Throughout the past decade, Racine has seen a significant surge in garden and plant culture. From the Racine Urban Gardening network on Washington Avenue to the Marquette Street Garden, Racine has used gardening to bring together community and promote environmental preservation.
Caretaker Lourdes Rio with the help of Kristina Campbell, owner of the event space, The Branch, and fellow Branch employee, Joanna Luebke, is keeping up the spirit with her establishment of The Plant Lady, a pop-up plant shop. I sat down with them to discuss gardening influences the community and why plants are so popular in society today.
How did you get interested in gardening?
Lourdes Rios: It started with my mother. She had all kinds of plants at home so that got me started into taking care of them.
Joanna Luebke: It was during covid and it was just a very soothing thing to do. I found that I was pretty stressed and it calms me. When Lourdes wanted to open up her own plant business, I said “absolutely.” This stuff is easy for me and it calms me.
How can gardens help communities and cities?
Lourde Rios: Clean Air and plants make people happy.
Joanna Luebke: I think they provide so much happiness. I think if you have something green around, you’re in a better, happier mood. They also clean the air; in my house, now that I have plants, the air quality is improved.
Why do you think plants and gardening particularly appeal to the current generation?
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Joanna Luebeke: With COVID, I think that it’s something that people can zone out on and feel comfortable doing. With climate change and everything, I think it’s very important to get people involved with gardening.
Kristina Campbell: We also became homebodies during all of this and you want your home to be relaxing. We need that as a community, a space we can go to and feel comforted.
What makes the connection between gardening and Racine so unique?
Lourdes Rios: I think it gets people involved. The more people see it, the more people will want to do it. We basically want people to get involved with the community.
Joanna Luebeke: I think in Racine, we need more of it. I know a ton of Racine people who have been doing community gardens and they really enjoy that. A lot of people don’t have the space so the community gardens are very helpful. We hope that we have a space like those gardens where people can come in for questions about planting.
What are your plans for the future?
Lourdes Rio: Get more plants and to get the community involved. I know some people don’t know about planting and I think it’s a good thing to learn. Hopefully, I’ll be helping somebody do that.
Joanna Luebeke: We want to be successful. I want Lourdes to be successful because she really is passionate about plants and wants people to have an education about plants. I know there are people who say, “I have a black thumb and I kill everything,” but hopefully Lourdes can teach them to keep it all alive. We’re hoping to have plants that people can keep alive.
