My father died on Thursday, Aug. 6 at 1:15 a.m. and because Muslim funeral rites are supposed to be quick and simple to swiftly lay the dead to rest, he was buried by the following afternoon.
The drive to the Islamic graveyard in Livermore felt longer than an hour and a half. It was a winding sojourn past bleached hillsides and dead chaparral. The smoke from fires up north grew thicker as I approached and blanketed the area in a foul miasma.
A sign on the cemetery gate warns mourners to watch out for rattlesnakes. Nothing grows. There are no rolling lawns, watered and manicured. There are only the rows and rows of the departed with their flat, barren plots, absent even headstones. Surely, other Muslim burial sites are beautiful places to remember and reflect, but not this one.
When I returned home I was desperate to see something vibrant, something green. I shut all the windows and doors against the smoke and turned on the air purifier. Over the next two days, I spent a good deal of time and money surrounding myself with new little house plants. Their names sound like Harry Potter spells: Peperomia, Alocasia and Pothos.
After bringing them home, I lovingly tucked my plants into their pots, surrounding them with rich soil.
Coming home every day to examine the satiny green leaves, watch the roots burst from the node of a vine stuck into water, see them twist and bend in the light, gave me a bit of serenity I had not found in the three months I spent in the ICU with my dad.
I wondered why several little vines and leaves could have such an impact on my emotional wellbeing.
Thy Do, a San Jose State alumna who graduated in 2020, has always had plants in her life.
“My grandma is an outdoor plant person, so [we] had fruits in the backyard: apples, oranges, plums and whatnot,” Do said.
Do said she began propagating and selling house plants during the beginning of quarantine and noticed a connection between her buyers and their new-found plant habits.
“People wanted to do things that they had never done to keep them in a positive-thinking way, holding on to hope, like all things will get better,” Do said.
SJSU anthropology professor Jan English-Lueck said evidence of plants aid in therapeutic recovery is growing.
English-Lueck said in addition to most modern and traditional medicines being derived from plants, having plants in one’s environment can be conducive to healing.
Therapeutic gardens create natural intentional spaces devoted to healing and therapy, according to a 2012 American Horticultural Therapy Association article.
The American Horticultural Therapy Association is a non-profit organization that seeks to promote horticultural therapy as a way to help rehabilitate patients.
The role of plants in those spaces is to engage the senses and promote sensory stimulation through all five senses while encouraging the exploration of memory. Therapeutic gardens are designed to serve all ages and to be accessible to people with varying levels of ability.
English-Lueck said while gardens in many cultures have historically been created as intentional spaces to enjoy nature and to find peace, the European model of gardening was often about asserting dominance and control over plant life.
“The philosophy of gardening in Europe has been traditionally to make the plant do what you want,” English-Lueck said.
However, she said since the American transcendental movement arose in the 1830s, there has been a shift toward simply allowing nature to be.
The American transcendental movement was a religious, political and philosophical shift led by writers, abolitionists and nature lovers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau believed human beings and society would benefit from seeking solitude and a connection with the divine through nature.
This shift in gardening philosophies has also been influenced by gardening philosophies in places including China and Japan. Other cultures also embrace gardening philosophies that don’t put plants in rows or “impose order” upon them.
She said Shinto religion, which originated in Japan, deeply respects plants, streams and rocks that are believed to contain spirits and to be animated, sacred beings.
“There is a huge tradition among many cultures of recognizing the sacredness of plants,” English-Lueck said.
English-Lueck said American garden spaces are moving toward having a relationship with plants that isn’t based on dominance or control, but is, in fact, a relationship.
Thy Do’s sales have dropped sharply as quarantine has slowly, but surely, lifted.
She said people are going back to the office, back to work and have less time to spend caring for their plants.
Still surrounded by her personal collection of plants, Do dreams of one day buying an Albo Monstera. She said the plant is hard to care for but it rewards its steward with its enormous, waxy fan-like leaves.
“I feel like when you look at living things, you just sometimes appreciate life,” Do said.
For Do, simply being near a plant as it grows gives her a sense of calm. Just bearing witness to a small thing, quietly growing, unaware of the struggles that exist outside of its stems and leaves, can be healing.
