WHY PLANT FRIENDS?
Imagine a world where cities are fully integrated biodiverse ecosystems, and where where people know more plant names than brand names.
With Plant Friends, we collaborate as a community of people, plants and other living beings to find ways to sustain ourselves as part of an economy of abundance.
Through practices such as tending ecosystem garden and learning collaboratively from local plant communities, we work towards regenerative and equitable ways of living.
ORIGINS
Rose Fairley (hi!) founded Plant Friends in 2020 as a place to consider what if caring for ourselves and caring for the earth were the same thing? What does that look like?
Our health is inextricably linked with the health of our home the earth.Like many of us, I struggle knowing that the ways we are currently sustaining ourselves rely on vast inequities among people and harm to other living kin.
Although I founded Plant Friends, the heart of this project is in community. Plant Friends is a community learning lab and place to practice finding ways of being that Plant Friends certainly doesn’t have all the answers, but holds space for cultivating tactical hope and developing an equity-driven approach to supporting a thriving planet.
ABOUT ROSE
Rose is a planting designer, nature worshiper, and artist. Her work encompasses art, ecology & community-building.
Her educational background includes certifications as a UC-ANR Certified California Naturalist and California Native Plant Landscaper (Theodore Payne/ CNPS)
She spent several years studying Appalachian plant communities and wild foods with naturalist Luke Cannon. Rose graduated with a BSN in Nursing from Western Carolina University, a BFA from New York University and completed the Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine’s 1000+ hour Herbal Immersion Program.
Lineage Gratitude: WHO INSPIRED PLANT FRIEND
Thanks to Robin Wall Kimmerer for igniting conversations around reciprocity and finding the places where indigenous and scientific connections meet (Braiding Sweetgrass), bell hooks for initiating my intersectional feminist education, adrienne maree brown for imaging ways of approaching activism and change in Emergent Strategy, and Doug Tallamy for making the connections between native plants and the food web clear to me.
Thanks to naturalist Luke Cannon for inspiring a community-centered model for deepening connection with plants and ecosystems and Graham Wesley for encouraging me on my personal journey journey as a facilitator. I received an education from the poetry of my grandmother Margaret who taught me the medicine of place and season, though I never met her. Thanks to my own mother who insisted I understand symbols and honor the potency of the creative lens, and my dad who brought me every year to a wild and beautiful place where I could gather berries and live in luxury without electricity. To all of you–and every participant who has shaped this project–and all the plants, mushrooms and places–and more, thank you!”