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/police-violence-physical-and-mental-health-impacts-on-black-americans#Police-violence-as-a-public-health-issue" dir="ltr" href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/police-violence-physical-and-mental-health-impacts-on-black-americans#Police-violence-as-a-public-health-issue">traumatic videos and stress-inducing news </a>consistently surface the media — especially around social and racial justice issues — chief medical director of Hope Health Systems, Jonathan Shephard tells The Undefeated that <a data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://theundefeated.com/features/black-people-were-stressed-before-the-coronavirus-now-more-than-ever-we-need-to-ask-for-help/" dir="ltr" href="https://theundefeated.com/features/black-people-were-stressed-before-the-coronavirus-now-more-than-ever-we-need-to-ask-for-help/">now is a critical time </a>for Black people to receive therapy in any form, even if it just means taking time to cultivate a flower or two.

Plant-enthusiast Andi Marsh, 21, agrees, noting that mental health is valid and necessary to focus on considering the current global climate. The busy Oxford College student’s garden of over 50 plants has allowed her peace and the ability to further understand herself amidst it all.

“It’s a great way to keep your mind active and hands occupied,” Marsh says. “It is also something you can take control over if you feel overwhelmed or that stressful matters are out of your hands.”

She’s given each of her plants specific names with quirky back stories and personalities, all of which helps her focus on things outside of the real world. Her Tillandsia plants, Babs and Phyllis, are the “old busybodies who sit and gossip,” she says. Her cactus, named Dave, is a divorcee.

But Marsh’s love for plant-care runs far deeper than just unique scenarios and names. For her, horticulture is a way that connects her to her rural Jamaican heritage which considers some plants sacred to certain Caribbean religions. Gardening allowed Marsh to bond with her Nanny and Grandad who are from the Parish of St. Elizabeths and who are longtime gardeners too. She says that to this day, they use an allotment of land for growing plants. “I saw it kind of as a route to my roots,” she says.

This was the case for new mom and gardener Zahira Garden, 29, as well. Growing up alongside her botanist grandmother, Garden says she took the plants around her for granted. It wasn’t until she moved away from her homeland in the Dominican Republic to Canada when she was 18-years-old and fell into a deep homesickness and depression that she tapped into the horticulture history of her family and began to appreciate plants.

“I brought nature back into my life and it made me feel more at home,” Garden says.

Now, with a new baby and the chaos of this year, tending to her countless number of plants has shown this mother that she’s more patient than she thought. It has allowed her to pause and bond with her daughter and partner during quarantine.

“Every morning when we get up, we go to the garden and see how the plants are doing,” she says. “You’ll see my little daughter — who can’t even talk — waving at the plants to tell them good morning just like how my grandmother used to do.”

She advises those who hope to start gardening for the first time to research any plant before buying, because no species is the same. But, ultimately, adding personal touches goes a long way to any gardener’s specific flora.

Bigham, for instance, plays Erykah Badu songs to stimulate his plants’ growth. Tucker has a humidifier that makes his New York apartment resemble a jungle, and Napier puts on full-blown concerts for her indoor garden.

Similar to how each person on this planet is different, with their own set of individual and unique needs, each plant is different too.

Gardening is a dependent relationship between people and plants wherein both parties can help contribute towards each other’s growth. While plant growth may be literal, the act of taking care of leafy beings as humans is what can propel us forward emotionally by stimulating mental wellness and by igniting important and necessary conversations within ourselves. Embarking on the journey of figuring out how these potted organisms need to be cared for can be filled with lessons from the earth about community, compassion, empathy, and patience. In a chaotic world that seems to only get more bizarre each day, many people may need them.

Tori B. Powell is a freelance writer and journalism student at American University in Washington DC. Find her on Twitter <a data-vars-ga-outbound-link="https://twitter.com/toribpowell" dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/toribpowell">@toribpowell </a>.

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