Best of KC 2020: Plant people’s numbers keep growing

Paradise Garden Club, 1621 Locust St, Kansas City, MO. // Photo by Zach Bauman

This month, we published The Pitch’s annual Best of Kansas City issue. You can browse the results of the readers’ poll here. The issue also included a list, compiled and written by our editorial staff, of some of our current favorite things about Kansas City in 2020. We’ll be publishing these items online throughout November. 

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Kansas City residents are getting serious about their plant children. The opening of several new locally owned plant shops in the area and a lust for leafy life in our homes have created a full on plant culture in the city. It’s hard to be inside a bookstore, record store, or even your own workplace without hearing someone talking about how their plants are doing: why they’re dying, if we’ve been watering them, or which ones are growing new leaves. Plants have become a staple of Kansas City’s Instagram stories, apartments, and our hearts. The mere presence of plants is so good for improving mental health and quality of life that some locals participated in the nationwide social media organized Undergound Plant Trade that began this summer, where white people donated plants for free to Black people who requested them. Bringing vegetative life into our homes is an uplifting experience all, and is the perfect way to put down roots in a community.