Sunday was a beautiful day in the Near Northwest Neighborhood as record crowds turned out to celebrate Arts Café with us, an annual event celebrating and showcasing our neighborhood. Beyond the beautiful weather, the general energy and spirit of the day felt different to me in a way I haven’t felt for a while.
There was so much hope in the air. So much community. So many familiar faces. So many wonderful, warm, and supportive conversations. We also had a phenomenal weekend of sales. (This after several slow weekends I can only attribute to Notre Dame games?) For such a young small business, those slow weeks still bring a bit of trepidation and doubt – how can they not? Did we make the right decision to open our business, is our strategy the right one, is there something we’re missing? Self-doubt and imposter syndrome have been fairly constant friends lately I have to remind myself not to focus on those small snapshots of time and instead look to the big picture.
I’ve also learned to remind myself to focus on the love in the room, and there was a lot of love in the NNN this weekend. If there’s love, it means you’re doing something right. It may also mean my gut was right when it told me what I needed do to get back to feeling empowered and creative again (because confession, I haven’t been feeling either empowered or creative lately and I thrive when both of those tanks are full).
I absolutely need to rest for a bit. Starting a business is rewarding, gratifying, exhilarating, and downright fun. It can be all of those things and still be exhausting, and when you’re wiped, you’re worthless. I’m sharing this with you less as an away message and more of a possible PSA – if you’ve also been feeling burned out, like you need to take serious time to rest and care for yourself, don’t ignore that feeling. Even by just thinking about taking a few days away I can feel my energy levels begin to rebound. (The vacation begins right after I publish this, by the way.)
This fantastic weekend full of friendly, supportive, loving conversations also allowed me to remember the future again – the place we’re headed as a business and our ultimate vision for how we hope to change the world. I can’t tell you how timely this is, given I’ll be presenting a Studebaker Talk in just a few days. This is no ordinary presentation because it feels like an inflection point, as if things won’t be the same after October 7, 2022.
Studebaker Talks are unique to South Bend in that, while they may feel like a TEDx talk, they embody the collective spirit of our city in a way that’s raw, honest, vulnerable, authentic, and hopeful. These aren’t light emotions to carry or convey and the pressure to discover and share Botany’s story on this stage and alongside the others in my cohort has been more intense than I expected. Is it too soon for us to share this part of ourselves? Do we need more time to bake and grow? What if South Bend hates this? (Oh, hello imposter syndrome, welcome back).
No matter what happens, I’ve realized through this process that what I’m going to share on October 7 is the same story I’ve been sharing since I was a kid. It’s been with me since the beginning, an old and dear friend, and is nothing to be frightened, scared, or ashamed to share. If you’ll be attending Friday night, I can’t wait to share it with you, and if you’re not, the video will be published a few weeks later.
Sunday I was able to dream for the first time in a long time. The day started with a visit to my childhood garden on the south side of South Bend, and a spontaneous urge to create an over-the-top-extra floral arrangement for the Shop in celebration of Arts Café later that day. So many things I planted so many years ago have grown and matured and moved and evolved seemingly overnight (what happens when you don’t live with your garden anymore), and I found myself rediscovering old friends. In a matter of minutes, I’d gathered the raw ingredients in this bouquet, and it took me a similar amount of time to put the arrangement together once I arrived at the shop.
It may seem fully inconsequential to you, dear reader, what this experience meant for me – a burst of unexpected creativity bubbling up in such a drained moment. And it didn’t stop there. As the day went on, the good vibes continued to flow, especially because I was outside the Shop in the vacant lot next door all afternoon – the first time I had spent a duration of time in that space.
I’ve been, like, *intensely* dreaming about what we’d one day grow in this space for over a year. I have dozens of sketches and notes in various states of evolution and refinement strewn about my home office, and until this weekend, that’s where they had stayed. I hadn’t spent any real, extended time in that space (because “burnout” above) and before I knew it, I pulled out the marking flags and spray paint and started to translate the doodles in my brain to the actual canvas of the space and the soil beneath my feet.
There’s something magical that happens when you begin to trace those first lines onto an actual site, because it means the performance is finally leaving the page and going into rehearsals. It’s getting real. We’ve designed the set and props, and we’re beginning to talk about casting the various roles we need to fill in our performance. Gardening is the slowest of performing arts, after all, and we want to get the right plants into the right places.
When it comes to planting design, I also tend to think of it like painting. I avoid drawing specific dots and circles on paper before planting because it feels like that somehow pulls me into a less creative place. Things are always safer and easier and more predictable on paper than they are in reality. A divot here, patch of gravel there, or an unexpected long shadow that suddenly change: all are discovered through immersion and deep observation and feel harder to capture on paper for me. So, when I *really* sit with a site and repetitively walk through a space and I feel the future garden begin to tell me what it could be, that’s an exciting moment.
That moment happened in the vacant lot next door to the Shop on Sunday. It feels like I suddenly took a giant step forward and crossed into tackling the next “thing” – another inflection point, perhaps – because, like Studebaker Talks, Botany and – I hope – our city, won’t be the same from this moment forward. Here begins the next great adventure, to grow a public garden grounded in sociability and community. What a moment.
Thank you for making all of this, and what’s to come, possible. It takes a village, and we’re grateful you’re ours. I like to say it helps when you cook with the right ingredients – but today, I’m thinking about it a different way… It helps when you put the right plant in the right place.
Let’s grow something beautiful, together. Onward, plant lovers.
With Gratitude,
Ben | Founder/CEO
P.S. If you want to learn more about our hopes or support our work, we invite you to consider becoming a Botany Backer. You can learn more here.
