The Black Men Behind Social Media’s Great Gardening Explosion
The social trend is watering your timeline with much-needed tranquility
Nearly two years ago, Nelson ZêPequéno posted an Instagram video of himself transforming a cerulean Nintendo 64 controller into a planter for succulents. A childhood relic becoming an artful vessel for growth is a common theme in the artist’s work; he’s also transformed a rotary phone, a clock, and a record player into homes for his plants.
All are stunning sights to behold, but ZêPequéno wants the world to know that he’s not the only Black man with a green thumb. His most poignant work isn’t even on his personal account — it’s at Black Men With Gardens, where more than 65,000 followers marvel at not just massive thaumatophyllum or leaning cacti but also the men who care for them. On an app where aesthetically pleasing images are the primary focus, creators like ZêPequéno use the beauty of plants to create a dialogue that encourages wellness and personal growth.
Plant content has surged online amid the Covid-19 pandemic, with fear of food shortages spurring a vegetable-growing trend earlier this year. But ZêPequéno is part of a growing group of amateur horticulturists who have long been missing from the social media landscape. “These plant accounts would be so freaking White,” he says, recalling his time searching Instagram a few years ago. “It was insane. How do you whitewash nature?”
Jasmine Jefferson originally secured the username for the Black Men With Gardens account in 2017, when she also created Black Girls With Gardens, its sister account with more than 140,000 followers. “I’ve been surrounded by [gardening] my entire life,” she says. “But as a child, I was over it, because my mom and my grandmother were the type of people who would have a shovel and pruners in their trunk just in case they saw something they wanted.” She didn’t get into gardening until she was an adult, while mourning her grandmother’s death. Soon after, Jefferson created the Instagram accounts in hopes of finding a sense of community; she later passed the reins for the men’s page over to ZêPequéno.
In his hands, the page flourished, not just as a source of #BlackBoyJoy but also as a depiction of Black men’s full humanity in the face of continued trauma. In a year when Black people have spent months battling police violence and a public health pandemic that disproportionately affects them, Jefferson calls Black Men With Gardens is an act of “resistance.” As the traumas of Black men flood other parts of the internet, there is a serenity to be found in watching Black men — in all of their glorious forms — celebrate life. They meditate. They stretch. They pose with sunflowers, their gold teeth glistening between parted lips. They pick leafy green vegetables with their son and, sometimes, their mom.
ZêPequéno is aware that Black Men With Gardens serves as a counternarrative to the typically negative and stereotypical depictions of Black men. Still, he insists his main goal when curating the space is to have a dialogue with his fellow “brothers” and challenge common perceptions about masculinity. “What everybody else sees is beauty and all that stuff,” he says. “That’s dope, but that’s [not] my main focus.”
On TikTok, Marcus Bridgewater’s wisdom and spirituality are sources of inspiration for the more than 600,000 people who follow Garden Marcus. It’s a large following — especially considering that before he started the account seven months ago, Bridgewater knew nothing about the social media phenomenon. (He thought TikTok was a calendar app, he says.) For the 33-year-old life coach, the engagement he’s received has been both “humbling” and a pleasant surprise. “It has been quite the learning curve,” Bridgewater says. “I’m that kind of fuddy-duddy old guy, as a 33-year-old who never was on Facebook.”
“For the first time in our lifetime, the train [has] slowed down. There’s a kind of motion sickness that comes with it. Most of us have never slowed down before.”
Fans of Bridgewater’s content may not immediately recognize how it’s different from traditional plant accounts on social media; his purpose has always been about more than sharing gardening tips. The co-founder of Choice Forward, a wellness company that offers “tools and techniques [to] promote productive choice-making,” including workshops and seminars, Bridgewater created the account to share his full-time work with the masses. With Garden Marcus, he can spread positivity, encouragement, and wisdom to the masses without coming across as “preachy.”
“I did not know that people would be this attuned to the information or receive it so openly,” Bridgewater says. “What I did know was that because of the encouragement of my team, I was going to share who I am and what I am as genuinely as I could,” he says. “If it was to help one guy or if it was to help 10 guys, we were going to be fortunate for that.”
Videos from Garden Marcus — much like the viral vegan videos from Tabitha Brown — have proved that wholesome, positive content can thrive on social media. In these videos, the plants and plant-based meals are, in many ways, secondary. Uplifting personalities, wide smiles, and life lessons are the draw even for fans who have no plans to eat Brown’s carrot bacon or propagate a pineapple like Bridgewater. In one viral video, filmed and edited by Choice Forward co-founder Dana Hammarstrom, Bridgewater repots a dying shrub he purchased for a dollar. “Finding this soon-to-be trash was like finding a diamond in a thrift store mistaken for a sequin,” he says in the video. For the life coach, the shrub and a dying lavender plant he purchased at a discount provide “both beauty and an opportunity to learn.”
Of course, the gardening tips are also extremely helpful. Bridgewater began gardening six years ago when a friend’s mother gifted him 16 plants shortly after moving into his first home. “I got them to Texas, and I killed more than half,” he says. “That experience really jarred me; I didn’t want the other ones to die.” Today, five of the plants are still at his home, and he’s developed a passion for purchasing near-dying plants and attempting to revive them. “I can’t make anything grow, but I can foster environments where growth is a byproduct of living,” he says, referencing his signature motto.
Neither Marcus Bridgewater’s nor Nelson ZêPequéno’s social media accounts launched in 2020, but in a time of increased stress and isolation, their content has thrived. “For the first time in our lifetime, the train [has] slowed down. There’s a kind of motion sickness that comes with it. Most of us have never slowed down before,” Bridgewater says. “Our bodies were born into a time of being tossed around. So now it’s like, ‘Whoa, what is this feeling?’ That feeling is grounding. So now you [have] people stepping out of the train for the first time in a long time, and what’s out of the train? Nature.”
ZêPequéno agrees that the increased interest in gardening likely stems from the growing need for self-care and therapy. “Once you start taking care of [plants], you learn that you actually take care of yourself,” he says. “There are so many deep, great principles of gardening and farming that our generation, I think, wants to really get back to.”
