Helen ZhangIn my heart of hearts, I have always wanted to be a plant mom. I want to be knowledgeable about succulents, tend a beautiful flower garden, and maintain several tiny bonsai trees. However, somewhere along the production line, someone cut off both of my green thumbs at the base, and I can’t even keep dirt alive. I bought a little cactus, which only needed to be watered every two weeks, to try and acclimate myself to owning plants. I still managed to kill it.
Due to my horrible shortcomings as a plant mom, I love seeing other people’s plants, because then I can be around cultivated nature without becoming some kind of Norman Bates of greenery. So, as you can imagine, I love the plants on campus.
Campus can be a hard place to be. Sometimes it’s the location of your greatest successes, but that also means it can be the location of your greatest failures. The calming nature of plants can alleviate these worries, so having them on campus is a wonderful idea.
Not only do I love the plants we already have here, I think there should be more. In my eyes, the nicest and more serene place on all of campus in the atrium in the agriculture building. As someone who isn’t an agriculture student I’m too shy to sit in there, but even walking past it can be calming. Being surrounded by plants in a glass enclosure just makes me want to be calm.
Through the foliage on campus, I can vicariously live out my plant mom dreams. Plants should be abundant and diverse on ALL campuses, not just at the University of Alberta. We all want to be plant moms inside, and this would be a great way to do it.
