From pandemic to ‘plantdemic’

Gardening enthusiast juggles between corporate job and coming up with inspiring contents for her social-media channel

Chen with Dr Ng at the Secret Garden on the rooftop of 1U Shopping Centre in Petaling Jaya.

THE term ‘plantdemic’ was coined during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, to describe how people began to take up planting or gardening during the lockdown.
The craze later spread, going beyond just being a hobby – it is now a profitable undertaking.

Irene Chen, a Kuchingite who now resides in Kuala Lumpur, recalls how plantdemic has led her into running a YouTube channel called ‘Leafing Around’.

“Believe it or not, I actually have a full-time corporate job!” she tells thesundaypost.

“It’s the kind where I sit in front of two computer screens all day long, working with Powerpoints and Excels, ‘battling’ emails and attending endless online meetings.

“It’s a global role with the chemical industry in the area of business development, mergers and acquisitions, and project management.

“Last year had been incredibly demanding, with newly-added responsibilities; it was a constant juggle between this full-time job and my YouTube channel – I barely had time for anything else,” says Chen.

Prior to being ‘consumed by the love of plants and gardening’, her passion had been in photography, specialising in the genres of ‘babies and maternity’.

“Alas, when Covid-19 came assailing, my photography went dead silent.”

Of home office and checking on garden

Chen at the Kira Organic Farm in Selangor, where she learns about organic farming.

Nowadays, Chen’s typical working day starts with breakfast, after which she heads to the guest room that has been turned into her home office.

In and between the hours, which she jokingly describes as her version of the smokers’ ‘ciggie breaks’, she would either check her Instagram feeds or do some googling of plant pictures and videos. During these times, she would also go to the garden ‘for a little adventure’.

Recently, she saw a vine snake surrounding her heliconias.

She gets very excited upon spotting a new leaf of her variegated Monstera deliciosa about to unfurl, because she knows that each leaf would be different. After all, she did pay thousands of ringgit for the plant when it just had one leaf – the addition of a new one could double its value.

This is how plant collectors justify their spending.

One morning when watering her platycerium, she stumbled upon a family of mesmerising beetles in metallic bands of green, blue, red and yellow.

‘Bordering on addiction’

Chena and her favourite plant, the highly-prized Licuala cordata, native to central Sarawak.

For those new to growing and taking care of garden plants, Chen advises them to first observe the environment of the intended planting area and then, identify the species most suitable for that environment.

“One must study many aspects, such as whether the area gets direct or indirect sunlight, and the soil if one planned to do the planting on the ground.

“This would save you from the unnecessary frustration from the trials and errors.

“It’s not impossible to ‘fashion’ the environment to suit a specific plant, but this would definitely take more effort, time, and of course, money. For those who can afford it, though, the undertaking could be a very enjoyable one.”

Chen learned, the hard way, that any plant would specifically need the right habitat to achieve good growth – otherwise, they would end up looking miserable or worse, they would wither and die.

“I once got a lush, beautiful weeping willow tree, which I got for RM800.

“It died within two months because I planted this sun-loving species at a shady place,” she remembers.

According to Chen, her interest in plants was actually sown about four years ago, when she moved into a new house with a bigger compound. She and her family fell in love with the place immediately, as the previous owner was a nature lover and had planted lots of trees around the property.

She remembers the backyard then having lots of Heliconia rostrata, giving the place a vibrant tropical aura.

Chen with her ‘artisanal’ moss pole, reconstructed from the charred branches picked from the roadside. To her right is the most expensive plant she has ever purchased – the Monstera borsigiana aurea.

“It did not last, unfortunately,” she laments. “I was devastated when many heliconias were destroyed by the workers who were contracted to paint the garden walls.

“In anger and impatience, I got them (heliconias) quickly replaced with new ones, but this resulted in uncontrollable overgrowth three months later.

“I sought help from a nearby nursery and was advised to uproot every stalk and then adjust the replanting with appropriate spacing and timing to promote gradual, but more manageable, growth.

“It was my first gardening lesson: to never rush it, and to allow the garden to mature in its own pace.”

Nonetheless, Chen talks about her ‘plant-buying addiction’ in a very light-hearted manner – she recently posted a comical skit about ‘a therapy session on ways to address plant addiction’ where she played both the doctor and the patient.

“The prices of these plants can be insane, and there are people who buy beyond their means; some have even drawn out their retirement funds just to purchase their ‘dream plants’.”

Photo shows Chen’s lush ‘wild-jungle’ garden in her backyard.

What Chen would really like to do next is to focus more on sustainability – to see what can be done at home to help heal the planet, as well as to travel and show her viewers the incredible gardens and let them marvel at the interesting plants that thrive around the world.

“Well… to travel freely still seems prohibitive at the moment. Thus, I’d just make do with unearthing the hidden beauties at home ground – the private gardens, our parks, our nature trails and forests, all in Malaysia which, in a way, could serve as showcasing them to the world,” she adds.

‘Game of conquest’

Chen’s penchant for plants is also driven by fellow enthusiasts, whom she is connected with via various social media groups.

“When you see others have certain beautiful plants, you also want to have them!” she laughs.

“I must admit that I have slowly descended into the rabbit’s hole of plant collection, and I must say it’s a different world. It’s no longer about selecting and buying plants for landscaping; it has turned into a lust for a specific plant prized for its beauty or rarity – the more uncommon a plant is, the higher it is placed on one’s wish-list. And also in view of it being hard to find, the hunt has become a game of conquest.”

Chen remembers how the prices of collector’s plants skyrocketed in 2020 and 2021 – the height of the Covid-19 pandemic where lockdowns were in force.

A prime example was the Cercistics mirabillis – an indoor decorative shrub prized for the beautiful lattice-like pattern on the leaves. Back in 2019, Chen could get a pot for only RM30; over the next two years, the price shot up to around RM500 to RM600!

Another example was a variegated Philodendron Billietiae, which she nearly bought in 2019 for RM1,800, but held back because she thought it was a ridiculous sum of money.

Today, however, this plant is worth more than RM10,000, and the price of a larger-sized variety can actually match that of a Perodua Myvi!

Self-learning undertaking

The blue spiral staircase in Chen’s garden, which leads to the landing floor that bears the design inspired by ferns and the simplified ‘Tree of Life’ symbol.

Chen admits that she has no landscaping or hardscaping training background. It is a self-learning undertaking mainly through reading many articles online and endless hours of scrolling over Pinterest.

“My mind then had gone into overdrive and exploded with ideas,” she reminisces about having spent 2020 and 2021 dreaming up a garden and making it a reality.

“I was inspired by the Balinese concept, the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi’s whimsical building and his Parc Güell in Barcelona, the Roman architectural ruins and the patchy stone-brick walls along the little lanes of Italian villages, the blue-white theme of the Moroccan city of Chefchaouen, and landscape architect extraordinaire Bill Bensley’s own amazing garden.

“The challenge was to calm myself down, and find ways to stuff all these inspirations into a limited space in a way that they could work in harmony; alas, the reality was they came together in great dissonance and ended up being a ‘rojak’ piece.”

Chen had kicked off the hardscaping work last August and did it in two phases. First was putting up a basic brick wall that was punctured with some old-school ventilation blocks. The original idea was inspired by the Roman ruins, where the composition of the wall had bricks being interspersed with concrete blocks and rocks, but it was abandoned as the contractor had never done anything like that and they were not certain of how the end result might turn out.

Phase II involved making a secret door within the garden. At first, Chen considered a Balinese door for the front entrance, but later thought of it as being ‘too ostentatious’. In the end, she settled for a hidden door that would open up to a blue spiral staircase leading to the lower garden in front.

This blue door leads to Chen’s ‘secret garden’.

The design for the landing floor of the staircase alone took much of her time, and thoughts. She mulled over using either terracotta tiles, mosaic pieces, or just plain concrete. At some point, she even considered the broken-tile collage to resemble Gaudi’s work, but she did not know where to get the broken pieces and thought that it would be too crazy to buy good tiles and then break them just to fit that concept.

Then, she thought about doing a Sarawak-inspired theme. She immediately conducted a research into Iban tattoo symbols, but later came across the Kenyah and Kayan’s ‘Tree of Life’ legend – the underworld tree that gave birth to the first man and woman, after being impregnated by the upper-world creeper.

“I was very captivated by its spirals but after some failed attempts to draw this complicated design, I doubted that it could ever be executed,” says Chen.

“I then checked with my good friend, Jacqueline Fong, and jokingly told her that I’d use her hotel spiral facade as my inspiration instead. Only after many months later did I finally notice that the floor design actually mirrored the spiral staircase.

“I was very proud of my accidental design ingenuity!”

Injecting humour to YouTube show

Chen’s ‘Vertical Garden’, which has garnered nearly 600,000 views on her channel.

On her YouTube channel, it was during the severe lockdown days when people could not go out, that Chen had utilised her time creating content at home. However, at a certain point last year, she began to incorporate comedy into her show after experiencing what she described as ‘some form of insanity’ due to being stuck at home for months.

In her skits, she would take jabs at herself and the plant collectors community about ‘their mad hunt’ for rare plants and the willingness to throw in obscene amount of money just for some leaves that a group of humans had decided to be highly desirable and therefore, a must-have for their collection.

She established her YouTube channel ‘Leafing Around’ as a platform to share her gardening journey, with a focus on garden-design tips and plant care.

Her YouTube journey started out one fine day in June 2020 when the Phase I lockdown was lifted and she invited Robin Wong, whom she has known for over a decade through photography, over for a Sarawak Laksa lunch.

A world-renowned photography blogger and YouTuber, Wong is the go-to person for all Olympus camera-related matters.

It was him who advocated Chen to set up her own YouTube channel, in view of her already knowing photography, having lots of content at home and being able to ‘string words beautifully’. Wong also noticed that Chen already had a fancy RODE microphone – apparently a leading brand for such device – at home.

“I have him (Wong) to thank you for the existence of the ‘Leafing Around’ channel. Not only did he plant the idea in my head, but he also gave a lot of help, even lending me his more sophisticated camera.”

At first, ‘Leafing Around’ was not intended to be ambitious – it was just for fun.
“I think I hit that ‘little jackpot’ very early on,” Chen smiles.

“It was my second video that turned out to be a little viral. It was about how to make a caladium lusher. I incorporated drama, re-enacting how I went to a neighbour to ask for her caladiums when I discovered that she was treating them like weeds.

“This, however, led to a tutorial on how to make a caladium more luxuriant. Looking back, I think that episode did well because it incorporated both education and entertainment.”

Her other videos are about her transforming a section of her garden and being authentic throughout the whole process – including her indecisiveness, the wrong choices, being struck by new ideas and abrupt change of mind while doing all the heavy lifting and work.

“Judging from the reactions to these episodes, I realise that being authentic and relatable helps me connect with the audience.

“You can say that’s how I have grown my channel, but I’d be lying if I said that these videos were easy to make.

“The whole process required heavy thinking, hard work and being entertaining in front of the camera. There’s no script – many times, I’d have no idea about the end result of what I’m creating right before the viewers’ eyes.”

Chen plans to release more episodes as the restrictions begin to ease more, especially those pertaining to travelling. She has just been to Penang and Kuching and thus, there would be upcoming contents about these places on ‘Leafing Around’.

‘Inspiring, and being inspired by, others’

This wall in Chen’s backyard garden is layered with various plants including vines, creepers and shrubs.

Chen feels really good that her channel is able to inspire many people. The feedback from the viewers is mostly them thanking her for motivating them to take up gardening, or to resume it after a long hiatus; a few hail her as the inspiration behind the setting-up of their own YouTube channels.

“There’s a heart-warming story from Emil’s Garden (a local nursery in Kuching) where after watching my episode on ‘Borneo’s Rainforest Nursery’, an eight-year-boy dragged his parents to Emil’s Nursery and then, asked lots of questions during his visit.

“There are kids, aged 11 to 14, who are sharing with me their love for plants; for this, I’m glad to have played a role in sowing the seed of love for plants and nature in them.”

Chen also has a list of the places that she has gone to and the people whom she has met while creating content for her platforms. One special person is Dr Francis Ng, a renowned Malaysian botanist. The man, now in his 80s, is still actively managing the Secret Garden on the rooftop of the 1U mall in Petaling Jaya.

“Being active has kept him young. Whenever I meet him, I always have something to learn from him. He has also revealed a number of misconceptions about plants,” says Chen.

Back on running her ‘Leafing Around’ channel, Chen admits that it is quite a challenge having to consistently come up with contents for her show.

“I used to say: ‘Omigosh! What am I going to post next?’ It is taxing, in that viewers are expecting to see a new video the next weekend.”

So about four months ago, Chen began to plan her episodes more systematically, filming more contents in advance so that she would always have materials in stock.

Still, she faces other issues as well.

“Some episodes, despite having put a lot of work into it, just didn’t do in terms of views; some turned out to be popular, despite me not putting much work into it.”

Then, there are criticisms, which she actually appreciates in that they push her to improve her work. For example, upon receiving complaints about the background music of some episodes being too overwhelming, she would tone it down for the next video.

Rarely, though, would she get nasty comments or allegations.

“I would just ignore such rubbish – arguing over it would only be a waste of my time and energy.”

Nonetheless, Chen feels good knowing that many people love her show.
“I wouldn’t let it get into my head, of course!

“But I’d like to share with you a time when I was in a nursery – wearing a sunhat, and having my mask and sunglasses on – a woman shouted my name: ‘Irene!’, introduced me to her family and then, requested for a wefie, to which I happily obliged.

“That’s the moment when it dawned on me that I actually had fans,” she laughs.

from Borneo Post Online https://bit.ly/3Ejh9xw
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