TURKISH GARDEN
Botanist Fem Güçlütürk is making it her mission to tame the spirit of the wild with tender loving care
This botanist’s home is filled with a diverse mix of plants, inside and out
In 2014, Fem Güçlütürk left the public relations company she’d founded to retrain as a botanist. In a quiet corner of Turkey, she discovered that caring for a busy greenhouse and garden was a conduit to caring for herself. ‘This is the part where people say, “And they lived happily ever after,”’ says Fem, speaking from the home she shares with her husband, Sezer Savaşli, in south-west Turkey.
Since trading city life for a plot of land remote enough to lack reliable phone service, Fem has found that her days now follow the circadian rhythms of her plants. The public relations executive-turned-botanist rises at 6am (‘even the dog doesn’t wake up then,’ she says) and studies permaculture and edible gardening. After breakfast, she heads into the garden and remains there, weeding and pruning, until sundown. ‘I live in a vegetative state,’ she jokes.
Born in Ankara and raised in Istanbul, Fem has always cultivated a somewhat unconventional path. She worked first in bars before co-founding her public relations firm. Despite achieving success, she found herself increasingly disillusioned with the relentless consumerism that accompanied urban life. ‘Growing up in cities, we’ve lost our connection with nature and found ourselves in a huge global story of consumption,’ she says. When she stopped wanting to attend her own PR events, she knew it was time to quit and change her life.
In 2014, Fem announced her next iteration as a botanist. Always interested in plants, she had started to attend gardening school and run a home shop in Istanbul; three years later, she’d relocated to Muğla, a province that boasts a rich and diverse habitat. Celtis australis, a nettle tree that is native to the region, shares its Turkish name, Çıtlık, with the nearest village. ‘The tree has its place in mythology,’ says Fem. ‘They say that if you eat the tree’s berries once, you can’t leave the place, which is true! I really don’t want to go anywhere else.’
Before she relocated to Muğla, Fem was a voracious explorer, touring the world on her motorbike. But since she ‘designed her own heaven’, she’s loath to leave it. Instead, from her glass-fronted house, she observes the eclectic gathering of shrubs, trees and perennials that pay tribute to her travels. ‘W hen I look at my garden, I see all the places I’ve visited softly merge,’ she says.
Only on Labofem – a Youtube channel that she launched to share her deepening knowledge of botany with other Turkish green-thumbed enthusiasts – does the outside world intersect with Fem’s new existence. Here, interested viewers seeking advice on their own plants can peruse videos where she counsels on everything from selecting the right planters to identifying common wintertime ailments, plus watch short, snappily edited films that chronicle Fem’s activities at home.
‘Youtube is where I go to share my experiences,’ she explains. ‘The viewers don’t judge me for my hair or make-up – which I don’t have anyway – they just listen to what I have to say. I play the role of an entertainer and, while entertaining, I can help them look at their plants.’ There are reciprocal benefits to this online community. Often, a question is posed that Fem must research to answer. ‘Both sides are winning: they listen and I listen,’ she says.