Went to the Kansas City botanical garden and finally got why people love succulents

I always thought succulents were boring, just green blobs in tiny pots. But standing in their desert room with 200 different species, the shapes and colors were wild. Anyone else have a random plant that clicked for you at a specific spot?

3 comments

3 Comments

phoenix_bailey9d agoMost Upvoted

I had that exact moment with ferns of all things. There was this old greenhouse at a local park I finally visited, and they had this misty corner with ferns spilling out of every pot and hanging basket. I always thought ferns were just generic green plants you see at the dentist office, but seeing them all together like that, the way they layered and unrolled their fronds, it totally shifted something in my brain. Now I have like five different kinds on my fire escape and I'm always looking for more.

smith.nancy9d ago

Five ferns on a fire escape sounds like you're running a small humidity factory. Hope your landlord doesn't inspect too closely.

felix4149d ago

Hits you right in the brain when you finally see them in their natural habitat, doesn't it? It makes me wonder if that's true for a lot of things we dismiss. We see these plants or objects stripped down and stuck in a corner, and we write them off as boring or ugly, but we're really just seeing them out of context. Put a succulent in a desert room or a fern in a misty greenhouse, and suddenly you're seeing the whole reason they exist, the full picture they were designed for. It's like judging a fish by how it looks flopping on a dock instead of watching it swim in the ocean.