Plant Care As Self Care: How Caring for Plants Gave Me Purpose
In 2019, I was feeling a bit lost and unsure of myself. I was in a new job and feeling like I was still getting my footing at the new campus and with my new commute, and I was struggling with my sense of purpose. So I started looking for new hobbies, trying to become a more creative person in new ways. Since my job had a lot of writing involved, I felt like I was burnt out on the main creative outlet that brought me joy.
I don’t remember how I came to find caring for plants as something I was passionate about, but I do know once I started collecting them, it escalated quickly. And then, pandemic hit. In those early days of lockdown when we didn’t know hardly anything about the virus and were all cooped up at home, I turned to caring for plants as way to make me feel better and to get outside of myself.
I started to order plants online from some local shops, which is how I found my favorite plant store in Seattle, Blue Poppy Floral. The store owner is very friendly and fequently gives away free little plants to first time customers. They have fair prices and a great selection of houseplants, including some rarer finds I haven’t seen that many shops in Seattle. I also came to find the Power Plant Seattle, a one-woman operation who sells a beatiful selection of plants in Beacon Hill, that usually the come with pretty ceramic planter pots.
When I started out with just a few plants, I really had a lot to learn. On recommendation from shop owners and some online research, I went with some easy, hard to kill plants to start out. This meant that I picked ones that did well in any light conditions and didn’t need a ton of specific soil, humidity, or watering requirements. I started out with a snake plant, a pothos, and a zz plant, all of which I still have to this day and are thriving. Both the zz plant and the snake plant didn’t require a ton of care— watering only every 2 weeks in the summer and maybe only every 3 weeks in the winter, with the soil needing to dry out between waterings. The pothos had a little more work involved and likes higher light settings but it thrives with a little time and attention every week.
When I first started out, I spent hours a day dusting their leaves, checking to see if the soil was dry, watering and trimming ones that needed care. When my collection grew to include some of the more ‘difficult’ plants, I would read about them on all sorts of plant blogs before committing to buying them, wanting to make sure I wasn’t taking something home that was doomed to die because of my lack of knowledge. And I will say that there are some plants that still evade me to this day— I have trouble with caletheas specifically as they like a certain type of light and humidity that has been difficult to maintain. And for the life of me, I can’t seem to keep a fern alive, even in Washington State where they grow like weeds, it is hard to keep them the right amount of moist without them getting root rot.
And then there are some that seem to just thrive with my care and I can’t for the life of me tell someone how to replicate it— I have a string of turtles plant that is thriving, but I’ve managed to kill several different ‘string of’ varieties of plants. And my big Monstera is my pride and joy, so much so that I even have a leaf tattooed on the back of my left arm. My plants were like my children before I had pets, they gave me something to care for and gave my life structure and meaning at times when I felt like I wasn’t rooted anywhere else.
Especially during the pandemic, caring for my plants really gave me a sense of purpose and meaning during a time when the whole world felt chaotic and out of control. I started recommending plant care to everyone, giving cuttings as gifts, and I really went all in, probably having 20-30 plants in the height of my interest. I loved spending the weekends caring for all of them, summer days doing sessions of re-potting, and collecting beautiful ceramic pots and growing the list of plants on my ‘need to have’ list. I now have a more modest 15 - 20, but I still spend hours on the weekends caring for them and making sure they are all thriving in their own ways. My husband and I have an ongoing joke about the ‘leaf to watch’ on each plant, and I feel a sense of excitement and pride seeing my little guys unfurl new leaves.
I think that tending to a living thing, whether it be a plant or a pet, can really help give a sense of purpose when everything else feels hard. Even when I am having a bad day, I can still check on my plants and make sure they’ve got everything they need. It might not be much, but plants make my home feel beautiful and helped give me a sense of purpose when I was lost. I can’t recommend enough getting just one plant and seeing where it takes you— maybe you’ll end up in a living room jungle like me.