(By Nate Carsten)
April showers bring May flowers. I wanted to experience it in full, especially with Earth Day around the corner. All excuses for me to buy a plant.
April 22nd is Earth Day. A day that is more than Earth-colored cake pops from Starbucks. Earth Day signifies the start of the US environmental movement. Sorry, “Earthday.org tells us that in 1969, a Wisconsin senator sought educational outreach programs for the changing environment. He was inspired by student anti-war activism and sought to direct that energy towards concerns with the deterioration of the US’s environment. The day they chose came to be April 22nd, 1970, the first Earth Day. With Earth Day 2022 coming up I thought I’d do my part and buy a new live-in companion, a house plant.
Prairie Gardens, being the closest to Parkland College, was my first choice. I had never been there before, and boy is it huge! For having such a quaint and unsuspecting, dare I say cute exterior, they overwhelm you with everything: lawn furniture, antique candy, gnomes, knick-knacks, and in every color you could want. But I needed green, green for the Earth. Eventually, I found the portal to my destination, Houseplants: air plants, orchids, and succulents.
I had no idea what to look for, what was what, or how to take care of it. Naturally, I turned to a cool guy in an apron and a ponytail for help. Luckily, he did work there, and he referred me to the nature queen, Linda. I broke down my setup: a smaller studio apartment with three big east-facing windows, but with overall low light. With that information, she toured me to view different house plants, with different degrees of need. I settled on a cute fern, something fairly easy which I named after my new teacher.
When buying a new house plant, it is important to consider the following: how much light is available, how much water and other nutrition they need, and how much time you will have to be around them; as my grandma says, the more you talk to them, the bigger they grow. My teacher also referred me to sources of education like, “Crazy Plant Guy,” at crazyplantguy.com
Leaving Prairie Gardens, I was excited, but I needed to do more; I wanted another plant and to check out the other sites in Champaign. Driving up and down University, I noticed a new storefront titled, “Gro-Up,” for indoor/outdoor gardening, aquaponics, and organics.
I parked across the street, near the now decrepit Dallas and Co., R.I.P. I walked in and immediately understood the assignment, to grow Cannabis. There was a friendly guy with the coolest tattoos named Nick at the front desk and he let me in on his business. He grew up in Decatur but moved to California 10 years ago. There he grew and sold cannabis to distributors for a mint. All that changed when the government a-taxed. He could no longer sell to distributors without paying a lot of money to get FDA approved, so decided to come back home.
I learned it is pretty easy to grow Cannabis, but the main requirement is a strong steady light. Nick informed me that his lights start at great retail prices and that he uses them with his seeds which he sells as well. Naturally, with more lights comes more electricity, which results in a higher bill. Nick says he usually spends around 600 dollars a month on his electricity bill, which is my entire rent for my studio. But he reassured them it wasn’t much higher than what he was paying before for his house. Which also made me realize I may never be a homeowner.
After being shocked but educated, I had one more stop, Plantify. Plantify is a shop right off Neil St. at the beginning of downtown, near Sticky Rice and Bentley’s. When you walk in your muscles instantly relax from the owner Long’s aromatherapy and vibes. Everything is ordered so neatly I didn’t want to disturb it. I had just gotten a sizable fern, so I was looking to downsize to the always popular succulents. Long helped me with all the information I needed, but after gazing upon a specific cactus, I knew I’d met my match: American Cactus, Jake Long, a reference to a Disney cartoon classic, if you didn’t know. Due to Jake’s size, he didn’t need to be repotted, which is a free charge at Plantify, but when I go back and upgrade, I will have a field day choosing from many of their unique pots.
Two plants to call my own, I’d say I had a successful journey, and all in the name of Earth Day. Now, you may be wondering if playing into a capitalist system by buying houseplants solely for recreation is being a responsible, sustainable citizen of Earth. It is the beginning of a journey in some type of way. Solely buying plants won’t be saving the Earth anytime soon, but what we are buying is an investment into education on how to be a steward of vegetation. The next step is to learn how to take good care and nurture more difficult plants. After that, create an indoor garden. After that, contribute to a community garden. We have to keep on evolving our education and experience with mother nature, and that is the true nature of Earth Day.
When you can responsibly sustain a garden, you are lowering carbon emissions by more than you’d think. Drawdown.org is a website for Project Drawdown, one of the world’s leading resources for climate solutions, taken from their homepage. Two solutions out of 100 that they have declared are enacting a plant-based diet and eliminating food waste. When you start your plant growing journey, you are working towards these goals. When you garden responsibly, you create a plant-based diet for yourself and are eliminating food waste since you grew it yourself.
To quote earthday.org, “By the end of 1970, the first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of other first of their kind environmental laws, including the National Environmental Education Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Clean Air Act. Two years later Congress passed the Clean Water Act. A year after that, Congress passed the Endangered Species Act and soon after the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.” Earth Day started only 52 years ago. It started as an educational journey, but there is still a long way to go.
We all start somewhere. In the beginning, we are novices, but we grow into masters to teach others. That is the spirit of Earth Day. A special thanks to my Bio 104, Environmental Biology teacher, Michelle Dallmier, for being one of these educators fighting for the Earth, thank you.