{"id":1026,"date":"2020-05-14T10:55:48","date_gmt":"2020-05-14T00:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/?post_type=articles&p=172710"},"modified":"2020-11-16T02:01:20","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T02:01:20","slug":"plant-parenthood-home-decor","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/plant-parenthood-home-decor\/","title":{"rendered":"Plant Parenthood"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This Image: Sonnie Hiles \/ Unsplash. Top: Prudence Earl \/ Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019ve killed plenty of houseplants.\u00a0 It feels wrong to lead with this \u2013 an early admission to herbicide \u2013 in such close proximity to the words \u2018parenthood\u2019 and \u2018love affair.\u2019\u00a0 But it\u2019s best to be honest about these things \u2013 my own relationship with plants hasn\u2019t always been an easy one.<\/p>\n

My mother started heaping houseplants on me when I moved into my first apartment.\u00a0 Every week or so, she\u2019d turn up with a new one, her gaze pivoting between used Ikea furniture and shoebox kitchen, doing her best to ignore the mild-to-serious cockroach problem.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t understand why she\u2019d decided plants were such an important addition to this ecosystem \u2013 whether she thought the cockroaches might see them and decide, \u2018OK, pack it up, these people clearly care about their home.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go elsewhere<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t matter ultimately, because one by one, the plants my mother brought got knocked off.\u00a0 It was usually neglect or ignorance that killed them \u2013 underwatering, inappropriate placement (ferns singed by direct sunlight; succulents left to wither in pools of shade, where I\u2019d put them to brighten up a gloomy corner).\u00a0 To me, they were just decorative objects \u2013 bursts of color that could be used to spruce up an otherwise barren windowsill \u2013 not living things with needs of their own.<\/p>\n

How a plant dies says a lot about its owner \u2013 overwatering signals inexperience and the nervousness of early love, while neglect is a sign of disinterest or a touch of self-absorption. \u00a0In young adulthood, I oscillated between these states, and my plants suffered.<\/p>\n

That all changed one day.\u00a0 I sometimes think that my love of plants grew as I grew up.\u00a0 I went from considering the idea of keeping something else alive an annoying burden to thinking of it as a fun project, an opportunity to watch and facilitate new growth.<\/p>\n

I bought a couple of starter plants \u2013 devil’s ivy or pothos (\u2018impossible to kill,\u2019 any plant veteran will tell you) and an autograph tree (clusia, whose thick, upright sturdiness signaled hardy toughness).\u00a0 I went from registering plants in my natural environment as uniform green blurs (in an article about her own burgeoning love affair with the leafy world, Jia Tolentino refers to<\/a> this as \u2018plant blindness,\u2019 a term describing \u2018the widespread non-noticing of plants in one\u2019s environment and the ranking of plants as inferior to animals\u2019) to noticing everything from genus to stage of growth, and coveting the thriving indoor gardens of friends.<\/p>\n

\u2018Your monstera deliciosa is doing so well,\u2019 I commented recently, on a Zoom call with a friend in Paris.\u00a0 \u2018I\u2019m so jealous that you have a rubber plant \u2013 I\u2019m desperate for one of those,\u2019 I said to another.<\/p>\n

This would be pretty tedious chat if so many others were not interested in plants in the same way I am.\u00a0 In the past few years, the take-up of the house plant trend among millennials has been enormous, with this generation\u2019s rate of spending on plants having \u2018grown at a higher rate than any other age group since 2014.\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

This interest is partly explicable by the state of perpetual adolescence that\u2019s both a running joke and a critique of my generation. \u00a0Cait Munro writes<\/a> for Refinery29, \u2018it\u2019s hard to deny that houseplants reveal a Goldilocks-style level of maturity that many young people crave. Healthy houseplants say that you have your shit together enough to take care of something, but that you could still take off for a spontaneous music festival or weekend camping trip at the drop of a hat. And isn\u2019t that the exact kind of vibe a lot of us are trying to cultivate?\u2019<\/p>\n

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Judah Guttmann \/ Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Plants also jigsaw perfectly into the millennial desire for beautiful, curated lives.\u00a0 While keeping houseplants is nothing new, according to Casey Bond for the Huffington Post<\/a>, \u2018visually driven social media [has prompted] their resurgence in popularity. Instagram, in particular, has become a haven for foliage fanatics.\u2019<\/p>\n

But the conversion of so many small-apartment-dwellers into hobby gardeners also reflects something more universal \u2013 a drive to care for and cohabit with living things.\u00a0 If it makes sense that the uptake among millennials is so high, then \u2013 as Lily Ewing, a therapist in Seattle, puts it<\/a> – \u2018people are designed for connection and nurturing, but with more millennials waiting until later in life to have babies and settle down, young people are turning to plants.\u2019<\/p>\n

My friend in Paris has a thriving indoor garden, made up of 40 or so potted plants.\u00a0 They overwhelm her one-bedroom apartment, a jungly mass creeping across her living room.\u00a0 She showers every one of them weekly to reduce the risk of pests. \u00a0\u2018I know that sounds insane,\u2019 she said. \u2018But honestly it\u2019s worth it for me to know they\u2019re healthy.\u2019<\/p>\n

I kind of get it.\u00a0 One of my plants recently had a fungus gnat infestation, and it was GNAT<\/em> good (bear with me) \u2013 it played on my mind constantly, and I mentioned it to everyone I spoke to for two weeks.\u00a0 Plant parenthood strikes me as something like actual parenthood \u2013 lower intensity, of course, but also frustratingly more cryptic, because the thing you are trying to care for can\u2019t cry or communicate that it\u2019s not getting what it needs from you.<\/p>\n

Despite these occasional stresses, any plant owner will tell you it was all worth it.\u00a0 That\u2019s the joy of parenthood, I guess.<\/p>\n

And especially for those currently confined to small spaces, or living in big cities, plants are a huge comfort.\u00a0 Mine certainly have been for me.\u00a0 Knowing that there is life nearby provides a sense of solace and hope, which we all need right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10061,"featured_media":1027,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[38,16],"yoast_head":"\nPlant Parenthood - Grazia USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My budding love affair with my house plants plots me squarely on a millennial trend\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/plant-parenthood-home-decor\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Plant Parenthood\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My budding love affair with my house plants plots me squarely on a millennial trend\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/plant-parenthood-home-decor\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Grazia USA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-11-16T02:01:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2020\/05\/PlantTile2.jpg?fit=1280%2C720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/plant-parenthood-home-decor\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/plant-parenthood-home-decor\/\",\"name\":\"Plant Parenthood - 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