Let's Grow Stuff

- Greetings from the garden, and welcome back to Let's Grow Stuff .

- My name is Ben, and as you know, we love to learn how to garden on this show, but one of the joys of gardening is also getting to know the gardeners themselves.

Well, today, we are at Plant Salon in Chicago, meeting a very special plant lover, Nika Vaughan.

And she is gonna tell us more about her story.

[upbeat electronic music] - Nika: People are so cute.

They'll come in and they'll be like, "I've got six plants.

"I don't know if it's getting crazy.

Is it getting out of hand?"

And I'm like, "Ooh, I had to start a business, I had so many plants."

[upbeat electronic music] I am Nika Vaughan, and I've lived in Chicago for a really long time.

I'm a mom, I am an artist, and I'm a plant collector.

When I first started Plant Salon, I mean, even like having an Instagram, I just literally, I was one of those people that just, "I'm gonna start a plant Instagram."

And I would just kind of document the little things I was doing around my shop and with my plants.

You can leave it just like this for like a few days, and then maybe give it a little drink of water.

Like, "Hey guys, I'm gonna be pruning my cactus, "and I'm super allergic to cactus.

Come with me on this journey."

[laughs] Like, totally digging that, okay, well.

[pot scraping] [Nika laughing] And people live that way in their homes, so to see it in a plant shop, it suddenly feels very like, authentic and approachable.

We say that our shop is very much a no-judgment zone, so then people can feel a little vulnerable about the lack of knowledge they have, and then they feel confident in asking questions, which has been really nice.

'Cause I think people need that.

It's like a little reassuring.

And we're sharing then our stories about our plants.

Having the community and then feeling safe in those communities has been so huge in the last year.

[gentle music] - Announcer: Funding for Let's Grow Stuff is provided by American Transmission Company, Ganshert Nursery & Landscapes, Willy Street Co-op, Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programming, and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.