If you asked me to describe my perfect date, my answer wouldn’t be April 25th, but rather the third Saturday in July. (If you get the reference, thank you.)
Why?
The third Saturday in July is Plant Pride, our signature, crown jewel event celebrating the opening of The Botany Shop at 909 Portage Avenue in 2021. From the beginning, our work and our mission has been grounded in community, and so every year since 2022, we invite our friends, neighbors, customers, and supporters for a day of beauty, laughter, smiles, and good vibes – a place where, as one guest shared, “Everyone could be their authentic self, surrounded by joy.”
2024 marked the third Plant Pride celebration, and before I go any further – please save the date, July 19, 2025, for next year’s celebration.
As I’ve been reflecting these past few weeks, reviewing photos and videos from this year’s celebration, I was reminded of a quote (below) from one of my entrepreneur idols, Erin Benzakien, Founder of Floret Flowers, a flower farm focused on research, teaching, and breeding new varieties in Skagit Valley, WA. Floret’s mission is to get more beauty out in to the world, and if you haven’t checked out their documentary series, Growing Floret, on DiscoveryPlus, I highly encourage you to do so. Your life will be better because of it. I promise.
“I hope that wherever you may be and whatever you may know or not know about growing things, that you might still give it a try. Put your hands in the dirt. Feel its cool touch. Plant a seed. Give it water and sunshine and warmth, and most importantly, give it all the love you have. Wait, and watch what comes up. You will bring something into the world, and no matter what it is, it will be beautiful. And that matters.
Love that. Share that.
This work isn’t about growing plants. It’s about growing ourselves. You, me, all of us. Together.”
Shortly after we left South Bend in 2015, every time we’d come back to visit, I kept feeling more and more homesick. When I saw how our city was beginning to reinvent itself, I longed to be part of that change. To do something that mattered, something with impact, in a place I knew well and surrounded by people I love and care for: home.
I joked we left South Bend just as it was getting fun again. In reality, the humor was hiding the pain and frustration of feeling stuck and small somewhere else. I longed to be back, and the pandemic was the signal we’d been waiting for.
We moved back to South Bend in late 2020. We didn’t have a plan or a place of our own yet – I just knew we had to get here first, and we’d figure it out from there.
Up to that point, I had spent the first decade of my career in public gardens: living museums and repositories of our natural and cultural commonwealth. I had worked in gardens from 2.5-acres in downtown Chicago to a 105-acre garden in rural Michigan to a 2.5-acre teaching garden on a college campus. I knew public gardens and I loved them with all my heart – they are my soul. But, South Bend didn’t have a public garden to call our own: the closest options at the time were Fernwood, just outside Niles, MI, about a 40-minute drive, or Wellfield Botanic Garden in Elkhart, another 40-minute drive. Of all the incredible cultural assets our community has been working to grow over the past few years, we hadn’t quite made it to public horticulture just yet.
After plenty of restless nights and doodling ideas on a giant note pad, I realized rather than be frustrated by our community’s lack of access to public gardens, why not focus on trying to find a solution instead?
I believe South Bend needs and deserves a great public garden, as all cities do. Yes, public gardens are repositories of natural and cultural commonwealth, but they also can be centers of community, because spaces grounded in plants are powerful. I like to say that plants have super powers, and one of my favorites is their ability to remind us we’re connected while helping us to connect – something I think we can all agree our world desperately needs right now.
This super power is always on full display during Plant Pride, and it was even more powerful and tangible this year. I was reminded yet again… this work isn’t about growing plants; it’s about growing ourselves. You, me, all of us. Together.
I shared a Studebaker Talk in October of 2022, just a little over a year into our Botany journey. I shared our story and how and why we came to open the Shop where and how we did. I ended the talk with this: “You may be wondering, why did we open a plant shop and not a public garden? That’s just it: we are building a public garden, we just started with the “Gift Shop” first.”
I remember how scary that moment felt back in 2022 at the Studebaker Talks. Up until then I hadn’t clarified Botany’s vision yet. (Who were we and what the f*ck were we doing?) I definitely hadn’t said those words, “We’re building a public garden for South Bend,” out loud to a room of people actually paying attention. Even after it was over, it still didn’t feel real – I knew what was in my head, and I knew we hadn’t achieved it yet. At that point it was still “just words” to most people, and I wasn’t sure if what I was imagining was even possible to begin with…
And then… Plant Pride. Y’all – there were and still are feelings. I’m talking deep, core, guttural feelings – things I’m still working to wrap my mind around and pinch myself that it isn’t all a dream. Why?
Because… that “thing” that’s been in my head this whole time? That dream of building a public garden for everyone in South Bend… might actually be starting to happen. As I look through the photos and videos from the day, I see not just that moment in time, but the hundreds of small and intentional steps that came before it. The spaces and relationships we’ve cultivated with love and compassion are beginning to mature and take shape. What I witnessed in our “parking lot” on July 20th, 2024 was a community coming together and connecting with one another in a space grounded in the power of plants.
And suddenly – it all snapped into focus, sharper than ever.
We’ve been building it this entire time, even if I hadn’t fully seen it or realized it before now. Here it is, staring me in the face with a grin, reaching out a hand to say, “Welcome.”
It’s actually real, and it’s more beautiful than I ever imagined it could be.
I’ve said from the beginning that South Bend’s public garden should reflect who we are as a community – it should take advantage of all the “in between” and otherwise “forgotten” spaces like parking lots, alley ways, vacant lots, sidewalks and front lawns, because everyone deserves access to the power of plants. This shouldn’t be something we keep behind walls and fences, admission tickets and business hours.
Plants naturally multiply the energy we put into them. They are an infinite source of abundance, and that abundance needs and deserves to be shared, generously. This is why Botany is on a mission to empower more people to grow more plants in more places, and one of the ways we’re doing that is through building a public garden that is uniquely of, by, and for South Bend. A public garden that exists in every neighborhood, for every neighbor, always.
I’ve recently been thinking a lot about how our journey through Botany is connected to the first decade of my life in public gardens, and I’m realizing it all boils down to one simple idea: growing something beautiful with the intention of sharing it with someone else is powerful.
We opened a plant shop because we wanted it to exist here. Over the past three years, we’ve learned thousands of you felt the same way. We keep leaning in because you keep leaning back. You show up for us, and because of that, we’re going to keep showing up for you.
You all are the reason we keep doing what we’re doing. Everyone lifted up everyone at Plant Pride and that is the kind of energy I wish we had more of in the world right now. We challenge you, along with ourselves, to keep putting that incredible energy into whatever comes next, continuing to pay it forward by sharing our abundance with one another.
So, I guess we really are building a public garden for South Bend. And yes, we just happened to start with the Gift Shop, first.
Welcome.
It’s good to be home…
With Gratitude,
Ben | Founder & CEO
P.S. We’re already gearing up for next year’s Plant Pride on July 19, 2025, and this time we’re recruiting a bigger team to make it happen - we need you! If you’d like to learn more and help make this event possible for years to come, please drop us a line.
P.P.S All photos by Emily Violet Photography.