Growing Joy with Plants - Wellness Rooted in Nature, Houseplants, Gardening and Plant Care

Plant friends, we are diving deep about how and why plants are such a fantastic tool for cultivating curiosity. Beyond making my home look beautiful, the greatest gift plants have given me is reinvigorating my connection with the natural world, and my inner student and child. As kids, we are blessed with this childlike wonder that gets so easy to lose touch with as we grow older, and plants bring...

Lots of free online and IRL events happening in the world of Bloom & Grow! The Cultivating Happiness Giveaway happening on IG through June 16th Details to enter at @bloomandgrowmaria on IG Urban Jungle PHILLY Event THIS FRIDAY June 17th at 6 pm RSVP HERE NYC Plant Swap and Launch Party at Greenery Unlimited June 28th at 7 pm RSVP HERE Pre-order your copy of Growing Joy: The Plant Lover's Guide to...

There is so much confusion on the internet and so many different contrasting practices around how to treat fungus gnats and what to do with a plant when you bring it home. Some people insist on isolating plants for two weeks, some people dismiss that practice. Some people say to sprinkle cinnamon on the soil surface to combat fungus gnats, some say completely swap new soil. One of our Society memb...

Terrariums have played a huge role in my plant collection and life. I recently created a good luck terrarium to bring into the recording studio to record my audiobook for  Growing Joy: The Plant Lover’s Guide to Cultivating Happiness (and Plants)  and had such a special experience planting up this tiny mason jar terrarium, filling it with special plants, stones and crystals, and carrying it in my...

Aroids have always been fascinating, with their different leaf shapes, structures, and texture, it's no surprise that this set of plants is only growing more and more popular today. In this episode, we welcome back the queen of the aroids, Enid from NSE Tropicals, to discuss five popular and unique aroids to try growing this summer! Enid is just such a well of knowledge on more unusual aroids and...

Seeds do not only provide us with food to eat, but they represent the future and also allow us to reflect on our history. They are heirlooms, a connection to our ancestors and their stories. In this episode, on Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we celebrate stories of Asian culture and connection to nature and food through seeds, with YC Miller from Kitazawa Seed Company. YC walk...

I feel like there comes a time in every plant parent's life when we start to get really curious and excited about having a dedicated space for all of our plants. If you are an outdoor gardener, the promise of a greenhouse for seed starts and overwintering plants is even more promising! I’ve had several different moments in life where I’ve Googled greenhouse kits but never crossed the finish line d...

Plant friends, in celebration of the launch of my new book, Growing Joy: The Plant Lover's Guide to Cultivating Happiness (and Plants), which is about my personal journey with plants, I want to celebrate YOUR stories on launch day.  Growing Joy  is not just about my personal journey with my plants, it's about the thousands of stories I have heard from listeners about how plants have helped them he...

Growing your own plants from seeds is one of the most gratifying experiences in the garden. Watching a tiny seed become a full-grown plant just gives you the most amazing feeling as a plant parent. However, seed starting is a whole different science and practice on its own and requires special soil, different care, grow lights and water monitoring, and interesting practices to make sure that your...

They produce some of the most desirable flowers we know and love, but a bulb can be very confusing to an amateur gardener. We look at this little stub and think, "Seriously, a daffodil is going to sprout up from this thing?" As tropical houseplant growers, bulbs can be a totally different game when it comes to caring, with different sets of tips to be mindful of. Jenks Farmer is a bulb expert and...

This might be the CRAZIEST thing I’ve done with my plants but this has also been such an extraordinary experience as I fly our lime tree, Limey, from New York to Florida! I am so excited to share the experience with you and talk about the citrus alley Mama Failla and I made in their beautiful Florida home. I document the entire journey of flying with a plant including the thought process, plant mo...

Plant friends, this has been in the works for almost two years and I am so excited to finally be able to share it with you! Two YEARS of quietly working on a very special project with our guest, and not being able to talk about it! We will dive more into this project in the second half of this episode, but more importantly, we get to know Samantha Leung. Samantha, the founder of the well-known pla...

Rubber plants don't get enough credit in the tropical plant world. These humble plants are always available at the garden center but tend to get overlooked for some of our sexier Instagram-worthy plants. In this episode, we will dive into the many reasons why rubber plants are fantastic plants with Raffaele of Ohio Tropics. The first part is going to be an overview of general rubber plant care and...

Has the concept of “bright indirect light” ever confused you? Or how to measure your light in your home in general? Or how to figure out when you need to supplement with grow lights, and if you get grow lights, how to set your plants up for success under them? Light is probably the most confusing topic when it comes to our plants. It was definitely my biggest pain point when I was starting out as...

We’ve likely all had some sort of run-in with a carnivorous plant: maybe bringing one of those little venus flytraps at the hardware store home to realize you had no idea how to care for it, maybe marveling at the wide array of carnivorous plants at your local botanical garden, and maybe even getting to see a fly land on one, or maybe it’s just knowing the man-eating plant Audrey II in the musical...

Welcome to a new mini-series for Bloom & Grow Radio: Knowledge Nuggets. They will be 5-10 minute episodes that show up once a month, in addition to our regular episodes, and will highlight one "nugget" of plant nerd education taken from the Node of Knowledge Plant Science lectures Leslie Halleck gives in the Garden Society. These lectures are so good, I couldn't help sharing a teeny bit with you!...

It's been such a joy having fellow podcasters join me in the pod as they never disappoint and have such wonderful insights about plant parenthood and plantrepreneurship. I met this episode's guest in 2020 and figured it was time to have her back on to catch up and explore a concept she’ll be tackling on the next season of her show: the past, present, and future of black people in horticulture. Col...

Houseplants and interior design: you’d think these two passions would go together like two peas in a pod, but they can sometimes be at war with each other. We can find ourselves desperately wanting to style plants in rooms with no light, or getting overwhelmed with figuring out how to make our homes look planty and not cluttered. Many plant people don't know the first thing about interior design t...

Happy New Year, plant friends! I hope you had great holidays and like me, are looking forward to a fresh start in 2022. In the first episode of Season 7, I invited some of my favorite planty podcasters back: Stephen and Matthew of the Plant Daddy Podcast, for a really fun conversation inspired by streamlining and simplifying our houseplant care routines. This convo is really rooted in reflecting o...

Hi Plant Friends, our official first episode of Season 7 of BAGR starts next week with the return of the guys from the Plant Daddy Podcast for a great talk about streamlining houseplant care in 2022, but since it’s the first week of 2022, I wanted to share a sweet moment with you that we recently had on a Growing Joy Call in the Bloom & Grow Garden Society: a 3 minute meditation, on the turn of th...

When I think back on this last year,  transition  is the word that comes to mind. We are literally transitioning into a new year, but I'm sure everyone went through some form of transition this year: a new home, family additions and losses, job changes, and more. And as we grow through those transitions, our plant collection evolves too. I personally went through a tremendous transition this year...

There is so much power in flowers, plant friends. A flower is so much more than a bloom, but an expression, a connection to something deeper. Whatever our known or unknown bias for blooms is, flowers are little joy bombs just waiting to be cut or grown. It’s undeniable that flowers also can play a huge part in a wedding day: from the ceremonial bouquet and corsage to the ceremony and reception flo...

From the moment I got engaged, and frankly, even before that, I knew that I wanted to have the plantiest wedding possible! My plants are a huge part of me and I wanted to incorporate that aspect into our wedding. I didn’t want my wedding to be houseplant-themed, but I wanted houseplants and nature to be woven into our day seamlessly, in a refined way that felt special. Katie O’Neil of Katydyd Even...

Plant friends, I am so excited to finally bring you this planty wedding series, after almost two years of waiting! This month, I’m bringing you the Botanically Inspired Wedding Series on Bloom and Grow Radio, where we explore all aspects and intersections of weddings and plants. We have something for everyone in this series whether you love to DIY, are curious about the floral industry and how to...

Snake plants are  completely  underrated. These “low light-tolerant” plants are often thrown into dark corners, dusty offices, and bathrooms with no windows due to their notoriously hardy personalities, but there is so much more to this beautiful collection of plants than just their ability to survive. Their leaves come in the most mesmerizing shapes and I think they are one of the most giftable p...