Curious Seeds 03: Plants are Joyful Hedonists
Interview with plant magicians Plant Doctors + Flower Flirt
This is the third installment of Curious Seeds, an interview series with beautiful, fascinating humans and/or creatures. Suggest someone to interview here.
Over the past several years I’ve been deepening my connection with the natural world as a portal to mindfulness, grounding, and dreaming. Naturally — ;) — I keep my eyes peeled for others in the space who are propagating creative + inspiring work. There’s much to share, but today I want to highlight two women-owned businesses that link plant-life with community, justice, + humanity, seeking to help you deepen your own connection with the natural world. I interviewed each separately, then wove together an edited version. Enjoy!
Chelsii Gregory + Skylor Powell are friends and co-founders of The Plant Doctors in Portland, OR, founded in 2018. Beginning with watering plants at a local smoothie shop, The Plant Doctors has bloomed into a growing business that offers an array of support and guidance. They don’t just care for plants, they care for plants and people, and the community they form together.
Jahnavi Alyssa is the titular leader of Flowerflirt Fine Gardening, providing specialized gardening services and coaching to anyone interested in cultivating their joy with the natural world. A soil + container gardening specialist, she has spent 20 years working across the length and breadth of the garden industry to bring her hard won wisdom on plant parenting to those who need it most – the ones who care.
Let’s play the game I made up called, "this or that, without context." You choose one and share why, or not.
Big cat or rollercoaster?
Plant Doctors: Rollercoaster. I heard that you reach enlightenment on a rollercoaster!
Flower Flirt: The big ass cat on a super small rollercoaster
Variegated or serrated?
PD: Variegated, always.
FF: Variegated. Let those stripes shine.
Antlers or winter?
PD: Winter. Antlers make me sad!
FF: Winter! My goodness, the way growth needs winter.
Root rot or toothache?
PD: Root rot :P
FF: Same thing
Exhaling or stretching?
PD: Stretching.
FF: Exhaling all the way. Stretching isn’t much without it.
What is the secret life of plants?
FF: I think plants are hedonists. I think they have this glorious existence eating, drinking, reproducing, resting, being in intimate connection with everything around them, and dying exactly as they please. They’re the dominant organism on our planet! They have it figured out.
PD: Plants bring so much joy and value to our lives in countless ways. The excitement of trackable progress, the lesson that we cannot control nature even in our house, the benefits of peace, calm, oxygen, and more!
Plant Doctors, the two pillars of your business are plants and community. Why?
Community has always been important to us, meeting in the yoga community we feel so lucky to extend that in the plant community, and bringing people INTO the plant community/world.
Chelsii and Skylor, you’re both yoga teachers. Can you talk about the relationship between yoga and plants?
You cannot force or control either! In yoga you need to listen to your body, pay attention to what it needs, and make changes as you go. The same is true for plants. There is no one-size-fits-all prescription for plants. We need to pay attention to them and respond to what they're showing us. How I care for my body in the winter, might be different than how you care for yours; the same is true for plants.
Jahnavi, what is a “flower flirt?”
Every flower, and every being who enjoys a flower! I define flirtation in its broadest and healthiest sense as enjoying yourself in the experience of someone or something else. I use this philosophy, epitomized by the natural joy that comes with watching a flower wave about, as the foundational practice of my business….and, let’s be honest, life.
How deep are your roots in the natural world?
As deep as a well-planted and nurtured 32 year old tree, and deepening all the time. I grew up with a huge backyard and flower-fairy proclivities. My mom raised me pagan-informed and with a deep reverence for nature from day one, and still we know so little compared to what our ancestors must have known.
While I’d like to say that my roots are as deep as the legacy of plant people behind me, the unfortunate truth is my family, like most, got torn up by the roots generations ago. We never lost our orientation to the earth though, which some people have entirely. My grandma always gardened, and my mom taught herself everything about how to run a landscaping business, and I get to re-teach them both about all the practices we thought were best that were only very mediocre. We lost the knowledge, but kept the instinct. And so I’d say my stock is strong, while my roots are young.
How do you coach someone who fancies themselves “bad with plants”?
PD: Tell them that all they need to do is pay attention to the plants and we'll help them learn!! Practice doesn't make perfect, but it does teach you A LOT!
FF: If they have the desire to have a positive relationship with plants at all, then they’re great with plants. That’s all you need. Try to let the rest fall away and prioritize being curious and getting honest.
Tell yourself the truth about 1) Your expectations of perfection and 2) How much light your home gets. Growing all plants (houseplants especially) is about balancing water and light. Let life be a learning curve and don’t try to grow a plant in a dark corner, and zoom you’re off to the races.
What’s the most joyful part of what you do?
PD: Getting to connect with so many amazing people in our community while doing what we're good at and what we love.
FF: Connecting with people, and learning a little more all the time how deeply I need my relationship with the natural world in order to be happy in the human one.
What don't we know about plants that we should? Flower Flirt:
The difference between dirt and soil. Soil is dirt + life. Just like our guts, the balance of the bacteria + other microorganisms in soil dictates everything about the health of the plants planted in it.
There is no right or wrong in the natural world. There is pain and hurt and devastation, and there is beauty and kindness and gentleness beyond imagining, and not a bit of it is right or wrong. The natural world is so much bigger than the human one, it absorbs all of our (prolific) right and wrong and transforms it into something useful and necessary for the next phase of life. I am so calmed by this.
Everything on this planet (including us) was made to be eaten by something else. More often than not a living body is stimulated by a bite being taken out of it (or a stem broken off, or a root getting pruned, etc.)
Overwatering is more about the frequency of watering than the amount of water being given.
What are the qualities of a successful plant owner/keeper?
PD: Someone who pays attention, doesn't take a dying plant personally and who is ok with trying different things!
FF: In this instances I’d define successful as happy, so I’d subscribe to the same qualities as anyone who knows how to have a happy relationship with another living thing. Stay attentive, stay curious, and most of all be willing to learn and support your plant’s unique and natural systems.
Favorite plant and why?
FF: Oh my god. The plant that communicates clearly with me. I love a plant that is extremely clear on its limits of tolerance.
PD: Fishbone cactus. They are SO COOL! I love that they go up and out, a gorgeous moment for a coffee table.
What have you been pecking at lately?
PD: 2023 is all about being less extreme for me I'm very go-go-go, so I'm leaning into rest and slowing down a little. Plants are definitely helpful with this, in that I can get lost in the process of caring for them and paying attention to them.
FF: Casually? Death. I’ve really been noodling around in the idea that the greatest violence modern humans do to ourselves (and to all the life around us) is to annihilate our relationship with death. We really did a number on it! All the preserving and burning and straight line off the planet from birth to heaven/hell stuff. We’re really so insistent that we’re not part of the natural world, by demanding that we are not meant to decompose and be returned to it. The consequences of viewing death this way are deeeeeeep, and rampant. I see little bits of them everywhere now.
I work with death a lot in composting, soil, and watching plants grow. They live and die and feed what fed them, right before your eyes. It’s so comforting, to be reminded that this is how the rest of the natural world works. Sucks that we struggle with it so hard.
What have you squirreled away for later?
PD: hm... rushing decisions...
FF: Little bits of writing and courses that I’m excited to make whole and send out into the world someday. I love writing and teaching about this stuff.
PLANT YOU! I mean THANK YOU! <3
I have two very special plants that give me great joy. The first is my sweet little plant given to me by Jess when she and Mike moved out of NY. Not sure of the real name but the leaves look like watermelons. It had about 5 little teeny leaves for almost a year and then I guess it was happy on our kitchen windowsill and really took off. It so sweet and healthy. My second is my Christmas cactus that almost died of a Fungus disease 2 years ago. I did what a plant expert told me to do and loved it back to life and this year it bloomed 3 times for me❤️. Thanks Jess for this interview😊