Rebuilding Community through Plants and Collective Engagement with Nelson ZêPequéno

Transcript

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Hey everyone, welcome to Exploring Health Macro to Micro.

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I'm your host, parker Condit.

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In this show.

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I interview experts from all areas of health, and this can be in areas that you would expect, like exercise, nutrition and mental health, while other topics may be from areas where you're less familiar.

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Today's conversation probably falls into the latter category, and my guest today is Nelson Zapiceno.

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Nelson is an artist and creator who uses gardening and plants as his art form.

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He's also the founder of the Black Men with Gardens Instagram page, which creates a safe space for black men being multidimensional and being in touch with nature, plants, gardening and the natural world.

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Our conversation focuses on the idea of regeneration, and there have been many conversations and episodes so far about regenerative farming, but this is more about taking those principles and applying them to life and how we live.

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Some of the highlights of this conversation are how a lack of resources can make you more creative and thus sustainable.

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Why community organizers are so important to the health and well-being of community members.

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How reconnecting with nature is really reconnecting with yourself.

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And understanding how consumer behaviors, marketing and purchasing power relates to climate change and our future.

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This was one of my favorite conversations so far and I'm really grateful for Nelson coming on and spending as much time with me to chat and share his story and share his wisdom.

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So, without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Nelson .

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So, without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Nelson .

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Nelson thanks so much for coming on.

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Thank you for having me.

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I'm excited for this conversation and it's honor beyond.

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Yeah, so we on this show.

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I've talked a lot about regenerative agriculture over the past probably month of shows and it's kind of become more of a theme and we're going to touch on that a bit today, probably more in terms of gardening and maybe flower arrangements, but I also want to tie that into sort of life and kind of using regeneration and regenerative as more of a overarching theme for this conversation.

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I think that'll be helpful for people.

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But I want to kind of start with how you first got introduced to plants.

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Uh, there's something on Instagram I saw where you said, uh, you got a plant because you moved to LA and you're kind of alone and you're depressed.

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So can you share how you first got into that?

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And then in that video you ended up saying, like, oh, we became growth partners.

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I'm like oh, like, oh, this guy is a poet.

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Um, I'd love to have him on.

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So we end up getting connected and it was uh, anyway, I'm really thankful that you're on and to have this conversation.

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But, yeah, let's start there and see where, where the conversation goes.

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Oh, yeah no, definitely, you know, I actually have.

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Um, there's two stories about how I got into plants.

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That one would be the most recent story of my discovery for Love of Plants because the first entry into plants was all based around cannabis and cannabis cultivation.

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That's what got me interested in horticulture and through horticulture I just really learned the science behind how to grow grow.

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But what got me into loving plants in general, for plant care, was, yeah, moving to Los Angeles alone, coming here to pursue my art form, and living alone in this studio apartment with nobody around me, not having my community just yet, and being in this really depressive state that life forces us all into at certain points of time.

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I remember, for the sake of art, I decided to buy one plant so I could learn to draw it, just so I could do a plant study, because I realized I couldn't imagine what a leaf looked like in my mind, enough so to be able to draw it on a piece of paper.

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So I went and bought a plant.

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During that plant study I realized, wow, these plants are actually beautiful and let me go and get some more.

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And I started putting them on my windowsills and I started hanging them up around me and it just started to bring me so much joy and it made me feel like I wasn't so alone and I think that in and of itself helped me out of a really dark place but then completely influenced the new direction I took my artwork in and that persona for the past nine years inside with you because like cities are sort of this weird thing if you think about it from evolutionarily, like how we kind of got here to be that disconnected, like as disconnected as we are now.

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You live in Los Angeles, I'm in Scottsdale, phoenix.

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It's kind of bizarre to be living in these sort of like made-up environments and assuming our body's gonna be okay with it.

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So I've kind of floundered surrounding myself with greenery is a nice way to sort of mitigate the I guess what would be some of the downside of living in an area like this yeah, it's, it's a great way.

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I mean, you know they don't incorporate natural spaces into large cities like mine, los angeles, like I live in downtown.

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I mean, I've been to downtowns all around this country and some downtowns do it better than most, but for mine I have one large park around me.

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That's kind of a mission to get to.

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My neighborhood has more concrete than it has greenery, so, living in this type of environment, I had to make a concerted effort to get to nature or bring it into my space.

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Totally so.

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You kind of used plants to kind of get out of a depression.

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And I was saying, right before this call, I had a similar thing where I tried to reconnect with nature when I was living in Colorado.

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Slightly differently it was um, it was actually a guy from LA, guy named Jeff Waldron, I think he started hanging up swings all around the city, um, just as a way to make people smile, and I was like, oh, that, I'm like that would make me smile.

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I'm an adult and I've been on the swing and probably a decade.

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So it was back in Colorado probably almost 10 years ago at this point, but I just started crafting swings and hiking up in the mountains and just hanging them up on trails so people could swing in the middle of a hike.

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Um, yeah, I called it the Aspen swing project and it was just a, a fun thing.

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That was like very outwardly facing and forced me to get out in nature and it it totally just snapped me out of.

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It, just gave me purpose.

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Yeah, that sounds like an incredible project.

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I really like that and I love public installations.

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It seems like at the core, we understand that one of the only ways out of the depressive state that our constructed system, societies, war, culture and everything around us communities, work, culture and everything around us it seems like one of the only ways out of that is to reclaim natural spaces, but also reclaim our sense of joy through play and through interacting with those natural spaces in joyful ways, like frolicking.

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How many people get a chance to frolic nowadays, nowadays?

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But you never really stop and think that could be the cure for these really heavy feelings that we deal with, on, you know, daily basis yeah, it's funny, I uh so swinging is definitely one of those things that brings that to me.

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And then also I have an electric skateboard and I feel like that's been one of the best purchases I've gotten in the past like three years.

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Just because, like the, the joy of having like wind in your face, it's such nothing brings me like childlike, uh joy, like riding that skateboard, which seems like such an absurd thing.

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But yeah, you just try to find the, you just try to find these things that you can sort of recapture uh bits of that.

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That ask that part of you, I guess.

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Yeah, that's actually a huge part of this work, especially when it comes to Black Mammoth Gardens, and just the image that seeing men working with flowers and plants has in itself is dismantling this idea of masculinity or what we identify with masculinity that haven't served us as men at all.

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So we associate it with our work, with our ability to do all types of stuff within these systemic structures, but we never identify with our ability to grow a garden or to go and play, to go and swing, or to go and play, to go and swing.

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And I think, because we've put so much focus on the previous things I mentioned, we see that the mental health crisis in our country has just been growing out of control and again, part of this work is to reclaim those parts of who we are and to reimagine what it is for us to be men in this society and in this system.

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Yeah, so you mentioned Black Men in the Gardens, which is definitely something we want to spend some time on later.

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I want to circle back to that.

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Just on the idea of mental health.

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Anytime this comes up, and just given our current environment, I always try to point out have you read any work by uh kaboor mate?

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no, I don't think I have okay, uh, he wrote his most recent book, I think it's called the myth of normal.

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Um, he advocates he's a medical doctor but does a lot in the like mental health side of things, and he advocates for the idea that a lot of the responses of what we're seeing is completely normal to the circumstances we're living in, as, as opposed to people thinking like, oh, I'm abnormal for having this condition or this sort of disease state or this response, and it's like it's a very normal response to the environment that we're currently in.

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So I always try to bring that up.

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I do want to get more of your background, though.

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Like can you just share with people?

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Um, you touched on horticulture, but like what?

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What do you do exactly?

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Cause I've even I've spent a lot of time on your Instagram.

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I'm like there's a lot there's a lot here.

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I know you travel quite a bit, you speak on panels, you do some work with climate Um.

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Can you just give me a brief overview of um what you do in a sense?

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Yeah, you know my Instagram is dedicated to my artwork and my artwork is actually something that I do personally.

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Professionally, I've been working in experiential marketing for the past seven, eight years now.

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I work as a creative producer, a project manager, sometimes set designer.

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Where I started was set design or scenic design, just building environments for TV, film productions, commercial and, specifically, events Just pretty much building cool stuff that other people get to engage with and take photos in front of.

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I do that professionally because that allows me to use my art form in a practical, professional way that allows me to sustain myself as an adult in this system where I have to pay rent and pay bills.

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My driving motivation is sustainable design.

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It's about bringing sustainability to my industry, which is heavily, heavily, heavily, you know.

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I don't know if you've ever seen the end of a production whether it's like a TV show or commercial or an event but literally they just wheel in huge dumpsters and trash everything that we spent weeks building up.

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So for me, it's all about bringing sustainability.

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It's about baking sustainability into that production practice so that we can, you know, obviously lower our footprint.

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But you know, when I speak to the executives on these things, it's about, you know, increasing our bottom line.

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If we're not trashing everything, we're able to reuse these scenic assets and adopt a different activation, then obviously we're saving money.

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So, essentially, I work to bring sustainability into my industry as well as advocate for it on a communal, on a social level, where, yes, I'll do panels and talk about sustainable creativity, because I truly believe that, when we are looking at all the issues that we're facing due to climate change and ecological loss and all these different issues that we're facing, it's going to take extreme amounts of creativity to innovate our way out of these problems that we've been handed down.

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And all of that innovation can't just be, you know, let's build a brand new product.

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We actually have to think super creative, think outside of the box.

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So to get there, we have to empower creative thinking and empower the next generation of people to dive into their creativity, understanding that they have a unique perspective that's going to allow them to see the issue from a different way.

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And all of these different, unique perspectives brought together is ultimately what's going to bring us out of the place we find ourselves in now.

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Yeah, that's a great point.

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And there's some smart person who said you can't use the same line of thinking to like.

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Whatever the problem is, whatever line of thinking you use to produce that problem, you can't use the same line of thinking to find the solutions.

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It might have been Einstein or you, probably there's some.

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I just butchered some quote, but anyway.

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So have you always been this involved in this kind of proactive in your thinking around sustainability, or was this sort of a slow shift?

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How did you get to basically where you are today from a mindset standpoint?

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Yeah, I feel like working class people have understood the same thing that the intellectual class has understood, and we just go about it from different perspectives.

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Every working class family that I've ever known has to think super creative about how they sustain themselves.

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Me growing up, I didn't have a budget for art supplies, so I had to get creative with the things I had around me, and that deeply informed my art practice.

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Now where it's like, yes, if I look at my lack of access as a barrier, then I'll never be able to be an artist, but if I look at my lack of access and focus on the things that I have around me to create value in my life, then I can.

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It's unlimited.

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The potential is unlimited.

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So working class families have been dealing with this for generations, for eons at this point, and it requires a certain level of creativity to be able to sustain yourself in a system like this that's constantly devolving in a sense, whether it's through inflation or whether it's through job market loss, all these different things, we have to find ways to sustain ourselves.

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And for me, being an artist in general, that informed my creativity, that informed my art form but then ultimately led me to think about it.

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Yes, on a more intellectual level, where it's like, okay, well, so then what's the sciences behind this, what's the applications behind this on a grand scale?

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But be able to bridge that gap in a way where it's like again, like some people, once they hear about sustainable doctrines that you might learn in college, they're actually like oh no, my grandparents used to do that when I was younger.

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We never let a container of butter go in the trash, like that became the container for something else.

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Or like I've been wearing my great grandparents' pants because, you know, when we reuse paper towels, we don't just throw things away and it's like, oh well, that's sustainability right, but we're doing it out of necessity.

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That's sustainability right, but we're we're doing it out of necessity.

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And unfortunately, more and more of us are going to be pushed into doing it out of necessity unless we start getting creative about finding solutions.

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Yeah, I worked in marketing much earlier in my career and again I'm going to butcher someone else's quote, saying like, if you need to get good results from your marketing department, cut their budget in half because you're going to force them to get really creative.

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It's like you can't just throw money at the problem anymore.

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You need to get creative with what you have.

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And, yeah, you do much more outside the box thinking if you will.

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It's not just a bunch of ad buys on Instagram and Facebook anymore.

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It's funny, you know, that necessity, the necessity and the lack of accessibility, again like it can be viewed as a barrier.

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It can be viewed as something that's working against you, or it can be used as something to work with and ultimately it takes somebody creative to see it in the latter form, you know.

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Mm-hmm.

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So where did you move from and what brought you to LA?

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Uh, I was born originally in Accra, ghana.

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Uh, I moved from Accra, new Jersey, and from New Jersey to Cincinnati, ohio, where I spent the majority of my adolescence, to Cincinnati, ohio, where I spent the majority of my adolescence.

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From Cincinnati, I moved to Los Angeles, california, about nine years ago.

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I was actually just looking at a post that I made in this again, this depressive state in this city and finding myself in the city and the state that seemed to be stomping on my creative aspirations.

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And I remember I was just viewing this post where I was saying something about like you know, I've always put other people's goals ahead of mine as a way of escaping failure.

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Um, and and with that being the case, I'm leaving to los Los Angeles to pursue what I feel like I need to pursue for myself.

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It was a mind-eff to look at that post and be like, damn, where was I?

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Immensely when that happened, but then also to be able to look and say, well, I've been doing what I set out to do.

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I have those days where I feel like I could be doing more.

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I'm actually proud of where my journey has taken me.

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So I grew up in New Jersey as well, um, originally, um, I think people who create content somewhat consistently once you've done it for a long enough time, you really see the value in being able to look back on it and you're like oh, this is a very good visual diary of where I was and what I was thinking, which you know can kind of make you cringe at moments.

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But also it can be very helpful to look back and be like all right, well, that's that's where I was in the world and you can just use that as these benchmarks.

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Um, to look back, my partner very recently just started a YouTube channel and you probably know the fear of like putting yourself out there, um, at first, and I'm like, if nothing else, just use this as a benchmark to kind of chronicle where you were at the time, and it's a great way to relieve some of the pressure from getting started.

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Um, but, yeah, I appreciate you sharing kind of the moments before you had moved to, uh, to LA, but you feel like you have been accomplishing what you wanted to.

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And like I will still wake up and I'll be like.

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Well, I'm still struggling in these aspects and I still don't have this figured out, but it's nice to be able to know that I'm actually working, doing the things that I want to do, and I'm privileged enough to be able to use my art form to create a living but then ultimately get to connect with more people like you.

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Yeah, it's certainly a privilege to be in this position, like being able to sit and have these conversations is such a pleasure for me, Not only yet just to be able to connect with great people in the world, but it's also like I get to learn so much.

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And to be able to do this and facilitate conversations and share it and hopefully spread the message, it's like what a joy to be in this position.

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It's really absurd.

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Yeah, it's a blessing.

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Yeah, can you share a little bit more about the horticulture, like what was your educational background that kind of got you so interested in horticulture?

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For me, everything has been self-started in general.

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When it came to systemic education, structured work, I just didn't fit in.

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So I had to find a way to build something sustainable for myself, and it's got to be self-motivated for it to be sustainable for me.

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So with horticulture, the motivation was to be able to have weed and not have to pay a lot of money for it.

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So I studied the Girl Bible by Jorge Cervantes and learned everything I could from every single resource that was available at the time to really be able to cultivate cannabis.

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And I did that for a couple of years, successfully cultivating cannabis in Ohio during a time when it was extremely illegal to do so, and that in and of itself taught me horticulture, but I never really applied it again.

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So like, oh, I can.

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With this thing that I just learned, I can actually grow a farm now, of other things, you didn't realize the skill set you had on hand.

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Yeah, I didn't realize in general, because part of cannabis cultivation is during the end, right before you harvest.

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You actually spend a large amount of time with magnifying glasses studying trichomes, so we're looking for different variation in the color of these trichomes that will signify to us that this plant is ready to harvest.

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And just spending hours looking at plants under a microscope, like you start to really appreciate like it was some of the most beautiful things that I've ever seen, just studying trichomes, and that just made me interested in plants in general.

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And fortunately, during that time where I was switching over when I moved to Los Angeles, the cannabis is plentiful here so I didn't have to grow myself but I didn't have the space anymore.

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So I think that appreciation of plants just really crossed over into an overall appreciation for plants and then the horticulture knowledge allowed me to keep my plants alive.

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I still lose one or two every once in a while, but I have plants that have been rocking with me for years now at this point and I'm going to continue to do you have any advice for people who are a little bit scared to start, even with a house plant?

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they, like I've killed so many house plants I just can't keep them alive.

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Do you have any advice for people like that, which was, you know, me a few years ago?

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yeah I say just get flowers, get fresh cut flowers every week and do a new bouquet in a vase and just bring some type of natural element into your space.

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It's going to beautify your space.

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It's going to make you feel good when you see it.

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When you arrange it in the vase, you're touching it, you're getting that grounding effect of even just working with plants.

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That's the main thing I recommend because ultimately, again, like we've been talking about these systems that have us so down in a lot of ways, and it's that same system that's got you killing plants.

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None of us have time to take care of a plant.

00:23:34.730 --> 00:24:02.547
It's a lot, it requires a lot and instead of, I feel people that understand the benefits of plant care are quick to push people into trying to get that benefit, without understanding that if you push somebody into trying to get that benefit and they spend a lot of money on plants and then they end up killing the plants, then ultimately they didn't just get any benefit, they didn't get any mental health benefit.

00:24:02.547 --> 00:24:08.830
It might even be the adverse, where it's like you just wasted money and you're upset because you just killed this plant.

00:24:08.830 --> 00:24:23.460
So for me, I would just encourage people to first just get into buying themselves flowers, taking care of themselves in that way, and then, ultimately, you can start to learn.

00:24:23.460 --> 00:24:34.022
You'll have more time to spend reading, learning about specific plants, because I think a greater study needs to be done For me specifically.

00:24:34.042 --> 00:24:39.663
I live in SoCal, so I purposely chose plants that thrive in the environment that I live in.

00:24:39.663 --> 00:24:42.515
That takes so much work out of it.

00:24:42.515 --> 00:24:48.321
I don't have to worry about keeping these succulents alive because they're drought tolerant, so it's okay.

00:24:48.321 --> 00:24:52.813
Actually, I can get some cacti or some things like that.

00:24:52.813 --> 00:25:00.128
When you start just even learning and paying attention to your own environment, you'll understand what can come into your environment and thrive with you.

00:25:00.128 --> 00:25:15.820
You, if you live in a place like Ohio, where for six months out of the year it's going to be gray and then it's going to get super cold, but not only does it get super cold, that means you're going to have to blast the heat in your home, which is going to drop the humidity and make it hot.

00:25:15.820 --> 00:25:21.382
You need to understand these things to really know what type of plant's going to thrive in that environment with you.

00:25:21.382 --> 00:25:24.549
So I think it's about looking at it holistically.

00:25:24.549 --> 00:25:33.986
While you're looking at it holistically, just buy yourself flowers and enjoy the splash of color that they bring in and joy that they'll bring you as well.

00:25:34.646 --> 00:25:40.003
Yeah, you're echoing a handful of the things that I had Greg Peterson on the show.

00:25:40.003 --> 00:25:44.112
He's an urban farmer and I was like what am I going to do?

00:25:44.112 --> 00:25:52.241
Cause he was basically the one who inspired me to start growing food out on the patio and I was like what should I do to not kill these plants?

00:25:52.241 --> 00:25:52.623
And he goes.

00:25:52.623 --> 00:26:01.741
Most people go to home Depot and they buy a tomato plant and they plop it in and they don't pay attention to what zone they're in what time of the year they're planting it.

00:26:01.741 --> 00:26:20.363
He's like if you just plant something that's made for your zone and plant it around the right time of the year, whether you're going from seed or you're going from transplant and, by the way, there's a PDF of this, at least for Arizona, that I can share with people If you're interested he's like if you just plant it at the right time of the year, you're going to have a much higher level of success.

00:26:20.363 --> 00:26:29.134
He goes if he's like you could be of the greenest thumb you want, but if you plant stuff that's not made for that zone at the wrong time of the year, you're working against nature.

00:26:29.715 --> 00:26:35.590
And that's kind of the theme of like regenerative and so much of what I've been learning more about.

00:26:35.651 --> 00:26:54.123
It's like, as far as how we grow food in this country, we just do things in the stupidest way possible because we can, like we have the resources and the money to just throw at problems in this country and that's what we do, instead of just working with how things naturally work in the world.

00:26:54.944 --> 00:27:27.211
Um, you were speaking before about kind of the beauty of plants, and I think it was something that I'd lost for a long time, where, like, I learned about plants in school Because it's just part of primary education, and like how plants grow, but I saw a video of it In like a glass with the side so you could see a seed being planted and then it being watered and it growing and sprouting, and I was like this is like the greatest magic trick Because that's going to grow and create food and then you can take a seed from that and replant it and it's going to create more.

00:27:27.211 --> 00:27:33.526
I'm like it's like the world's greatest pyramid scheme and we're like we're doing it all wrong.

00:27:33.526 --> 00:27:44.613
Like nature just has this beautiful way for us to produce food and we're just doing it not that way miraculously that.

00:27:45.253 --> 00:27:55.342
That's that awakening moment that everybody has when they're subjected and when they finally do get their hands on plants or do get the ability to see how nature works.

00:27:55.342 --> 00:28:15.910
In and of itself we start to realize that it's probably one of the greatest crimes committed against all of us is that miseducation and that disconnect from where we come from to such an extent that now only one percent of the people in this country control the overall, or the overwhelming majority of the food that we eat.

00:28:15.910 --> 00:28:20.227
But it can be as simple as all of us growing the foods that we eat.

00:28:20.227 --> 00:28:22.958
It can be as simple, and it's for a reason.

00:28:22.958 --> 00:28:28.364
Obviously, we can't be growing food and working in their factories at the same time, right?

00:28:28.364 --> 00:28:45.738
So it's like, okay, well, once we do go through that awakening and we do start to learn and take those type of things into account, then we start to recreate those systems in ways that benefit us and that don't leave us all depressed and disconnected from where we come from, you know.

00:28:47.102 --> 00:29:02.632
Yeah, I think plants are a great way to sort of introduce people to that in a less direct way, where you have to start caring for something outside of yourself which I think is a big issue here where everyone's just like kind of huddled up with their stuff, the kind of me, me, me.

00:29:03.741 --> 00:29:49.204
But if you have a few plants or you start growing some food, oftentimes you have too much of that one thing and you can't use enough of it and you start giving it away and then it's uh, I think it's like this a little gateway drug into making people not care more about other people yes, of course you know, one of the one of the benefits, one of those things about gardening, especially for me me as a man is that gardening aids in the recovery of emotional connection in and of itself and that leads then to more community care, work outside of bills, outside of all of the things that have been built up here.

00:29:49.204 --> 00:29:51.249
We start caring more about nature and about community.

00:29:51.249 --> 00:30:07.922
We start to see better effects just on the mental, spiritual, emotional, societal level, and I'm happy to see so many men coming back to that, because we rarely have these places where we can show that level of care.

00:30:07.922 --> 00:30:08.884
It's always hidden.

00:30:08.884 --> 00:30:19.689
It's hidden from society in general and it's it's it's controlled and it's only shared with the people closest to us, behind closed doors.

00:30:19.689 --> 00:30:22.400
And, you know, never let anybody else see.

00:30:22.400 --> 00:30:27.763
You have to always maintain this facade of this masculine identity in this, this way.

00:30:27.864 --> 00:30:44.194
But when you see a man out, you know working and care for plants and teaching his kids or other children how to care for plants and care for community by providing them with produce that he cared for and brought to them, that he cared for and brought to them.

00:30:44.194 --> 00:30:48.038
It's such a beautiful thing to behold and it's such a beautiful thing to be a part of.

00:30:48.038 --> 00:30:58.910
I'm telling you, any man that does this feels it on such a molecular level and it's completely transformative in and of itself.

00:30:58.910 --> 00:31:01.749
You mentioned watching that seed grow.

00:31:01.749 --> 00:31:13.231
I view men in today's society as that seed that's been buried under soil and that soil is the rigid enforcement of, let's say, patriarchy.

00:31:13.231 --> 00:31:18.769
And when watching that seed grow and sprout through is watching that transformation of somebody.

00:31:18.769 --> 00:31:32.210
Get in touch with their caring side, with their community side, with, you know, supportive side, and redefine everything else that was dictated for us to be in general, you know yeah, it's.

00:31:32.451 --> 00:31:43.567
It's hard to break through that resistance, though, because there's a lot of pressure working against that, so I guess that segues nicely into like is that why you started black men, man with gardens?

00:31:44.429 --> 00:31:45.490
yeah, that's.

00:31:45.490 --> 00:31:48.365
That's a huge, huge reasoning behind it.

00:31:48.365 --> 00:31:52.299
At the core of black man with gardens is about reclaiming narrative.

00:31:52.299 --> 00:32:00.701
One of the easiest ways to dehumanize people or dehumanize communities is to show them in specific ways.

00:32:00.701 --> 00:32:08.102
You notice that the people that are afforded humanity in today's society are allowed to be three-dimensional.

00:32:08.102 --> 00:32:19.730
We see them care for family, we see them in the garden, we see them as part of community, but the others are only shown in these one-dimensional ways of well.

00:32:19.730 --> 00:32:26.823
I'd hate to even dive into the stereotypes that they provided for us, but, in general, for me and my community.

00:32:26.864 --> 00:32:50.165
Specifically, at the time where I created Black Muppets Gardens, you were more likely to see a video or photo of a Black man in some type of negative interaction with police or with the system than you were to see a photo or a video of a Black man caring for plants, and that didn't sit right with me.

00:32:50.165 --> 00:32:53.232
It was during a time where I was looking for inspiration.

00:32:53.232 --> 00:32:56.769
I was looking for anything that could help me on my journey.

00:32:56.769 --> 00:32:57.832
When I came here, I was alone.

00:32:57.832 --> 00:32:58.561
I didn't know what to do.

00:32:58.561 --> 00:33:03.489
I started to get into plants, but I still don't know what to do with that.

00:33:03.489 --> 00:33:11.036
Everybody that I was learning about plant care from didn't look like me, and I mean, growing up, we become used to that.

00:33:11.156 --> 00:33:22.320
But obviously I still want to search for examples of ways to live that match my experience, and it's impossible to find that, so I started to create it myself.

00:33:22.320 --> 00:33:28.446
Obviously, because of the type of artist I am, in general, it's like there isn't that many examples.

00:33:28.446 --> 00:33:30.909
It's all about creating a new visual.

00:33:30.909 --> 00:33:31.869
Cool.

00:33:31.869 --> 00:34:06.986
I'm going to take on this specific task myself and not rely on anybody else to provide that narrative or that representation for me, for me, and also what I can do is search harder for that representation and create a platform that is committed solely to increasing and facilitating holding space for that community and sharing that community again with us holding up a mirror for us and creating a safe space where we can come and be ourselves and see us for who we are.

00:34:06.986 --> 00:34:13.429
And it's incredible Like the Black Mammoth Gardens hashtag now has more than 20,000 posts.

00:34:13.971 --> 00:34:14.612
That's amazing.

00:34:15.059 --> 00:34:18.911
When I started, if you search Black Mammoth Gardens, there was 100.

00:34:19.260 --> 00:34:21.487
Yeah, you get that sign less than 100.

00:34:21.487 --> 00:34:22.530
What are you trying to say?

00:34:31.639 --> 00:34:34.523
It might even say honestly, it might even say 100 plus, but then you click on it, you scroll and you get like 50 taps out, you know.

00:34:34.523 --> 00:34:43.632
So it's been great to see that many you know black men or men in my community feel more comfortable sharing that side of who they are.

00:34:43.632 --> 00:34:47.376
Yeah, feel more comfortable sharing that side of who they are.

00:34:47.376 --> 00:34:59.391
And each representation, each photo that gets posted, each video that gets posted, counteracts that negative representation that someone else decided that they were going to share about our experience in an effort to keep us one-dimensional.

00:35:00.581 --> 00:35:01.626
How long ago did you start that?

00:35:02.800 --> 00:35:05.447
I started that page in 2017.

00:35:06.331 --> 00:35:06.550
Okay.

00:35:06.550 --> 00:35:08.195
So, seven years ago.

00:35:08.195 --> 00:35:10.724
Okay, what do you think you?

00:35:10.724 --> 00:35:17.554
What's the most surprising thing you've learned from sort of facilitating and garnering that space?

00:35:18.800 --> 00:35:25.402
I think the most surprising thing I've learned is that it's who, it's who the F we are, it's who we are.

00:35:25.402 --> 00:35:46.911
And it's crazy because growing up as a Black man in America, we're so I mean everybody, we're so deeply influenced by media in general and, again, not having the media growing up that, like Black men work with flowers, Black men garden, it was surprising to me to see that.

00:35:46.911 --> 00:35:50.487
Hold on, like that's what the majority of us are spending our weekend doing.

00:35:50.487 --> 00:35:52.862
That's what the majority of us care to do.

00:35:52.862 --> 00:35:59.079
We want to be out of nature, we want to, you know, we want to produce for our families.

00:35:59.079 --> 00:36:06.063
We are these people already and I can share that, you know, even as a Black man.

00:36:06.164 --> 00:36:42.869
It surprised me because, again, I was just as much a victim to the older white lady that told me that because of the page and because of the images that she was able to see on the page, she was less likely to think that the black man walking behind her was going to rob her and more likely to think that he was just on his way to the farmer's market or something.

00:36:44.201 --> 00:36:47.235
And it's kind of a stab in something and like it's.

00:36:47.235 --> 00:37:01.985
It kind of it's like a stab in the gut, but then it's kind of uplifting a little bit, Cause I'm like I understand why you would think that if the only videos you see of us are being arrested, being brutalized by police, whatever it is, um, then it matters more.

00:37:01.985 --> 00:37:30.056
It matters just as much that you're able to see who we are on a human level and be able to use that information to form your perspectives about us, Because perspective is reality to a sense, and because of the perspectives, because of the narratives that were portrayed about us and the perspectives that it created, our experiences have been negatively impacted for generations, and this work, our work and the work of a lot of people, are changing those perspectives.

00:37:30.056 --> 00:37:38.360
I mean, it's a burden to have to do that, but we're changing those perspectives and redefining our experience along the way.

00:37:40.641 --> 00:37:45.309
Yeah, the perceptions that are portrayed, they kind of come across everywhere.

00:37:45.309 --> 00:37:47.072
I got to pause for a second.

00:37:47.072 --> 00:37:48.389
I'm getting a little feedback.

00:37:48.389 --> 00:37:50.894
Okay, that sounds better now.

00:37:50.894 --> 00:37:57.277
Yeah, I think it's just lagging for a second, so I'll just start over.

00:37:58.117 --> 00:38:10.963
Yeah, so, like, the perceptions that are put out there, they get you know, they affect everyone, right, and you kind of shared that story of that older white lady and then it was one of the I think it's one of your pin stories on your Instagram.

00:38:10.983 --> 00:38:12.202
I think it's one of your pin stories on your Instagram.

00:38:12.202 --> 00:38:33.431
It's like a roundtable discussion and you were talking about how there's a negative connotation for black people working the land and you were kind of advocating for the fact that it can be if we reframe it and kind of change that conversation, shift it to an empowering position which, like once I read it or like listened to you say that I was like 100%.

00:38:33.431 --> 00:38:41.514
I totally get that, but it was something I hadn't consciously thought of and it had to be put in front of my face like as embarrassing as it is to admit.

00:38:41.514 --> 00:39:00.306
But yeah, so I think it's important hopefully for me to have these conversations so other like white people listening be like you need to acknowledge like these are the perceptions that are out there and we all need to kind of work to help shift them, um, hopefully, in a better direction definitely that's 100.

00:39:00.327 --> 00:39:21.887
True, you know it's the perceptions of one thing but, like you just mentioned, there's trauma associated with this type of work as well, and you know trauma, trauma-informed agriculture seeks to address these issues in the realm of agriculture and it's been a barrier working within my community.

00:39:21.887 --> 00:39:32.289
We don't want to, intrinsically, or maybe based off of our experience, we don't want to go out into the woods.

00:39:32.289 --> 00:39:34.438
There's trauma there.

00:39:34.438 --> 00:39:35.181
We don't want to.

00:39:35.181 --> 00:39:40.514
There's trauma there in our past experiences.

00:39:40.514 --> 00:39:48.398
But then even the disconnect through redlining, the lack of access to natural green spaces who does it all belong to?

00:39:48.398 --> 00:39:49.503
It's not us.

00:39:49.503 --> 00:39:53.304
So how can we have these experiences right?

00:39:53.304 --> 00:39:59.246
And when you grow up, not having these experiences, not having the access to it, you start to develop fears around it.

00:40:00.451 --> 00:40:06.126
I was afraid of frogs for a really long time just because I never was in an environment that had frogs.

00:40:06.126 --> 00:40:08.318
So I never touched them growing up.

00:40:08.318 --> 00:40:14.400
I never played with them or anything like that, and because of that I just had this unconscious fear of frogs.

00:40:14.400 --> 00:40:15.943
I'm like I don't want to touch that thing.

00:40:15.943 --> 00:40:32.224
It's slimy, this thing is a part of nature and if I had any opportunity to be around them growing up, I wouldn't have this unconscious fear of it and what, for me personally, what that unconscious fear represented to myself was an unconscious fear of nature and I had to deeply address that.

00:40:32.224 --> 00:40:35.755
And I'm still addressing that, because I'm still afraid of butterflies.

00:40:35.755 --> 00:40:52.202
I'm like you know all these things, and so there's trauma, there's a lot of work to be done in our community and again it begins by just even getting us to touch plants, to touch grass, to go hiking, to go camping, and it evolves more and more.

00:40:52.202 --> 00:40:54.405
And then, next thing, you know, people are talking about homesteading.

00:40:54.405 --> 00:40:54.724
You know.

00:40:56.007 --> 00:41:02.617
Yeah, a lot of the conversations I've had on this show around health and healthcare.

00:41:02.617 --> 00:41:10.204
One of the big question marks is always social determinants of health, which is the aspects of health that you cannot directly control.

00:41:10.204 --> 00:41:16.601
Right, it's not your step count, it's not the medical doctor, you see, it's not how much you exercise, what you eat, it's.

00:41:16.601 --> 00:41:20.155
Is there access to groceries within walking distance?

00:41:20.155 --> 00:41:24.003
If you live in a city and you should be able to walk there, it's not a 20-minute bus ride.

00:41:24.003 --> 00:41:27.179
Are there access to green spaces?

00:41:27.179 --> 00:41:41.090
And a lot of these are deeply rooted in like systemic, racist policy and infrastructure problems and, through most of the healthcare professionals that I've spoken to, there's never that acknowledgement.

00:41:41.090 --> 00:41:52.065
It's always like we're working on, you know, not to say it's like a weekend seminar, but that's how, like the solutions being presented kind of feel from the healthcare side and it's so frustrating.

00:41:52.065 --> 00:42:03.163
I mean not even to be like personally affected by it, but just to like have these conversations like we're not even having the right conversation, we're refusing the acknowledgement of the conversation.

00:42:03.684 --> 00:42:09.391
And just to give people a concrete example of this, robert Moses was the parks commissioner.

00:42:09.391 --> 00:42:14.045
He was a very powerful figure in the like the 1920s through the 1950s in New York city.

00:42:14.045 --> 00:42:25.186
Um, but he created about 400 parks in New York city and I think only four of them were in uh predominantly minority neighborhoods.

00:42:25.186 --> 00:42:30.864
So, like, when you talk about access to green spaces, it's like these were decisions that were made 80 to a hundred years ago.

00:42:30.864 --> 00:42:35.376
It's like they, those, those still exist, like that infrastructure is still there.

00:42:35.376 --> 00:42:46.489
Um, so it it's a much broader conversation around these things that needs to happen, and it can't just be like how do we do uh sensitivity training for doctors?

00:42:46.489 --> 00:42:49.036
Like cultural sensitivity training for doctors?

00:42:49.036 --> 00:42:53.405
Yeah, that's important, but there's there's bigger issues at play.

00:42:53.405 --> 00:43:01.306
So, anyway, I just want, uh, I want to try to tie this into uh health and health care as the theme of the show, but uh, well, it's all.

00:43:01.407 --> 00:43:06.985
It's all associated and deeply rooted or connecting back to health, mental and physical.

00:43:07.505 --> 00:43:16.260
Um, whether it comes, you know, one thing I think about is when we work with children and we teach them how to grow their own food.

00:43:16.260 --> 00:43:37.436
Anybody that's done that work notices just how much more children are interested in eating fruits and vegetables when they've seen how it's grown or when they've actively participated in growing it, in growing it.

00:43:37.436 --> 00:43:47.842
So when you're so far disconnected from it, not only do you not have any interest in it, but they make other things that are more addicting, you know, and that are more readily, and that stuff happens to be more readily accessible, like fast food.

00:43:47.842 --> 00:44:28.166
And so when we think about how the deeper physical, mental health effects that has on a long term, it's unfortunate because my community is being impacted by health issues at an earlier age now due to just diet in general, issues at an earlier age now due to just diet in general, and I think it's almost every community in America now is starting to get colon cancers earlier, starting to have liver disease earlier, and my little sister just passed away from kidney liver failure.

00:44:29.518 --> 00:44:30.202
Sorry to hear that.

00:44:31.215 --> 00:44:32.016
I appreciate that.

00:44:32.016 --> 00:44:48.829
And one thing the pastor said the pastor that's at the funeral, he's, you know, he's like 80 years old and he's the one that's mentioned the fact that, like, why are children dying from these things that in my day it was the oldest people that were suffering from?

00:44:48.829 --> 00:44:57.940
And we don't realize how, just how connected that is to our disconnect, our disconnection from nature in general.

00:44:57.940 --> 00:45:15.172
And by being disconnected from nature we're susceptible to so many horrible things that, again, the 1% of people producing the foods that we eat now are are um, producing it and, and you know, feeding to us because it's all that's available.

00:45:16.315 --> 00:45:20.242
Yeah, um, where's it going to go with that?

00:45:21.543 --> 00:45:38.130
Oh, I feel like also like you can look at these individual aspects of health um, exercise, nutrition, whatever you want and I think those have been largely isolated from the community aspect, I think.

00:45:38.956 --> 00:46:00.907
I think you need to eat so well now and you need to be so strong and you need to get so much sleep now um, all independently, because the the lack of community is so prominent, um, where it's like you have to be like the strongest version of an individual possible because there's nothing backing you up in the way that community has largely been degraded.

00:46:02.275 --> 00:46:11.559
I think a lot of those health aspects can probably be a little bit more lax if the community is a lot stronger.

00:46:11.559 --> 00:46:25.704
And that's something I've changed my tune on a lot, probably over the past five or six years, where I was like here's the data, it's empirical, like if you have a lot of muscle mass, you're going to live longer, you need to get seven to nine hours of sleep, because that's what the data says.

00:46:25.704 --> 00:46:39.331
You can probably buffer a lot of this stuff if you have a really strong community and you don't feel like you're solely responsible for everything that comes your way in life and you can sort of disperse that amongst a strong community.

00:46:39.331 --> 00:46:46.208
I want to kind of parlay that into the fact that you seem like a good community organizer.

00:46:46.208 --> 00:46:48.179
Is that a fair assessment?

00:46:48.739 --> 00:46:50.625
Yeah, that's part of the work that I do.

00:46:50.625 --> 00:46:55.326
It's probably one of the biggest parts of the work that I do is community organizing.

00:46:56.514 --> 00:47:01.907
What can people do to become more active or become better participants in the community?

00:47:04.175 --> 00:47:05.141
That's a great question.

00:47:05.141 --> 00:47:14.715
I think about this a lot as well because I'm a community organizer, but I'm also a participant.

00:47:14.715 --> 00:47:19.465
Um, it kind of goes back to what you're saying.

00:47:19.465 --> 00:47:38.248
It seemed like for a time there that the majority of solutions that were handed down to us is to become the best individual that we can be, all within the comfort of our own home, never having to interact with anybody else, just do the best you can do for yourself, and that doesn't work.

00:47:38.248 --> 00:47:59.351
It just doesn't work through different modalities, and so, with the work that I do, I'm trying to find ways of what exactly that can look like, because it's something that we're all struggling with.

00:47:59.351 --> 00:48:00.416
It sucks.

00:48:00.416 --> 00:48:08.739
That it doesn't suck I'll say this that there are a lot of community that are out there that you can participate in.

00:48:08.739 --> 00:48:27.885
Unfortunately, that requires resources on the community organizers for the community organizers' efforts, so sometimes there's always going to be a paywall, so it's going to affect the people with the least amount of resources, right, but the people with the least amount of resources might need it the most.

00:48:27.885 --> 00:48:54.090
So it's about actively just going outside, being out in green natural spaces, finding communities that are also engaged in doing that, and being open and honest with your communication with them, to be able to interact and to engage with them, because I know a bunch of organizations here in the city.

00:48:54.090 --> 00:49:02.496
I'm going on a group camping trip this weekend and then another one next weekend, and I love camping by myself.

00:49:02.496 --> 00:49:12.847
But I'm like I realized I need to go and do things with other people right now, because I'm also going through a lot of stuff and I can't just their pies myself.

00:49:12.847 --> 00:49:16.023
I can't just fix this stuff in my own echo chamber.

00:49:16.023 --> 00:49:22.927
Actually, I just need to go and be a community doing the things that I've found are fun to me.

00:49:22.927 --> 00:49:25.884
So, like you said earlier, you like skating.

00:49:25.884 --> 00:49:27.981
It's about joining a skate club.

00:49:27.981 --> 00:49:45.786
What I love about the huge cities now, too, is that you could go and take skating lessons and that's going to put you around other people that are just as equally excited about skating that you can build community with, whether it's rock climbing, camping.

00:49:45.786 --> 00:49:49.505
All of these communities are opening up.

00:49:49.505 --> 00:49:51.380
So, okay, I think I got it.

00:49:51.420 --> 00:50:02.166
Now, if you want to be a better participant, identify what brings you joy and then go outside and find other people that enjoy the same thing.

00:50:02.166 --> 00:50:04.996
So, for me, I love plant care.

00:50:04.996 --> 00:50:10.726
I love floristry, so I went and found floral workshops.

00:50:10.726 --> 00:50:21.637
I facilitate them, but I also attend them because I get to learn something more about floristry, I get to work with plants and I got to take home a beautiful bouquet at the end of the class, right?

00:50:21.637 --> 00:50:32.266
I love camping, so I'm going to go on a group camping trip and the activity is going to bring me joy in and of itself, but then I'm going to get to meet new people.

00:50:32.266 --> 00:50:38.583
I'm going to get to interact with these people and possibly make new friends and come outside of myself.

00:50:38.824 --> 00:50:55.175
It's such a slap in the face to the systems of isolation that they created for us, for us to get back outside enjoying ourselves and enjoying ourselves with other people that are interested in doing the same thing.

00:50:55.175 --> 00:51:24.065
And I say, if you're facing a scenario where you believe you don't have the resources to engage with these types of communities, I can tell you, as a community organizer myself, if you're earnest in your communication with community organizers about where you are and your ability, what your ability, but also your interest and enthusiasm and being a part of these things I don't think there's a single community organizer is going to be like, oh well, actually I still need that bread.

00:51:24.065 --> 00:51:25.297
Like, nah, they're going to.

00:51:25.297 --> 00:51:26.625
They're going to invite you in.

00:51:26.625 --> 00:51:28.996
I'm telling you they're going to invite you in.

00:51:28.996 --> 00:51:33.527
So communicate earnestly and realize like that's part of being a part of a community.

00:51:33.527 --> 00:51:42.347
You know we're all going to support each other in every single way, and that goes both ways for the organizers and the participants.

00:51:42.367 --> 00:51:43.110
Yeah, that's great advice.

00:51:43.110 --> 00:51:49.246
I hope you see some butterflies on your camping trips to help with the uh, the exposure therapy I hope I do.

00:51:49.327 --> 00:51:56.074
You know, on one of my last uh group camping trips it was dope because there were people that weren't afraid of frogs.

00:51:56.074 --> 00:52:06.282
So they're catching them and they're holding them, giving me the ability to kind of just like pet them, get you know kind of exposure therapy and I'm like breaking it down and it's great.

00:52:06.282 --> 00:52:19.556
It brought me a lot of joy, even though I'm, like you know, wincing a little bit Like I don't know, know Winston, a little bit like I don't know.

00:52:19.556 --> 00:52:21.141
But overall I think that taking these routes is the path to self-actualization.

00:52:21.141 --> 00:52:24.329
We're not going to self-actualize in our home alone.

00:52:24.329 --> 00:52:31.536
We're not going to self-actualize while we're at work, especially in the work culture that we have now.

00:52:31.536 --> 00:52:33.327
That actually says hold on.

00:52:33.327 --> 00:52:36.561
Don't build emotional connections to the people you work with.

00:52:36.561 --> 00:52:40.405
Actually create a barrier between that and all these.

00:52:40.596 --> 00:52:42.835
We're not going to reach it through those modalities.

00:52:43.175 --> 00:52:44.643
Make sure you have your corporate persona.

00:52:45.394 --> 00:52:47.222
Yeah, your corporate persona.

00:52:47.222 --> 00:52:56.965
We're not going to reach self-actualization through that and we're not going to recover our emotional connections through isolation.

00:52:58.757 --> 00:52:59.842
Yeah, that's great advice.

00:52:59.842 --> 00:53:02.543
I do want to ask you a little bit more about your workshops.

00:53:02.543 --> 00:53:16.585
So I've seen some of the results of them, but can you share, I guess maybe, what was the first workshop you did and I'd love to hear sort of how they've evolved over time and what you, what you, really want to create with this.

00:53:16.585 --> 00:53:26.157
Obviously there's a trying to build community and build something beautiful by the end of it, but, um, how did you, how did you start with workshops and where do you want to take them in the future?

00:53:27.739 --> 00:53:27.838
I.

00:53:27.838 --> 00:53:30.722
I got to give credit to hugh hugh augustine.

00:53:30.722 --> 00:53:32.545
He's to Hugh Augustine.

00:53:32.545 --> 00:53:34.507
He's actually a rapper here in LA.

00:53:34.507 --> 00:53:37.431
It's like a huge time rapper.

00:53:37.431 --> 00:53:39.438
He's amazing, extremely talented.

00:53:39.438 --> 00:53:41.262
Out of nowhere.

00:53:41.262 --> 00:53:44.438
One day he just hit me up and he said hey, we're throwing this event.

00:53:44.438 --> 00:53:46.143
You want to lead a workshop?

00:53:46.143 --> 00:53:47.706
I had never done it before.

00:53:47.706 --> 00:53:55.869
This was like in maybe 2018 or so, right after I had just got into making plant art.

00:53:55.869 --> 00:53:59.742
It was right after that and I created Black Mouth Gardens.

00:53:59.742 --> 00:54:09.121
He might have found me through Black Mouth Gardens I don't know how he found me, but he hit me up and he's like hey, we're doing this event and there's going to be other artists kind of leading these things.

00:54:09.121 --> 00:54:11.097
Do you want to come in and do a plant workshop?

00:54:11.097 --> 00:54:14.722
I said, yeah, I didn't know how to price it.

00:54:14.722 --> 00:54:15.264
I didn't know.

00:54:15.264 --> 00:54:19.829
I knew where to get the material, but I didn't know how I was going to lead it.

00:54:24.074 --> 00:54:26.447
And it ended up being maybe like 150 people there or something like that.

00:54:26.467 --> 00:54:40.972
Oh, a nice easy one to start with, Right it was huge Low pressure, but I'll never forget how happy everyone was, how much people just enjoyed they were coming and picking their plants, and I created a station where it's like the way I do my workshops now.

00:54:40.972 --> 00:54:56.576

Rebuilding Community through Plants and Collective Engagement with Nelson ZêPequéno

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