2,000 free plants will be given away Saturday in Leimert Park

Staff with The Plant Chica were busy the day before the event receiving, labeling and preparing indoor plants at the open-air shop in Leimert Park. The company’s co-founder, Sandra Mejia, said everyone should have a plant in their home.

“Plants aren't necessarily something that people are going out of their way to buy,” she said.

And many people who’ve come to her adopt-a-plant events have never had plants in their homes and, therefore, have not experienced what it’s like to take care of a plant and see it grow.

“If we're giving them out for free, then people come and they take them, and then now they're plant people,” which means, she said, that some become advocates for more plants indoors and outdoors as well as public green space.

The giveaways have grown

Mejia’s first plant giveaway started in her home, she said, in 2018. It was an effort to clear out the less popular plants. It didn’t go so well, but after she moved it to her shop, which has been in several locations around South L.A., near where she was raised by Salvadoran parents, the plant giveaway has grown.

Her family first instilled a love of plants, and she keeps them involved.

“My dad is at home right now, printing the information sheet for the plant so people know how to take care of the plants, and he's cutting them for me,” Mejia said.

Some of the plants are donated by local greenhouses and the rest are paid for, about $2,500 she said, out of her business’ marketing budget.

Staff at The Plant Chica, Philip Bucknor and Odessey Osteen-Diluca

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

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LAist

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What kind of plants are we talking about

The giveaway includes philodendrons, like pink princess, which are good starter plants because they’re low maintenance, tradescantia plants, which have green and purple leaves, as well as prayer plants, whose scientific name is maranta leuconeura. These get their nickname from the opening of their leaves during the day and closing at night, like hands in prayer.

“Everybody deserves a plant that's cleaning the oxygen around them. Everybody should have some sort of thumb in the green somewhere,” said Philip Bucknor, who started out as DJ at events for The Plant Chica and began working for the shop last year with the unofficial title of “vibe curator.”

That includes helping people through a feeling he hears a lot — “I don’t want to kill the plant.”

“My thing is helping people understand the right plant for them and not overthinking these tasks of taking care of a plant,” he said.

That means, he said, don’t overdo watering, be chill and feel your plant’s vibe.

He’s set to do that with people who come to the plant giveaway Saturday.