A Verdant Passion

Those of you have read my blog The Interdependent Life may have noticed that I tend to garner rather intense relationships with plants, specifically those in the forest. But the roots go way back. After growing up with a tropical plant-loving mom, I went to horticulture school, worked in four different nurseries, and even tried my hand as a landscape contractor—a story that shall remain hidden behind the doubtful retaining wall I tried to build. But it was my first job in tropical plant maintenance that truly showcased my fervency.

An excerpt from Notes from the Bottom of the Box: The Search for Identity from a Modern-Day Renaissance Woman.

The job was straight forward: take weekly care of leased plants in a variety of business settings. I was quite good at this job and could have even been excellent, except for one rather smallish problem: I couldn’t stand to see the plants fail. At home, I would have studied the light, my watering schedule and local temperature fluctuations, but at the job I had limited control. There were office workers using the plants as ash trays, litter bins and convenient sinks for their coffee dregs; space heaters and fans creating micro climate havoc, and leaves brushed against and disregarded by people with coats, purses and umbrellas. I was the de facto social worker whose once-a-week visit was to assess, maintain and remove those “wards of the state” found to be languishing. And therein lay the problem. I took it personally when the plants failed to live up to their glory. When my skills couldn’t turn them around, I tried ignoring their decrepit appearance, relying instead on hope and faith—hope that their fortunes would indeed change and faith that no one would notice when they didn’t.

It worked for the most part.  There were exceptions, of course, most notably the Dracena warneki—the generic office mainstay—standing alone in the lobby of a major bank, right in front of the elevator. Each week the doors would open and there she would be, Ms. warneki, my own anorexic wall flower—a skeleton of brown-tipped leaves—sadly greeting each newcomer. And each week, with rose-coloured glasses firmly in place, I would water her roots, shine what leaves remained and beg her to show some life. It worked, sort of, until the supervisor joined me on my route one day.  She didn’t appreciate the Skeletor impersonation or my Pollyanna fantasies and out the door went Ms. warneki. I retrieved her from the garbage bin that night and took her home.

The job didn’t last much longer after that. I started getting headaches from the stress and responsibility, spending most Friday nights lying on the couch in semi-darkness. The real kicker, however, was the flasher. One of my sites was a swimming pool in the basement of a Burnaby apartment complex. The gardens within this natatorium were magnificent: ten-foot high weeping figs, split leaf philodendrons, hanging spider plants—a virtual jungle of verdant joy. Every Wednesday, I would enter this veritable terrarium to wash, water and inspect my charges. I loved my Wednesdays, until one day, I looked outside. ..

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If you like my writing, check out my other blog, The Interdependent Life.