Rootbound

I love gardening but I couldn’t find the gardening content that I was looking for. So I started making my own.

I’ve always been enthusiastic about plants and in 2019 I studied to become a Master Gardener through Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. Then in early 2020, my wife and I moved into a house with a yard and, suddenly, we found ourselves with a bunch of free time on our hands due to the recent pandemic. So I took all my gardening knowledge and put it to use as I transformed our yard from lawn into a wildlife wonderland full of native plants, a tufa rock garden and a natural pond. Here’s what the backyard looked like when we moved in March 2020:

And here’s what it looked like in the summer of 2021:

Now that I was thinking more about plants and pollinators and the environment, I quickly realized how intertwined us humans are with the plants around us. Most people think of plants as these ornamental things that exist in a garden but plants are everything! My wood house is made of plants. My clothes are made of my plants. My food and medicines are plants. And plants shaped world history! Human migrations and colonialism and slavery were all deeply related to plants.

I wanted to start sharing more stories about all the things I was learning so I started a Substack newsletter called Rootbound. Every week I explore how plants and gardening intersects with culture and history. I also give occasional updates on the many critters that visit our backyard.

Within six months of launching Rootbound, it became one of the most popular plant-centric newsletter on Substack. You can subscribe for free  by clicking here.