Learning Life Lessons from Plants

week spending a day watching grass grow with scientists. She learns there are more than nine thousand species of grass, and the one thing that unites them is that, unlike so many other plants that shoot up from the tops of mature stems, grass actually grows from the bottom near this embryonic tissue called maris stem, and as the cell divides and multiply, you can apparently even hear the crackle

of it growing. But the most fun part of the article is where the scientist has this digital voltmeter clamped onto a little piece of grass, and as they watched together, it starts flickering and in an hour it grows three

point five millimeters. And while that is so in significant, Valerie points out that if the temperature holds, her little seedling will grow seventeen millimeters taller by the time she gets home that night, And suddenly she is buzzing with pride, and she has been convinced that watching grass grow is

actually fun. I've been thinking about that article and also about my own kiddos, who my wife and I spend very long days within this pandemic, and while the daily changes are imperceptible, it blows my mind how quickly time has passed and how much they've learned and evolved and grown into little adult Almost Ruby refuses to let us help them with their homework. Henry would rather sneak off to the neighbor's house and then walk to the bodego to get snacks rather than kick a soccer ball in

the backyard with this old man. And it makes me smile how they made themselves eggs and fended for themselves, turning the upstairs into a four when Lizzie and I contracted COVID at the end of last year. But growing is good, at least, that's what I keep reminding myself. And most of us are all growing and evolving even well into our adulthood, and I know some of those lessons have come from caring for plants. In fact, I'm starting to think that plants maybe one of our greatest

teachers about how to be better humans. I mean, the numerous basil plants I killed at the start of the series have taught me to never give up, and to be kind and forgiving to myself. Our MONSTERA has taught me how to be flexible and find ways to adapt in new environments. And all those seeds that Ruby and I planted in our backyard totally scatter shot have taught me to keep my expectations low and to be delighted

when things do sprowed up. While I've learned a lot over the last fourteen months of the pandemic, I also know that with each new change or shift to life, or challenge or loss, there will be more growing and evolving. But I feel confident that we'll get by with a

little help from our plant friends. Hey there, I'm Mongish Particular, co host of Part Time Genius, one of the founders of Mental Flaws, and this is Humans Growing Stuff, a collaboration from my Heart Radio and your friends and Miracle Grow. Our goal is to make this the most human show about plants you'll ever listen to. Along the way, we'll share inspiring stories, tips and tricks to nurture your plant addiction, and just enough science to make you sound like an expert.

On this episode, our season finale, we are examining how we're growing alongside plants and the life lessons we can learn from our leafy green roommates. We'll discover ways plants motivators, what they teach us about resilience and survival, and whether or not caring for them can make us better humans.

Chapter fourteen, Learning life Lessons from plants. Despy at the often delicate appearance of some plants, they can be incredibly resilient snake plants, easy plants, Chinese evergreen, rubber plants, cacti, and succulents. They're all very resilient and can handle minimal water, lackluster light, and still somehow thrive. Take the cactus for example, It's thorns are highly modified plant leaves, which protect them

from animals who try to access the liquid inside. The top level roots collect water from the rain, and the lower, much deeper roots collect water from deep below the surface. They can store water for years, and the feisty cactus does so by opening its pores at night, whereas most plants open there is during the day, and as a result, they are less vulnerable to warm temperatures that would ordinarily evaporate that store of water. Think of how smart that is.

They are prickly geniuses. But plants are incredibly resilient, and after an unexpected winter warm hit Texas this year, so many people were shocked to see how native plants bounced back after experiencing this true shock to their systems. I want to talk to someone who witnessed this resiliency firsthand, so I called up Mark Peacock. Mark is native of Great Britain who recently followed his heart to Texas, and although he pursued a career in fitness after school, he's

even graced the cover of Men's Health UK. Mark actually studied horticulture and university and has been getting back to his green roots and figuring out how to grow in the challenging climate and soil of Texas during the pandemic. Hey, Mark, are you there? Yes, I'm there, I'm there. Hello. Hello, Hello. It is so nice to be chatting with you. It's lovely to chat with you too. So I know most of us had a really really hard with COVID and

the pandemic and just life in general. But it seems like somehow you managed to have a few really nice things happened this year. Yeah, I had some really nice things happened. I mean, it was a huge different kind of game changer of a year. You know. Obviously I got married in the middle of part of last year, so that was really nice. But it was very socially distanced, and obviously, being English and my partner's American, we were kind of a very small intimate. It was just myself,

him and the judge here in Texas. So yeah, so we did that, and you know, I permanently relocated over here and we bought a house and have a garden, and I'm kind of learning, you know, the difference between a very British garden and what you can do in Texas. So I'm assuming you grew up around plants, but then you decided eventually to study them. Yeah, and then I kind of just fell into going to university. You know, it was tough, but it was so interesting. You know,

every week you'd be given a sample of plants. So it would be like, right, this week, we're going to learn narcissus. You need to know the species of narcissus. And they would line up twenty different narcissus bulbs and you'd have one week to learn the difference and then they would only put out ten or twelve of them, so then you'd have to go in, and you go in and this took for like five pc of your whole degree or ten percent, so you had to be like, Okay,

that's narcissus tete, that's narcissus whatever. You know pheasants eye, and you'd have to know it just from the singular bulb. When they did it with roots, they did it with leaves, they did it with everything. So it kind of helped

build up a good knowledge of plants. And you know, even after I walked away and didn't end up going into that field, I would always be walking along and I would see plant and I'll be like a less spectral apendula, or that's a moneage ponega or that, And I would continuously always be testing myself and yeah, I used to go to the Chelsea Flower Show every year and my my friend Gerd he we went to the Chelsea Flager one evening. I was walking around me and

he looked at this plant. He's like, that is called fatcier japonica. And I'm like, yeah, what do you think? I was just giving you some like Harry Potter Wizard names these whole times, and it's like I just thought you were making it up. I didn't think you actually knew what these things were called. So yeah, I kin't of surprised myself sometimes with like kind of what I know and what I don't know. So what do you

get from being in your garden in the morning? What do you get out of you know, mentally and physically from from being in the space. I think it's just an opportunity to really switch off and like there isn't you know for me, gardening is kind of an ever changing thing. You're never going to get to a point where it's finished. Just being here in Texas is like completely different to the UK, like the soil, but I

mean it's like what soil. I'm working on rock and stone and take about half a foot and you've hit bedrock and you're literally smashing in to try and even get into the So there's lots of like technique, you know, and I'm going to have I'm you know, setting up a compost system because I really need to start building more organic layer on top of what I've already got, because what I have got it is shocking, Like you know,

it's not worth anything, it's useless basically. So yeah, so there's lots of it is it's like and you're so limited on the plants. Like being in the UK. Was saying this to someone yesterday. I was like, I feel like I've been spoiled because the climate in the UK, your your ability to grow pretty much anything is so vast and I don't really need to think about, oh it's going to get too hot, and what I'm noticing.

It's like I'm putting plants in and a plant in the UK that would take you know, six months life cycle here because it's just so warm and humid. It's just sped up the whole time. But the plant is I want heype from my plants, but it's just it's coming into flowers so quickly. So I'm literally like taking the flowers off, trying to encourage a bit more gross

it doesn't put his energy into producing these flowers. So but this is kind of my first full season gardening here in Texas, so it'll be interesting to see kind of how that pans out, and I'll learn a lot this year as to what I can kind of can't do. So what what what was the what was your thought process? When you got to Texas, did you look out your backyard and decide there has to be a garden here

or how did you decide to tackle the yard? Well, I mean there was kind of some kind of garden here, but I mean the first thing I did, like when we moved in the where the vegetable garden is now, it was like a skateboarding half pipe there. And then when we moved in, they were like, would you mind if we took the half pipe? And We're like, yeah, by all me, you really do I look like a skateboarder. So as soon as that went, then, um, I got to work and I built the built the raised beds

from scratch. I was looking everywhere and I couldn't find any so it's just what I'm just going to go down to loads and buy some wood and kind of buy myself a band sore, and I kind of just started making it all. So it's just things like that.

Learning that and the vigetable gardens the first thing, and the kind of just been working around with the kind of loose structure we had in the back garden and just kind of filling the beds out, seeing what works, what doesn't work, and then eventually I'll tackle the front. But the fronts literally like building on Mount Everest. It's just rock essentially, So I don't quite know how I'm going to tackle that one. But you can just put skateboard ramps all over it. Oh yeah, just or a

toboggan run for when it snows again. Oh my god, it's ludicrous. Everyone was like, if it snows here, it just snows for a day and then it melts. It never gets cold. And you know, luckily we weren't in town when it happened. But beforehand, I'd like, I had all these Dailier tubers and I'd like potted them all up, and you know, I just left. We bought all these citrus trees and I just potted them all up and everything. And then as soon as we left, it was like

winter storm coming in. So you know, I had to try and get it wrapped and see what survived. And I pull the potatoes in the ground already, and I was like, oh my god, it's going to go. And then we just We've got so many like cedar trees around here, and they were just like falling left Bryant Center and the I was just getting fed back pictures of the garden. I was like, oh my god, I've

lost of the garden. And then then you know, after a couple of weeks and you know, as soon as the sun comes out, I'd say we've probably lost my kind of guests probably turned into more like so you know, the plant's kind of surprised that you know, they just kind of gone all the way back to the ground, but they were still actually like you know, little life forms under the ground ready to kind of come back.

I mean, we lost a lot of the height and scale and the bushiness of a lot of the plants that would take probably a good year to kind of

come back. But in terms of you know, the structure of kind of having the plants, you know, we've managed to retain them, and you know, financially, I mean it's a huge thing, like the amount of plants that there's so many people that had giant palms, Like you're driving around and these huge palm trees that people have gotten they're just like, I don't even know they're going to

come back. They're like three four or five thousand dollar trees that people have everywhere, and you're like, you lost ten twelve of them and I'm like, you feel a bit sorry for them, So it's a learning curve kind of. I'm just kind of gauging what survived, and I'm like, okay, well I'm going to you know, bulk up that, you know, air towards that side of planting, because in case it ever happens again, you never know what the climate is going to be doing in the future. So um yeah,

that's kind of my goal essentially. Well, I do want to ask you about the resilience of plants, and you know, you talked about this storm that came and it really hurting a lot of the garden and plant life. Was there anything you were surprised by that it bounced back or or surprised by the resilience of any certain plants. I mean, I thought my potatoes I put in the ground before I left were gonna even though they were

under the ground. I was just like, this is cold, and I'm I don't even know if I don't know if they're going to rot under the ground or but you know, they came back and they were absolutely fine, and like some of the palms, you know, they were they were like just a bronze color. They were they were gone. But you know, and this is the thing about gardening is all about patients. I'm a strong believer that it is about patients. Like just leave those let them be and see what the plant's going to do,

you know. And and some of you know, some of them are starting to reshoot again. So whereas before I would have you know, could have got trigger happy and just pulled everything out and started again, you know, actually just leaving it and letting it recover. You know, you are kind of amazed by kind of what what can pull through. Um. Yes, so that's kind of that was kind of the thing, kind of the palms that kind

of grew the bamboo as well. I mean around us a lot, there's a lot of bamboo, and it is it was just it was dead above ground, really, you know, yes, like funny, I wouldn't imagine it seems like such a sturdy plant. It was obliterated. You're driving it just looks like a desolate war zone kind of driving through where

we were. When we came back, it was just like, oh my god, cedar trees had fallen down everywhere, and you know, bamboo was just this golden dead, like all of the leaves dead and so but now, like you know, those stems, you know they need to be cut off, but people are keeping it for like screening for their houses. But you know, underneath it, it's just like you know, it's firing up everywhere. So the resilience of that is

quite amazing. I didn't think that would pull through, but you know, you just give it a month and you know, see what happens. Yeah, I mean I know one person on this um this podcast said, um, their plants want to grow, and you just kind of have to remember that there's like there they want, they want to grow and and and and so um you can do less and be patient and and and they will they will for you. I guess I think that that's the thing.

It is all about patients, you know. And you know, I always think if someone hasn't got a lot of patients, then garden is a good way to learn. How can I learn patients? Garden? Because you cannot push a plant. A plant will grow at whatever rate it you know, wants to grow out. There's no there's no way of you you can help it long. But you know, at the end of the day, you're at the mercy of that plant, and you know, you just got to nurture it. And it's just kind of like the same as you

know a person. You kind of have to nurture it and you know, look after it and it will kind of reward you in the end, be at one with it. I mean that makes me like, really hippie it is. It's just like, just take a step back. What's the rush? What is what's the immediate kind of rush for it to be there? Now? It's just like, you know, go with it. Let's see what happens. When you came to Texas, did you did you sort of enjoy the challenge of like figuring out what does grow here and what native

plants are or or um? Did that just feel like a like a bit of a hurdle. No? I mean I love I love the challenge. And you know, I came in a little bit blind thinking I can just you know, do what I did back home and kind of do whatever I want. And you know, the longer I've been here, I have kind of learned that do

I can't just bulldoze and do whatever I want. But you know, walking around some of the guns and some things that are like house plants in the UK, I'm like Oh my god, I can grow that outside here. I'm like, yes, right, we're changing No longer I gertru g coal with your herbaceous yes, a tropical house plants. We're bringing them outside, you know. Um so yeah, that that's been a fun thing to kind of learn and adapt from. And I think that's the thing. It's all

about adaption. You know. I'll be able to kind of gauge kind of what is right and what is wrong. And I'll make loads of mistakes this year, but it doesn't really matter. I like that you said that's not my vision because I feel like that's my entire experience of gardening. It's like a garden that's not my vision. But um, but that, but that, but that gives you always think that's the best. Like whoever, whoever has a

first idea and that's the perfect idea. I always think it's the second or third kind of idea that you may have. I mean, when you get to idea twenty seven, then your change tack. But you know, when you have the first idea, you're always been like, but then when you kind of evolved that idea, you know, I think that's when you get the best ones and that's when you learn, like, you learn by mistakes, and those mistakes creates something far better than what you probably would have

envisioned the first time. Oh I like that. I'm going to carry that with me. That makes me think about this belief that we can adapt, even you moving from London to Texas, right, it is adapting exactly. I think that. Yeah, that's it. It's like this year has been a bit of a crazy year of change. But you know, I don't believe changes are wrong, a bad thing. It's it's

a good thing. And you know, who wants to stagnate and just be the same forever, you know, very caution to the way and do stuff you know, make may change. And yeah, I think that's that's that's a good thing. So Mark, before I let you go, is there anything else you want to add about the resiliency of plants and what we can kind of learn from plants? I don't think so. I think it is just mainly that

patience thing. Just just don't be in a rush, you know, look at them, you know, you know, and if they're hurt, help them. You know, if a branch is hanging off, would you want someone to passed you with your arm hanging off. No, like get in there, like look for that kind of safe point to cut it back, to cut it back, stop that disease getting in, you know.

And that's kind of vice aversa. You're going to help the plant, and but then also take that lesson and help someone else if you see someone, help them the same way you would help plant. And just remember that plants are the masters of adaption. You know, they will adapt, but it's kind of if you want the best out of them, it's probably best just to kind of just look up its origin and then kind of just be like, even if you don't know like anything about Spain, you

might know something about the Mediterranean. It's hot, it's dry, Okay, well I'm gonna it's this bit area, this sunny area is going to be good for it. Then you know, you can kind of use it's kind of origin as your kind of the idea of what you should do with it. You might get it wrong, but it doesn't matter. You can move it well. Mark, thank you so much for spending time with us and talking plants with me, and and it was it was a real pleasure. It's

been a pleasure for me. Thank you for having me humans growing stuff will be right back after a short break. Plants are incredibly resilient, but they also know a thing or two about being flexible and adapting to the resources around them. Take the venus fly trap, for instance. Charles Darwin was such a fanboy of the plants that he wrote the venus flytrap is the most wonderful plant in the world. He even dedicated an entire book to them. But the tiny toothy plants are carnivorous for a reason.

Venus fly traps grow in very poor soil, and they've evolved to eat insects because they need those nutrients to sustain themselves. It is not uncommon for plants to get creative about how and where they get nutrients based on their environment, and honestly, it's just one more thing as

humans could learn from plants. As the climate crisis becomes more immediate, there are a lot of ways we can all reevaluate our diets to get the same nutrients but from a different source that will help maintain and restore our climate and the environment rather than hurting it. I personally haven't said goodbye to meat, but we don't eat that much of it at home and we've been exploring all these plant based substitutes. Things have come a long way since the poor Bello burgers I was forced as

a youth. But we've seen the evolution of things like impossible burgers and beyond meat substitutes that look and even bleed like a real burger on the grill. And now they are vegetable butchers cropping up at places like Vita's in Columbus, Ohio, where you can get plant based cheeses, cold cuts, and sausages. And while a lot of it tastes a lot like meat, more importantly, eating a more plant based diet is the way we can adapt to

our changing environment and keep it from changing exponentially. It reduces the impact of climate change of greenhouse gas emissions come from food production and three fourths of that hers from animal product production, and it saves water to producing one pound of beef requires eight gallons of water. That said, if plant based protein isn't your thing, maybe insect based proteins are like cricket powder or even stink bug. Just get in touch with that inner venus fly trap and

enjoy that crunch. They're not hard to find either. Some are already being sold at places like Whole Foods and other grocery stores. The more time I spend with plants, the more they teach me about taking care of others but also the earth. I'm not only looking at my home through the perspective of my plants, I'm also rethinking my everyday habits with a more sustainable and environmentally friendly

intention and purpose. You may know Lauren Conrad as a television personality, New York Times best selling author, fashion designer, or philanthropists, but Lauren is also an avid gardener and using a lot of what she's learned about plants in

the environment to create more sustainable products. In two thousand thirteen, she co founded Little Market dot Com, a nonprofit with a mission to build sustainable partnerships with artisans around the world, connecting them with customers through an online marketplace, and empowering women artisans to rise above poverty and support their families.

In two thousand eighteen, the Little Market launched their first brick and mortar location in l A. I called of Lauren because I wanted to hear about how gardening has made her think about sustainability more on an everyday level, and lessons she's teaching her own kiddos about life as they grow together in the garden. Hey, Lauren, are you there. I'm here. Oh, it's so nice to chat with you. You too, How are you doing well? Well? Thank you

so much for being on the program. You know, I know you as this sort of incredible designer and influencer, but I only just realized that you're a gardener as well, and I'm so excited to talk plants with you. Need too, I am. I'm relatively new to the space. It's just kind of a hobby that I've picked up the past year. So I'm still very green. Well that's both of us, I guess. So tell me about how you decide to

get into gardening. Now. Last year I unexpectedly had a little more time on my hands, so I we have on the side of our house now, we had kind of a just like a strip of land that we don't really do much with it, just kind of like whatever grows there. So I cleared out a little area that was like, I mean maybe like three by five feet and ordered some plans and I really did it just as something to do with my son, who's turning

four in a couple of months. So, you know, it was probably just about to turn three, and uh, and I just kind of did it as something to do with him. And then also I really love the idea of kids understanding where food comes from. And that's where it started. Because it's gotten a little while now, basically anywhere anything will grow, I've taken over in our yard.

I'm figuring out now how to like make it more aesthetically pleasing because it's a little it's a little funny, but I tore out, like all a bunch of rows is in our front yard so I could do like a vegetable garden really in the front yard. Yeah, yeah, I mean I definitely could use a little work. But I also I don't know, I just I kind of love edibles as like like kind of landscaping as well because it's like a dual purpose. I think it's nice. Yeah.

I actually saw someone who was planting herbs that way, like different basil plants, and it's amazing how architecturally you can get with it. Yeah. I've always done that with time, and I did that while I did it with mint, which is a huge mistake if anyone's ever put mint in like a contained area. I just took over but yeah, I've always kind of done that. Yeah, do you think you'll try to keep some of that space for yourself

as we move into a sort of a crazier world. Uh, yeah, it's just getting worse, and whereas I'm about to like clear like basically the last space I can and I just also took over a deck and created a container garden, so it's becoming a full time job. I've definitely probably I've probably beiten off more than I can chew. But it's so fun. I love that. So so it sounds like it's started very much with these like few vegetables. And then and where are your ambitions going? Um, anything

that will grow. I've been doing a lot of research. You know, where we live is we're right on the water, so the salt in the air it kind of limits what I can and can't grow. Um. And also just like the way our house is positioned. So I've just been researching and kind of like trial and air, I spent a lot of time figuring out what would grow.

And then I kind of turned my office into a greenhouse, which, as strange as it sounds, um, it's like a wall of windows and it gets really, really really hot in there, so I just sort of took advantage of it. But then I also learned that starting plants in a window is not the best idea because it kind of makes for weak plants. So that's where I'm at now. So I'm learning a lot of lessons. Yeah, that's incredible. And do you have any friends that you sort of share

tips with or or pick things up from. Have you found community and gardening a little bit? Yeah, I've actually made a couple of new friends and actually started this hobby with a couple of friends. Um, so it's it's nice. It's like a I don't know, it's so it's so door key that I'm like sent as a KINI picture literally sending like pictures of zucchini to my friends being like look what I threw. I don't know. It's like

I don't know. It's just like a fun new thing we can talk about and it's just simple and you know what I mean. No, I mean I feel that way too. I mean, so I you know, I used

to run a magazine. I headed up development at at my Heart for all these podcasts and stuff, and I had no time and then suddenly, with you know, the quarantine, were stuck at home and I was just looking for ways to hang out with my kids and do something that felt productive, you know, in this way where you can actually see something grow and and and hold a vegetable or whatever. And it is amazing how quickly you can dork out about these things. Yeah, it is. Yes,

I feel it's actually like really embarrassing. The other day, it was like in my office kind of like going through all the seedlings, and I'm kind of like talking out loud, and my husband opened the door and he was like, are we talking to the plants now? Yeah? I think so. I think we went there. Um. I think that one of the really nice things about planting, once you've kind of got all the basics down is just like the idea of planting something is just it's

just possibility. And and in a time where we were all kind of stuck in a rut and everything felt like Groundhog's Day and the future was so uncertain, it was like this one very simple thing I could do and watch grow, and it was a little different every day. It made each day feel, you know, some something to look forward to, something different. Yeah, I agree with that, and something positive in in a world that was so sort of um claustrophobic, with so many, so many issues.

So I'm curious what do you feel like you get out of gardening and caring for these plants, and maybe even what are some of the things you're learning about yourself. I think I don't know. It's it's sort of an unexpected hobby for me. I think if you had asked me, like ten years ago, like are you going to get super into this? I wouldn't. I would have said no,

it's interesting that that I got so into it. I think it's it's been good for me because it's it's forced me to kind of sit still and do something kind of quiet and simple, which is the challenging for me. Yeah, it's interesting that you say that because a lot of our guests have said it's very meditative for them. Yeah. I've never been the type of person who can meditate. It's really difficult for me to clear my mind, and so this is kind of the closest thing I get

to that. Um, you know. I I like what you said about noticing the salt air and the light and the way your land is because for me, it's it's really interesting to sort of gain this new perspective of the world. Yeah, that's so interesting. I so you're gardening. Do you have like a little balcony. I do, I've I've got a little balcony in a little space outdoors. But when I started this, it was mostly house plants that I was tending to. I feel like house answer

is so difficult. I think I killed them all. Well, I just keep moving them around until they started start doing better. And yeah, yeah, I have. There's one I'm not going to know the name of it. I think I want. I think it's called like a mermaid fern or something. It's some sort of fern. It's really delicate but very beautiful, and like every two months I buy one and I'm like, this time, this time, I'm not going to kill it. But it's like the type or like the soil can never dry out or else, it

just like immediately dies. I'm I'm yet to really keep one alive more than a few weeks, but they're so pretty. Yeah. Have you learned anything from the failures of being in the garden? Yeah? Right now. The biggest thing right now, honestly is I grew. I'm not exaggerating. I grew sixty tomato plants in my office. Yes, yeah, I did. It doesn't make any sense. It's a I have it's a big window. But anyway, so and then I had to

harden them off and do all the things. But because I grew them in a window, they got like the the stems are like really long and thin. They're kind of leggy, and so they're not very strong plants. So I picked the best ones and I'm like putting them in the tomato garden and creating an area. And now I have like a bunch of really sad tomato plants sitting outside that I can't get rid of because I'm like, I grew them from seed. I can't get rid of them. But also like what am I there? They like can't

stand up by themselves. I think, I'm just it's hard to let go. I did I did it wrong. But I'm also like it's like a living plant, and like a couple of even have like tomatoes on them. I'm like, I can't give up on them. I have a hard time letting go. So tell me about your kids in the garden, because I'm curious about this. I know I've seen photos of one of your kiddos toddling around and and like eating pea plants. I think probably, Yeah, it's funny.

I've noticed that, you know, in our family at least, that my kids are so much more excited to eat something off a vine than off a plate. And like we have just like shelling peas growing in our front yard right now, and when we're out there, I'll usually just grab a few and be like, whose wants peas? And they'll like fight over them, which is so funny.

And so I think that that's been a really nice thing, is just not only them being familiar with oh, our food comes from the earth, we should take care of it, and like you know, the domino effect there. And I also like my my younger son, Charlie. It's like a year and a half, he's he's very much like me. He just wants to be dirty all the time, Like

I was always just coming in mud. But like whenever I'm clearing space or anything, I'll just let him go there with like a little like a little sand shovel just to dick and he just loves it and be stilthy. Like literally we don't know how to wash him up, Like can we even put him in a shower like this. He's so dirty, but it makes them so happy, and I just think, I don't know, I think there's something to that. I think that kids they should play in the dirt and they should get dirty like that, and

they don't do it as often anymore. So Yeah, I agree. So what are you excited about planning the boast the season right now? I'm so excited because every year I grow sweet peas, and there's something about like where I am, but they just like explode like they're taller than me. There's hundreds of sweet peas in the front of my house. Yeah, it's like a it's a statement and I love it.

And it smells. I like, literally in the morning when I'm walking into the car, I just like stick my face into the just like massive flowers and breathe because it's just the best smell. Yeah, this is one of my favorite times of year. It's just because I know, I get like a wall of sweet peas. So tell me a little bit about what gardening with your kids has been like and what you sort of hope they get from this experience. Gardening with the kids. It's been fun.

I think it's trying to think of how to say this nicely. I'm like, you know, my son will get really excited about the idea, and then when it comes to like doing more than two minutes of digging, he's like, I'm out, but he's really in it for the harvest. So you talked about the fact that you started gardening with your kids in mind, and I'm curious, whenever they do participate in the actual gardening process, have you found that you've been able to teach them any life lessons

as you teach them about growing and gardening. You know, we talked to them a lot about this is just like, you know, we're gonna plant this plant, and we're gonna be patient. I think patients is a big is a big lesson here too, because you know, we'll plant something in the next day. He's like, is it done. It's like, no, we need to be patient. And each day, well, we'll check on progress and kind of talk about how the plant has to grow and then we you know, we'll

see the first fruit whatever. The plant be kind of really tiny start and you know, explaining the process I think is really nice. It's really nice. How old are your kids. My kids are a little older. They are eight and ten. Yeah, but but when we started gardening, I'd say it was my kid just turned eight, my younger, so so it was like six when when we started

doing some of the stuff. It's been fun to watch them play and and also just be very cocky about the stuff that they really like, walking around telling me like, like what I'm doing wrong? Stuff like that, which is sweet and fun. Um. Obviously, gardening has helped us all think about the way we give back and take from

and connect to the natural world around us. Right. But I'm curious, because you do this with your little ones, do you think you know, since becoming a mother, you've started thinking more about your relationship to the earth than you had maybe before you became a parent. Absolutely. I think when you have a child, you know that they're inheriting the earth that you're taking care of right now, it sort of changes things. And I don't know if that means I was more selfish before or if I

just you know, hadn't thought about it. But yeah, I mean, what in their lifetime, what changes are going to take place, like what's going to happen? Um? And it's always on the top of my mind. I'm curious what you think we might be able to take away from your experiences with plants. I think. I mean, I can say my takeaway this year has been you don't need that much. I always talk to my son like, what does a plant need to grow? Needs? Sunshine, water, nutrients, that's it.

And I think that a lot of people experience this in the past year or so is just you don't need that much. And I think that, you know, when you get really busy, you just you kind of forget to live simply sometimes and and things get really complicated and it's it's you know, bigger, more better. But I think that we, you know, my family simplified our lives a bit this year and it's it's been really kind of a welcome change. Yeah. I like that a lot. Lauren,

thank you so much for being here. Do you have any final thoughts on gardening for our listeners? No, I think, I mean, the only thing I would say, like such a tork, I would just really encourage you will to try it because it's really it's really fun. I think it's a fun family activity. I think if you do it properly, it's pretty easy. In low metance, you can kind of set up a garden. You know with plantet drip system and then you kind of just get to

enjoy it. So I think it's like an intimidating idea. But even if you're just starting with like a few containers on a balcony, like I don't know, I would just encourage you will to give it a try. Yeah, wonderful, Well, Lauren, thank you so much for being on the program. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for having me.

This was lovely. Not long ago, my friend nailed me a plant as a gift, but when it arrived, my family and I happened to be out of town, and so it just sat there waiting for us in the hallway, And when we finally opened the box, the plant looked pathetic, like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree. The soil had dried out, the leaves that hadn't fallen off were well about to fall off, and at the time I wasn't even sure

if the plant was still alive. But it was a gift from a dear friend, and I wasn't ready to part with it, so I repotted it and moved it to the sunniest spot in the house, somewhere where my other plants would be jealous of it. I checked the soil and watered it regularly, and one day, as I was debating whether to relocate it to the compost bin, I decided instead to prune the remaining leaves. It was

like giving a haircut to a bald man. But as I looked for dead leaves to trim, I saw this little bright sprout emerging, the sign of life, and I got so excited. Suddenly I realized those months of warmth and care that I've been pouring into it had thrown this thing a lifeline. And I don't know whether it was my persistence or the plants, but together we somehow figured out a way forward. I mean, you could tell

that or a few ways right. You could say that I took a plant that was about to die and just kept feeding it the nourishment it needed, the sun and the water, and it clung on until spring, long enough to thrive. The story where I just helped out the plant, where you could tell it the way I think about it, that this plant came into my life at a time when I was exhausted, worn down by the news cycle and the grind of working and parenting and schooling. From home and in that exhaustion, this plant

gave me another space to pour my love. It gave me something to hope for and asked for my patients. It trained me to realize that if you look out the window, yes, you can see all the difficult things the world is dealing with right outside, but you can also feel the warmth and count on the day's light

to stream through one day after the next. It was something to bask in and look forward too, because, of course, my little plant needed that light, but so did I. I've learned a lot of lessons throughout the season of humans growing stuff. Some of them have been more gardening and plant care related, like how to properly care for air plants, that earthworms are great pets and even better

contributors to good soil. I've learned not to trust groundhogs, especially when it comes to planning for spring, and I witnessed just how much you can do with a little bit of space. But I've also learned a lot about what it means to be human. Throughout the season, Molly and I have asked the same question to every friend who's picked up our call. Do you think taking care of plants can make us better humans. And the answer to that question is always yes, but the reasons are

so often different. Plants are tough, plants are resilient plants and want to grow. That's a good lesson for humans because I always think that we are more billions and tougher than than maybe we think we are. Sometimes even a delicate flower if you look at what that had to do to grow and become that, that's resiliency. If you look at a plant and you realize it just kind of was programmed to do that and it's going to do that same thing for humans. Oh gosh, vegetables

produced food. It's it's all about what I love to do. Honestly, seen from where it starts to where it ends on the plate and it's consumed is just such an experience. I think humility and patience is really what gardening is about. You can create communities with something as in with a garden, you can create friendships and bonds and just you can

just you can restart the world. You know, it starts with life from these plants that's growing and they're giving themselves to as and we move on and we give ourselves to other and it is connects and it keeps going. I mean, it's not not everybody can really really understand it. I mean sometimes my friends come over and they're like, how can your indoor plants are so amazing? I'm like, well, I always play music in the house. It's not like I'm walking around talking to my plants, but I might

and like I love them, you know. I mean, I dust the leaves on my on my fig trees in my house because I know they need to breathe. I see how they change shape because I know that they're moving towards the light. Who would notice that unless you are really aware of what's going on in your environment.

You know it's it's really important. I would say one gardening and plant care make us better humans because they teach you empathy and you become so grateful when you realize whoa this grew from this to this, and you're

thinking about how grateful you are for this. So you're cultivating gratitude in your body, in your spirit, in your mind, and then when you go out into the grocery store, when you go out into the mall, when you get on a plane, you have that gratitude that you've cultivated inside your body, that you now carry with you, and that started when you watch your bell pepper grow. It really does make them way more attuned to the people around them and way more connected to the communities around them.

And I think that anytime you're more connected to your community and the people around you, that's that's going to lead to more empathy. I think nature gives you all life lessons. You could put out anything from nature and there would be a lesson. We've been it. We as humans think we're so clever, we're actually pretty stupid, stupid and our desire to want everything and we're not patient. If we were more patient with everything, we'd be in a much more harmonious world. But we're not. We're just

so eager. We need it now, We need it now, We need it now. You know, Just take a step, look at what's around you. Look at that nature, Look at that tree, Look at that little thing. It's going to go in its own time. You can shout and scream and brings as much carbon on it as you want, it's not going to grow any faster than what it wants to grow. So just nurture it. You're going to get out of it as much as you put into it.

Gardening is about taking time and being patient. So if you're impatient, it might be the perfect thing for you. I'm a very impatient individual, but I have I have a much better relationship with loss and the circle of life than I did going into it, and so I'm more comfortable with life, I want to say, because I understand the whole process now and I can. I can handle it. It's not it's not easy, and I don't

think it's easy for anyone, but I can. I can do it, and so I think that's that's something I've I've really come to appreciate about being out here. Do you think you have to be an optimist to be a farmer? That's a very good question. I don't know. Before I was I would say that I was an optimist. I don't know. That's a that's a great question. I think it helps for sure, because you can see the light at the end even when it's really dark. What

do you think I think I think you do. I think you need to believe that your patients will bear out. And I think you have to believe in the earth and the seeds you're planning and and expect that things at the end of the day will will go right even if they go, hey, why a little bit, You're still going to have a bounty, you know, if not this year, next year, And I think it is an optimistic practice. M hmm. I think you're right. So much of what we take from our time with our plants

is personal. While a lot of us are finding comfort from plants and being in the garden, we respond to that interaction differently. Some of us are energized after a few hours working out. Others go to our gardens to find peace and solace. It's a lot like the way we're all attracted to different plants. We all have our own plant niche, and with different plant preferences come different life lessons. For some of us, we learn about struggle

and we use it to make ourselves stronger. I think about how the grapes that make the sweetest wine are the ones that persist through the most difficult conditions that they have to bear stress to deliver sweetness. But how while those grapes are going through that struggle, they don't know the greatness that they're destined for. Or tiny plants, because maybe you're a tiny plant person just embracing the beauty and the joy that the tiniest of plants can

radiate across the space. As this season of humans growing stuff comes to a close, I find myself naturally looking back at all the lessons I've learned, and the biggest lesson that keeps coming up for me is patients. I am quiet by nature, but I'm not patient. And the way our phones have trained us to constantly be rewarded by tweets and likes and social media updates and just knowing everything immediately, I'm not sure any of that has

trained me to be a more patient person. But plants tuning out the rest of the world and focusing on helping these little things grow, that has made me more patient. I've seen it with my wife, my kids, even myself. Plants never question what's ahead of them. They just trust that they'll find a way. They stretch their roots, figure out how to reach towards the light, and they know

they'll thrive. And think about that. That makes me incredibly optimistic about what's ahead for my family, for myself, and quite honestly, for all of us. This is our last episode of the season, so I hope you've enjoyed it. I know I have, But we'll be back soon with more content for everyone from the master gardener to the plant parent to the plant care curious. In the meantime,

you can hang out with us on social. You can find updates and more great content on the show on Instagram and Facebook at Humans Growing Stuff and on Twitter a Growing Stuff pod. Don't forget no matter what season it is or where you're at in your gardening journey, there are some incredible resources is waiting for you on the Miracle Grow website. Humans Growing Stuff is a collaboration from I Heart Radio and your friends at Miracle Grow.

Our show was written and produced by Molly Sosha and me Monga Chatigler in partnership with Ryan Ovadia, Daniel Ainsworth, Haley Ericsson, and Garrett Shannon of Banter. Until next time, be patient with your plants and each other. I'm Manga there. Thank you so much for listening.