By Alison Butz
Whether or not you mean to do it, plant murder happens every day. Not all of us can be the best plant parents and that’s alright.
All throughout my childhood, I was surrounded by plants and wildlife. This made it so exciting for me to receive plants as gifts. The first ever plant I was given was a cactus, and this was mostly because they are super easy to grow — and even harder to kill.
I had this cactus until I was around 15 years old. It only died because I didn’t want to bring it with me on yet another move. At this point, I had moved twice already and grew busier with extracurriculars by the day.
I haven’t really branched out to care for plants myself, but if it’s anything like how my family is with keeping plants alive — I will not be good at it.
I remember my sister begging and begging for a bonsai tree when I was around nine or 10 years old. She ended up getting one later on and unfortunately, it didn’t last long at all, or that’s what my preteen brain remembers.
Bonsai trees are among the ranks for easy plants to take care of. Others include multiple varieties of cacti as well as multiple versions of succulents.
I’ve been thinking about getting more plants to care for and keep alive — one being an aloe vera plant — simply because I think it would be fun to grow and make my own aloe.
Another plant I think would be fun to grow is a prayer plant, which is a type of Marantaceae. This one is particularly interesting because the leaves move and bend throughout the day because of the sunlight.
An unrealistic plant I would like to own is a Venus flytrap. I think it would be fun and I think they’re super cool and all, but it’s unrealistic because I have such an irrational fear of bugs.
If I like having plants, I could get adventurous enough to grow my own veggies or fruits. I think it would be cost-efficient to have this type of garden because if I were to think about how much I spend yearly on fruits and veggies, it wouldn’t be a pretty number.
I can even be one of those people that enter a ginormous pumpkin into the fall festivals in October to hopefully win a cash prize. This ultimately would take a lot of work, and I would definitely have to be in a good place to have the effort to take care of a garden like this.
Overall, plants are fun to grow, with bonus points if it was grown straight from a seed and not bought from a store. However, there are some people who just cannot be trusted with plants and you can never know until you try caring for a low maintenance plant.