If your social feed has ever stopped you mid-scroll because a monstera looked like it’s been better-tended than you have, you’ve probably already found Christopher Griffin — known to their 800,000-strong plant-loving community as Plant Kween.
Griffin — @plantkween on Instagram and author of “You Grow, Gurl!” — has turned houseplant care into something much bigger than watering schedules and sunlight charts. For the Brooklyn-based creator, tending to greenery is about tending to ourselves: nurturing softness in a world that demands hardness, especially from Black, queer and nonbinary folks. What began as a love passed down from a grandmother Griffin describes as a goddess has grown into a platform rooted in care, curiosity and radical community-building — one that now extends from practical plant advice and work with New York institutions like Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to their newest video series, “Experimenting With…,” in which Griffin turns the camera inward to explore everything from bilateral hearing loss to roller skating to makeup.
We caught up with Griffin to talk plants, Black queer joy, the politics of green spaces and why a humble houseplant might just make us better at holding the line for each other.
How did you become Plant Kween?
It started when I was younger. I was obsessed with my grandmother — this Black woman in the church scene. I felt like she was a goddess in my family. She introduced me to plants, and then later in life, I bought my first one and I still have it. It’s [at least] 14 years old. So I started testing different ways of showing up online and finding people, community-building and using it as an opportunity to build bridges. Now it’s turned into this amazing multidisciplinary space where I get to explore myself and my interests and float into spaces that I wouldn’t have access to if I was still working as an educator.
What does it feel like to do what you’re doing now and how did you make that shift from academia?
It feels like a dream. Ten years ago, if I knew this is how I’d be making money, I would have been like, “Girl, shut up. There’s no way.” The shift was very gradual. After working at Harvey Milk High School as a college counselor, I went and worked for NYU for nearly a decade in student activities. I was working my nine-to-five and casually posting, and then I got my first brand deal just on my own. It was like, “We want to pay you $4,000 for a video,” and I was like, “All I gotta do is be on camera? I do this every day at my job at NYU.” The perception of the value of my time changed completely. Then the pandemic hit. I was home, bored as hell. That’s when it really skyrocketed.
Do you see plant care as part of nurturing spaces that sustain us when the world doesn’t?
It’s one method. There’s different pathways to caring for ourselves, or nurturing the nurturer within us. Plants can teach us to sit still. With how technology has us wrapped around its finger, I think it’s important for us to just sit with something real. It’s a very low threshold: a living being that you can practice on in terms of care. Like, what kind of nurturer are you? What are the various different ways that you can care for yourself? Are you drinking water? Are you giving yourself room to grow? Are you pruning those dead, yellowing leaves that you need to let go of so you can refocus your energy on other things? Are you getting yourself in sunlight?
Caring for a plant is basically an empathy-building tool.
It really is. And that’s something that we can all be better at practicing because we need more of it.
As a Black queer creator, what does activism look like for you right now?
I think when it comes to activism, as it relates to any marginalized community, we often pay attention to the most visible forms of activism: protesting, literally being on the front lines. But I think of us functioning as a clock. There’s multiple pieces that have to happen, there’s different jobs that we all have to do in order to make this clock work and to help our community continue to move forward. And some of it is not super visible, some of it is just maybe donating money, maybe it’s reallocating resources, maybe it’s watering people that can’t water themselves.
For Black, queer, trans, nonbinary folks, none of this is new. I grew up with an understanding of how I was perceived in the world, and that was concentrated around my Blackness. My parents really were like, “You are a Black, flamboyant boy in America.” That really prepared me with a level of confidence and a foundational love that has allowed me to be strong in these times and to stand on my own two feet, and to understand my self-worth, to know that the hate and the negativity that folks put onto me has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with them.
So holding the line for me lately has been existing unapologetically in my truth. It has been holding space for family and friends who are going through times and just need a listening ear. I have been told that I give good hugs, and that I have rejuvenating energy.
Your joyfulness can be seen as a kind of defiance. Do you see it that way?
For me, I think joy is that fuel that keeps us going. Joy is us saying, “Despite everything you’re trying to throw at us, I still know who I am.” It’s understanding that these systems were really never for us, and that we have to manifest that joy for ourselves. My grandmother would always say, “I’m the author of my own joy.”
Growing up in a country where we were marginalized communities, we’re never really thought of. When they were creating all this, they didn’t have us in mind. So we do have to be the authors of our own joy. We do have to create those systems. We do have to create systems of community care. And so, for me, my community care is a part of the work that I do. I’ve always been in service of other people, whether I’m educating them, whether I’m empowering them, whether I’m giving them some food for thought for them to figure out.
Was it intentional to disrupt the idea that plant expertise belongs only to certain groups of people?
Black folks have always been a staple in horticulture. If you want to go back, you can talk about slavery. We were the ones tending the land. Then prior to that, our ancestors on the motherland, they were tending the land, and they were learning from us. And then also, if you think about Indigenous folks, they were tending the land in ways that Europeans had no knowledge of. So we’ve always been stewards of the land. So it started off, quite selfishly, as just a passion that I was just interested in. Then I was like, well, where are the other Black, queer, non-binary folks? That’s when I was like, let me turn this into an opportunity to invite other people, through my own visibility. I’ve built relationships with a lot of the community gardens here and it’s important for us to take up spaces in these white-ass institutions. We have to take up space. We have to show up. So that has been a lot of my work. But when we talk about houseplants in particular, what I hope is not only when it comes to Black and brown, queer, trans, non-binary bodies in horticulture, because nature is inherently queer, that if I can get you to care about the plant in your living room, maybe you’ll care about the tree on your block. If you care about that tree, maybe you’ll care about the park in your neighborhood. Maybe that’ll get you curious about community gardens in your area.
You’ve worked with institutions like Prospect Park and Brooklyn Botanic Garden. What changes would you like to see to make those places feel more inclusive for queer and BIPOC communities?
Brooklyn Botanic Garden has Pride Nights, which is amazing. They offer community tickets — tickets that are free. Central Park and Prospect Park have been providing resources for folks in the area, and providing opportunities for education outreach.
So they’re doing the work. It’s just, let’s do more of it. Unfortunately, when it comes to funding, when it comes to care, when it comes to green spaces, less than 1% of New York City’s budget goes toward green spaces.
Your TikTok series, “Experimenting With,” touches on everything from roller skating to makeup to hearing loss. What have those explorations taught you about curiosity and self-discovery?
I just love being curious. I’ve always been just a nosy person, and that series was born out of some vulnerability. Nowadays, as an educator and working with these institutions, I’ll write out my scripts. And this was a challenge for me not to script anything. Everything I’m saying is me kind of just winging it. Just real moments. What I’ve been enjoying is the dialogue, the community that I’m co-creating with my audience and seeing that there are folks from all different walks of life and ages, like “I’m playing with makeup for the first time at 60,” or “I’m a grown, older man that has been trapped by masculinity’s expectations, and now I actually want to try makeup and see what that looks like for me.” Or my laser hair removal. There were a lot of folks with melanin in their skin being like, “I was terrified,” but that is so helpful to know. I feel like that vulnerability has created this two-way street. That has been the most fulfilling thing about it.
What is the biggest lesson plant care can teach us?
We’re basically houseplants with complex emotions. So everything that we do for plants, we can do for each other. Water each other, feed each other nutrients, check in on each other occasionally, but not too much. You don’t want to be a helicopter plant parent. No overwatering. Every plant needs space to grow and do their own thing. Every plant and person needs to be checked up on.