TikTok’s Garden Marcus plants seeds of love and positivity
I’m jealous of people like Marcus Bridgewater who can grow things.
The sago palm was the only plant I had not killed in my yard; then winter storm Uri took care of that.
Bridgewater, who lives in Spring, is known as “Garden Marcus” on TikTok, where he has nearly 700,000 followers. He has become a plant whisperer on the social-media platform with his snappy, inspiring videos about planting seeds of love and positivity.
Plants are like people, Bridgewater says, and love helps them grow. His videos about plants are really about life.
“We can’t make anything grow, but we can foster environments where growth is the byproduct of living. We have to learn how to nurture the environment so that something wants to grow. That’s when you have actual growth.”
Bridgewater’s TikTok fame emerged at the start of the pandemic, just as people were slowing down enough to stop and smell the roses. He had learned about farming and gardening from his adopted grandmother in Zellwood, Fla., a small town near Orlando. His mother also worked in a plant nursery.
“I spent a lot of time outdoors and grew up with a love and respect for nature,” he says. “But I didn’t start utilizing my own energy toward nature until I had my own space.”
Bridgewater moved to Houston to work as a technical director for a private school in The Woodlands in 2015. He bought a house and started his garden with 16 plants given to him by a friend’s mom who owned a nursery in Florida. In two months, nine were dead.
Instead of feeling defeated, Bridgewater did everything he could to keep that from happening to the rest of the plants. He bought 100 more on sale.
“I became connected to the plants, and they presented an entirely new opportunity for me to learn and move myself forward,” he says. “The garden has become this incredible therapy for me.”
Bridgewater says his motto is: “Spread kindness, patience and positivity by sowing seeds with love.”
“Growing up, I learned a lot of lessons about how life works and how you appreciate the entirety of what you eat, so you don’t waste. I’m surprised when people don’t know how long it takes for something to grow — that a pineapple takes time. To be in a position to share that and encourage people to respect nature and the life they are living, I’m thrilled,” he says.
For the record, it takes two to three years for a pineapple to mature. I didn’t know that before I met Bridgewater, and I now have newfound respect for the tropical fruit. I even learned how to make nutrient-rich pineapple water, using the fruit’s skin, after watching TikTok videos.
Bridgewater is also the founder of Choice Forward, a wellness company focused on empowering people to improve their health in an effort to make better communities. His TikTok messages are an extension of that.
“I want people to know that plants are a great opportunity to learn,” he says. “If you start making learning the center of your everyday activity, plants will bring you more and more peace every day.”
Peace, I’m all for that. Bridgewater’s favorite plants are bromeliads, pothos and orchids. He finds beauty in weeds and is optmistic that his garden, which was decimated by the freeze, will recover.
I shared with him that I once planted a Meyer lemon tree, expecting that nature would show me some grace and shower me with lemons. It remained puny and barely 2 feet tall for three years. It never produced a single lemon; then it finally died. A cactus I received as a housewarming gift had a similar fate.
In talking with Bridgewater, I realized I have finally done something right by Mother Nature. I have three live orchids in my house. I brought them home from my office desk when the pandemic started.
They haven’t bloomed in a year, but they’re still alive.
Bridgewater peered through the computer screen to get a closer look as I held each one up on our Zoom call.
“They look happy,” he said.
“As long as you have those green nodes on top, they’re good. I try not to rush my orchids. Just let them be happy.”
“The garden has become this incredible therapy for me.” Marcus Bridgewater, aka Garden Marcus