There’s a question I get asked all the time. And when I say all the time, I mean it’s literally without fail the very first question I get asked in any press interview, on any podcast, by every cab driver and every stranger in the pub, as soon as they find out what I do: “So, what made you first interested in plants?”
“Did you have a really influential teacher in school? Does it run in your family? Seriously, what on earth happened to you?” I used to feel this huge pressure, particularly when I was younger – especially in my 20s – to make up some kind of superhero origin story. “Well, my grandma in Borneo used to take me around her garden…” (As she did, with all my many cousins, none of whom really care about plants now.) “I guess, growing up in the tropics meant I was physically around more plants as a kid, so there was more chance to become fascinated.” (Albeit in Singapore: a country better known back in the 1980s and 1990s for its hermetically sealed,
air-conditioned shopping malls.)
One day I asked my football-mad brother, Paul: “Has anyone ever asked you what made you interested in football? Does it run in your family? Did you have an influential teacher?” His reply, with much guffawing: “No James, because football is actually interesting!”
This point of view, predicated on the flawed assumption that plants are a sort of passive, green backdrop to the natural world, is probably why animal science students now outnumber plant science students by 500 to one. It has led politicians to suggest horticulture is a form of civil punishment, a mindless drudgery, alongside litter-picking. Even my colleagues in architecture and town planning often describe landscaping as “developers’ parsley”; a sort of inconsequential garnish to the actual talent and skill of the non-plant people.
Perhaps I am so obsessed that I have lost all sense of objectivity, but my perspective is the direct opposite. I actually find it weird that people aren’t interested in plants. Far from being merely outdoor soft furnishings, they are the solution to pretty much every major problem that faces humanity – from climate change to biodiversity loss, to food security, to discovering new drugs to treat our biggest diseases. It is no exaggeration to say that understanding plants and the power they have is crucial to the future survival of our species on this planet.
I wonder if I am the only person to think this. I definitely remember that when I finally came to the realisation that it was clearly everyone else that was somehow terribly confused, not me, I really felt something click. Perhaps it might be reassuring for other gardeners, who have this strange (I would say, sensible) lifelong fixation with plants to know you aren’t the only ones.
Follow James on Twitter @Botanygeek
