Why do we like plants? Why do people increasingly want to bring more plants into their homes? What’s the schtick with natural lighting, green spaces, natural spaces?
In 2023, 66% of American households have at least one houseplant. 67% of adults are growing/planning to grow edible plants. In 2020, 37.6 million households grew houseplants, barely 30% of the 126.8 million households in the country at the time. There has been this huge increase but why? The Pandemic is the easiest explanation.
Covid caused people to work from home. It forced the earth to (metaphorically) slow down and made every one of us take a step back and figure out what is most important. And we all found that we wanted the simplicity and enjoyment of life. We grow plants, we want to be self-sufficient and grow our own food, we want to feel closer to nature because nature is where we come from. It's a way of going back to our roots in the midst of this fast paced, concrete lined life that's so far removed from it.
This urge is not unfounded - there’s plenty of research that shows how much natural lighting and house plants increase productivity and reduce stress, all this with the added benefit of filtering toxins from the air. Why wouldn’t we want to breathe cleaner air when the outside is so full of smoke? In a rapidly deteriorating world, we know that we need to go backwards and integrate our green friends into our lives better. We knew this before the pandemic too, we had been trying but failing in the face of busy life and the dreaded Workday but now, we’ve been stopped in our tracks by the pandemic and forced to take a look back. In our absence nature grew back and it's amazing yet unsurprising how much it benefitted us. It's clearer now how much we need to coexist with nature instead of destroying it and how we need to enjoy its benefits, which is what most of us are trying to do. So we should keep on this quest and bring more and more of nature back into our homes and our lives. The best way to start is with plants :) and the Water-Witch™ helps us do that!
Aahanaa Tibrewal
Horto-Logic Intern for Summer ‘23
Macalester College Class of 2025
About me:
I’m studying Computer Science and Studio Art at Macalester College. I’m interning for Nick at Horto-Logic this summer! I have a passion for product design and I love the iterative process of it. In my free time, I garden, read and create art! I’m also re-watching the series House M.D. this summer :)