We love our plant babies
On March 23, as my entire then-workplace panicked in preparation for the imminent Level 4 lockdown and we all packed our things and fled home, I suddenly inherited four plants. As a known plant killer, I was as surprised as anyone to be delegated as a flora foster mum.
But in the weeks and then months that followed, the rise of the houseplant became very important – who can forget Hilary Barry, basically alone in the spacious TVNZ building, with only Barry, a colleague’s plant, for company.
In my own home, my new plants slowly went from being something I would remember in a panic once a fortnight to something I cared for every day. Well, in full honesty, one plant did not recover and has gone to the great greenhouse in the sky. But the rest have thrived, bringing a little nature to our flat.
I am not the only millennial to have suddenly developed a green thumb; in fact, I am part of a great movement of 20 or 30-somethings discovering the joys of plant parenthood. This is partly because, for millennials, actual parenthood – and the other traditional markings of adult life – are becoming more and more out of reach.
