Sabina Palermo - Hi Cacti: Happiness & wellbeing for you & your houseplants

Growing Houseplants & Happiness

Sabina Palermo

Hi yall, Im Sabina, founder of the colourful botanical business Hi Cacti. Im here to preach the joys and benefits that cultivating, nurturing and caring for houseplants can have on your happiness and wellbeing. Some call me the girl next door of easy-care houseplants and others call me the crazy cactus lady, but as long as you call me, right?

Throughout this book I also want to share some of the places, faces and experiences that helped spur me on my path to creating Hi Cacti. My business started with a sinking feeling that I was failing at adulthood when I even struggled to just keep my houseplants alive, and then lifes random experiences led me back to my roots, which inspired me to blaze this new trail. This journey didnt just turn me from a plant killer to an enthusiast, but helped me grow into a botanical entrepreneur as well.

I want to level with you Im not a botanist and I didnt go to horticulture school. Im not writing this book as a scientist or a doctor any expertise has been self-taught by my trials and triumphs along the way. Ive built my botanical business from scratch on my own with no business degree. Heck, when I started on this Hi Cacti journey in 2015 my business was called Prick Cactus and it was a pleasure project. I was thrilled to bits when people were even slightly interested in what I was doing, albeit most of my friends and family thought my idea of a cactus shop was kind of crazy and very niche. The whole point was to help others who, like me at the time; were not gifted with green fingers, so I started hand-making colourful concrete pots and pairing them with low-maintenance cacti and succulents. Once my confidence with other easy-care indoor houseplants started to grow, my business also literally grew from there!

PLANT POSITIVITY

I realized early on the impact of adding these new plant babies into my home, it gave me a new level of fulfilment, peace, comfort and love of my space and made me feel more at home and calm. Over the last five years of running my business, Ive seen first hand the positivity that occurs when we coexist with houseplants. Customers faces light up when they are passing by my botanical boutique and see the greenery and plant life pouring out on to the path. I see how people stop in their tracks for a moment to appreciate the beauty and aesthetic of plants they really do make us feel good. People are drawn to the greenery and touch the foliage; its really pretty magical to watch how strangers stop, smile and enjoy this natural engagement with the simple company of plants.

Through this book I want to share the ways in which plants help enrich our physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing. I will share recommendations for some of my favourite easy-care houseplants to enable you to create your own low-maintenance jungle indoors. And a few crafty DIYs, tips and recipes to make it easy, fun and inspiring to add some feel-good greenery into our daily lives.

PLANTS WERENT ALWAYS MY BAG

Lets rewind to about six years ago, before I started Hi Cacti and before I had any houseplants in my life. I was in a job that didnt fulfil me. I was always busy. I rented a small, damp flat in the English seaside city of Brighton, where cost of living is high and you are lucky if you have an outdoor space. I was about to turn thirty and owned nothing; I wasnt allowed a pet and didnt feel even close to having kids. I was worried that all these things combined with my long-term boyfriend and I still being unmarried, somehow meant that my life didnt fit into the picture I had imagined. Then my role model and idol died: my grandmother, Nanny Joy. Devastated and mourning while helping my mother and grandad clear her belongings, I inherited her small cactus collection and a handmade pendant with a desert landscape that she used to wear, which is one of my most prized treasures.

Thats how this story started a displaced, thirtysomething gal from Austin, Texas, desperately attempting to keep her grandmothers memory alive through her inherited cacti in not-so-sunny England. Little did I know that me and these cacti would grow together into a new hobby that would turn into a fresh career path Nanny Joy would have loved this story.

BLOOM WHERE YOURE PLANTED

PLANT CARE AS SELF-CARE

Instead of the typical books on plants that can be a sterile how to or plant encyclopedia, I want to create an alternative botanical empowerment guide a book that shares and captures the feel-good qualities and beauty that houseplants bring us. Through my business and this book I celebrate plant care as a form of self-care, and the everyday ways in which to bring the outdoors in. In this digital age where we are often overwhelmed, we can find some inspiration to reconnect and be rooted to nature in small ways. And I will let you in on a little secret its good for you! Your mind, body and spirit can all be enriched by these magical green botanical things that grow in the cracks of the pavements, gardens, the kitchen, the park, the forest okay you get my drift.

From epic adventures of exploring the great natural outdoors to small and simple interactions with houseplants, nature affects us in a multitude of ways.

BLOOM WHERE YOURE PLANTED

Bloom where youre planted is a mantra that struck me and left an impression from my road trips around the southwest of America, but more specifically from Tucson, Arizona. Tucson, where I was fuelled by epic drives, tacos and cactus desert hikes followed by margaritas, felt like a second home. My boyfriend Dan and I were road tripping from LA to Austin and were only really passing through Tucson to break up our route, but we fell so hard for it we changed our itinerary to extend our stay. We saw this motto of Bloom where youre planted pop up across the city and the desert in various forms: bumper stickers, street art, T-shirts, and even on beer coolers. When youre in that part of the world, you understand why this mindful quote hits home with the locals as a tiding of perseverance and hope sometimes in life it feels tough to survive, let alone bloom, when you find yourself in the desert.

NATURES LIFE LESSONS

The mind-blowing contrast of travelling from the lush greenery of England to the heat of the Arizona desert, and then to witness plants and flowers rising up from the red clay and rocky earth is awe-inspiring. Thousands of giant saguaro cacti hold their heads up to 12 metres (40 feet) high, and despite the heat and lack of rain they still thrive. Nature and her plants provide mindful daily lessons, from finding motivation in how a dropped seed has become a tree within the confinements of blocks of paved concrete, to literally taking pleasure in the fruits of your labour by picking a tomato off the vine that you planted. You dont have to dig deep to reconnect to nature to enjoy its simple pleasures and motivational moments, just occasionally slow down and take the time to smell the roses. Breathe in deeply and reflect on the abundance that nature shares with us. Surrounding yourself with plants brings life and a breath of fresh air to your space.