In the Garden of Succulents

From the moment I first laid eyes on them, I hated them.

My mother insisted on filling our new garden with succulents. We had just moved across the world from China to California, and my casual dislike of the state soon turned to full blown disdain. At 12, I had never lived in this state, despite being born there, and being stripped of my home had started my teen angst early.

Many succulents are native to California, and these plants grow with little water and constant sunshine. They can be as small as a ping pong ball or grow to the size of a golf cart. Clippings of the plants can regenerate and spawn new plants. Their will to survive is incredible, as is the fact that they can thrive under a multitude of inhospitable conditions.

And I hated them, so much so that I once went out and arbitrarily chopped down multiple plants in a fit of anger (They grew back).

It seemed to me that the plants were mocking me. As an adult, I am aware of how ridiculous it is to have a feud with a plant (actually, a variety of plants), but at the time the succulents were a constant reminder of my miserable life in a strange place, with nothing and no one familiar other than my parents. I had long adored the United States for my summer visits to the East Coast, where rolling hills, forests, and meadows sprinkled with pink and lilac sunsets dotted my daydreams. California was the exact opposite of everything I had imagined my life in the U.S. to be, and now my garden was even being overtaken by symbols of the state. Every day I had to stare at these plants, and they served as a reminder of where I was, a place both inescapable and suffocating.

I wanted rose petals, and it seemed like all I got were thorns.

It wasn’t until I experienced my worst year of depression 8 years later that I was able to deeply appreciate the beauty of these plants. I was in one of the worst depressive episodes of my life, at which time I could barely think. My brain had shut down, and I had little focus and few memories. There are months of my life during this period that I can barely remember. My most significant memory of this time was coloring for hours while a tv show played in the background. It seemed like all I could do was work with my hands, in a way that let my anxious and crumbling mind finally rest. It was during this time that the succulents called me.

My memory from this time of my life is blurry, so I can’t even remember what nudged me to take the first steps towards these gardens. I was processing my pain, loneliness, and suffering through art, and at some point, I had stumbled upon the idea of succulent arrangements. As succulents spawn from clippings, bowls of clippings can last much longer than the average flower, especially if they begin to grow roots. They can eventually be transplanted into the ground, and a single succulent clipping will have spawned a new generation.

I wandered outside, with a small plastic bowl, and absent mindedly gathered cuts from the many varieties of succulents we had scattered around our yard. I started with scissors as it was all I could find, but later found a proper pair of garden shears to clip my materials with. Somewhere, in that fog of depression and anxiety, I began to arrange the plants into bouquets of flowers planted in dirt. It became a miniature garden at my fingertips. The plants I so loathed reminded me that in my darkest hours, when life seemed meaningless, there was still beauty within my grasp.

As I carefully picked each clipping for my arrangements, my mind that swirled so frequently with despair quieted. The act of selecting and curating beauty showed me how to exist in a moment. I could be present, in a way I never thought I’d be able to again. At the time, I felt no obligations. No self-imposed artistic rules or regulations. I simply compiled what I found beautiful. Now, as I look over the many gardens I have created, I can see that I naturally engage with depth, by playing with the heights of the plants, and with color, ensuring that the varieties don’t blend together by separating plants with a similar appearance from one another by adding in those of different hues. It’s not an art I’d ever be able to instruct another in as it is entirely based on my feelings alone. Here, I feel like a child once again, picking flowers in a field. I never could have envisioned that the plants I associated with the end of my childhood, would have returned me to a place where I felt free again. A place where you create for the joy of creating, and you live because that’s just what living things do.

There is just something extraordinary about these simple plants. They survive when the odds are stacked against them, through droughts and scorching heat. Even when they shrivel away and appear close to death, they continue living on until the rain comes. And now, as I wander through my garden and choose flowers and leaves for my next creation, I am reminded that there is beauty even in life’s deserts. That I can also overcome hard things and dry spells, and that I will survive until I find water.

What I once hated now brings me joy. With my succulents, I am an artist, a gardener, and a creator of beautiful things. I never thought of myself as an artist before I connected to these plants, but as I work to design miniature gardens that encapsulate endurance, tenacity, growth, and beauty, I now joyfully claim that title. I feel the dirt on my hands and the sun against my face, and I feel gratitude for how this beautiful earth has provided tools for me to heal and a way to connect once again with people around me. My succulent gardens have served as a way for me to gift beauty to those in my life, and I am overwhelmed about the redemption that can be found in something as small as a plant. Life is a circle, and these succulents have helped me find my way home.