Marcus Bridgewater entertains his followers with videos of the different plants in his garden — how to grow them, care for them and how to take care of ourselves as humans.
When facing struggles in his own life, Marcus Bridgewater found solace in the garden. By taking care of plants, he was inspired to take better care of himself. Now, Marcus is sharing his garden-inspired insights with the masses on social media. As one of the nation’s most noteworthy plant influencers or “plantfluencers”, Marcus has gone viral on platforms like TikTok. He shares tips, tricks, and insights on fostering plant growth and self-growth. Known by his social media handle “Garden Marcus”, he's managed to turn his passion for plants and education into his fulltime job.
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Marcus Bridgewa...: I'm that guy who spent the last 10 years, not on social media, I didn't have a smartphone for like four and a half years. I'm that guy who was like a 96-year-old grandpa who was in a 34-year-old body and I'm like, "Ah, man, what are these kids doing?"
Shelby Stanger: When Marcus Bridgewater first heard about TikTok, he thought it was a calendar app.
Marcus Bridgewa...: TikTok, TikTok, TikTok. It just made sense to me. It was like, "Oh, it's going to keep track of time."
Shelby Stanger: But now just two years later, Marcus definitely knows what TikTok is. In fact, he's gone viral on TikTok, posting videos of the different plants in his garden. He shares tips, tricks and lessons for both taking care of plants, and taking care of ourselves as humans. Marcus has become one of America's most well-known plant influencers or plantfluencers as some call them. Known by his social media handle, Garden Marcus, he's managed to turn his for plants and education into his full-time job. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Shelby Stanger: Few years ago, Marcus Bridgewater was not at all interested in social media. He didn't even have a smartphone. Instead, Marcus spent his days teaching and he loved to unwind after work in his backyard garden. He found that the plants had a lot of lessons to teach him and he was getting better and better at caring for them. This newly discovered green thumb came as a surprise, especially since the first plants he brought into his home in Texas, didn't do so well.
Shelby Stanger: Marcus Bridgewater, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living, you've definitely had a wild idea.
Marcus Bridgewa...: Awesome. Thanks for having me.
Shelby Stanger: So tell me just a little bit about where you're from and where you grew up and how you got into plants.
Marcus Bridgewa...: Okay. Well, I'm from a place called Zellwood. It is North of Orlando, Florida. I grew up there and it was a very country place, it was a very woodland area. And I was very fortunate to spend a lot of time out in the woods exploring and learning about myself and about nature. But I didn't really know how valuable those experiences were until I bought my own house and I didn't have access to woods, but one of my oldest friend's moms was gifting me some plants as a housewarming gift and I was just so thankful for that gift. It was just this reawakening of my last connection with nature. And as we walked her nursery and she was just pouring information on me, I was so thankful to have had this experience. It was just like this eye opening thing, "Oh, my gosh, look at how much life is in these nurseries."
Marcus Bridgewa...: And then I got home and I killed more than half of the plants in just a couple weeks. And that tanking of sorts of emotion is really what sparked this journey into motion because I was desperate to keep the last set alive. And in that desperation, I had to humble myself and really start questioning what I was doing wrong and that just forced me to really think and connect my choices with my actions and with their results, and it increased my accountability, it increased my awareness, it increased so many parts of my life. So that is where I'm from and where I grew up and how I got into plants, I think as concisely as I could put it.
Shelby Stanger: It's an amazing story. So you've said so many things right there that really hit for me. So one is that you killed a lot of plants because personally, I actually recently bought some plants and Oh, I sort of killed a couple of the first ones as well, I over-watered them.
Marcus Bridgewa...: Common mistake.
Shelby Stanger: So before you got into plants, what were you doing?
Marcus Bridgewa...: So in college, I studied technical direction, and technical direction is the project management of theater and film. And so basically what we learned to do was orchestrate a timeline and help all of the different facets of the production execute on their timeline. And in doing so, I really focused my expertise on communications and so by focusing on the communication of sorts, I really was focusing on community. And the more I focused on community, the more I found that the other pieces of the puzzle, regardless of what the industry was kind of fell into place. And so taking that, I used that concept to approach every facility I went to. My grandma has a saying, "Be a task big or small, do it well or not at all. Once a task has begun, do it well until it's done." And I was one of the grandkids who took that really seriously and I still take that seriously to this day.
Shelby Stanger: As a technical director and independent contractor, Marcus ended-up flying all over the world and working with different theaters, opera houses, events, and venues. He managed sound, lighting, set design, construction, and even crew members. But at some point, Marcus needed to switch gears and have more stability. So you moved to Texas and eventually began teaching technical direction. During that challenging transition, Marcus found plants and gardening to be healing for him.
Shelby Stanger: Okay. So let's bring it back to plants. So you take all these skills from your work, communicating, organizing, recruiting, people, getting them to kind of get out of their own way, getting them to finish tasks, and you get really passionate about plants, and very quickly you become this amazing influencer on apps like TikTok and Instagram, and you don't even know what TikTok really is, but you get on it and you excel. How does that all happen?
Marcus Bridgewa...: Wow. Well, I was brought out to Texas to be a technical director. In a few years, I had become a teacher of technical education and I created a program and a curriculum to train and to help. And really what it did was it fine tuned my ability to connect and I was really thankful for that. And at the same time, one experiences difficulties in life, loss, trauma, change, working 70 hour weeks is a very difficult thing to do. So stress starts to build-up and for the first time in my life, I was in one place, right? I had spent the better part of my life after college working as an independent contractor and traveling so I hadn't really been in any place for longer than four and a half months. But in my travels, I had learned and practiced a lot of things to help mental health, physical fitness, spiritual awareness.
Marcus Bridgewa...: I'd found out how important they were and I'd been studying them because I found that they were the progression in a modern day articulation of mind, body, spirit and those are the things that really matter, but that's not what pays the bills. And so my mom had gotten injured and I'm an only child and so I was like, "Oh, it's my responsibility to help my mother with some of these bills. Right. And so the only way to do that is not as a independent contractor who goes and does what they please whenever they want, it requires a kind of consistency, a kind of stability. So that's that change in lifestyle. Right. But it was costing me, it was really difficult and I found solace in the garden. So remember I was saying, I had spent all that time trying to get those plants to stay alive.
Marcus Bridgewa...: Well, that journey, right, a friend came to me and said, "Hey, there's a bunch of discount plants at the department store." And I was like, "Woof, let's go check it out." And they were selling plants for percentages off 75% off already, so I got plants for a quarter. It was incredible.
Shelby Stanger: It's so funny. I find some of my best plants not at these fancy nurseries, but at Trader Joe's.
Marcus Bridgewa...: And just like, I find some of my best plants where they are going to let me pick through of the dumpster.
Shelby Stanger: Amazing. That's even better.
Marcus Bridgewa...: Right? And there's not a lot of places that do it, but when you ask, right, you'd be surprised at who's like, "Oh, yeah, I'll let you take some of that." Or, "You know what I mean? Wait, give me some quarters for it." So I bought hundreds of those, ended-up filling up my garden, learning so much about life and it was giving me peace to combat the pressures I was facing in the world.
Shelby Stanger: So what are some of these lessons you've learned from plants? You're hands on fingers in the dirt, learning, killing plants, but saving a lot of them. What are some of the lessons you learned that you applied to your life?
Marcus Bridgewa...: All right. So one of the biggest things that I think I've been able to apply to my life is persistence. And this understanding that you can't make things grow, but you can foster environments where things want to grow. And in that thought process, I realize how much of my life is dictated by community and environment and how much of my own life I spent adapting and utilizing the tool of adaptation to fuel my progress despite what community or environment I was in. Because of where I was in the garden at the time, I was able to take this, understanding that I could take a plant that's dying, but as long as I give it the right conditions and put it around the right community, it's likely to thrive naturally.
Shelby Stanger: So you've always been like a teacher and a coach.
Marcus Bridgewa...: Yes. In many ways, I've always been a teacher and a coach. The amount of times my mom was like, "Oh, you know you're a teacher," and I'd be like, "Ma, you got to stop calling me a teacher. I'm not a teacher." And here later in life, it turns out it is that actually in my nature to share knowledge and that makes me a teacher.
Shelby Stanger: The technical theater curriculum that mark has taught was no joke. It was challenging for the kids to keep up with the work. In order to motivate and connect with his students, Marcus would show them pictures of the plants in his garden and share the insights he was learning. The growth he saw in his garden was mirrored in his students progress. He decided to get creative and make his plant show and tell even more fun for them.
Marcus Bridgewa...: I would propagate pineapples. And I had gotten in the habit of every time I propagated a pineapple, I would like name it after one of my kids, because they loved to see the pineapple growth. And I love pineapple and I was eating a ton and so I was just naming pineapple. And so that was the original connection to the garden I believe. And so then they would be like, "Oh, do you got any pictures of the pineapple?" So I'd take a couple pictures and they'd be like, "Oh, my gosh, look at this other plant next to the pineapple." And so they'd been seeing the garden since before the world saw the garden. And then later in life, one came back to me and said, "Hey, you should share your essence on TikTok." He created a presentation for me to watch and was like, "Hey, you should understand what we're talking about so you get a better idea of how to share." And then we went into the garden and it was just me sharing things I had shared with them from the garden.
Shelby Stanger: What was the moment that then you've taken these lessons you got on TikTok? Was it pretty instant that it took off?
Marcus Bridgewa...: Yes. Because it was 11 days and within 11 days, we were jumping in followers and within a few weeks to a few months it had just continued to grow and blossom. It did happen relatively quickly when I have conversations with others and we compare it to just how people grow in general. It will was a relatively unique time to be sharing what we were sharing.
Shelby Stanger: When did you start?
Marcus Bridgewa...: December of 2019.
Shelby Stanger: That was early.
Marcus Bridgewa...: Yeah. It was just before-
Shelby Stanger: The pandemic.
Marcus Bridgewa...: Right. Just before. And so it was almost like a surge of sorts was happening at that exact that was really geared around the focus of wellbeing. And I was presenting a kind of refreshing thought process in terms of wellbeing. It's like, "Yes, this is something nice to see and nice to hear, but it's also what we really should be trying to do. And I'm not trying to sell you on anything. I'm not trying to entertain you. I'm trying to help you. I genuinely care about the future of our species and thereby your wellbeing. This is my attempts to share what I've learned that's helped mine, hopefully it helps yours, so no shenanigans." And I think that caught a lot of people off guard. The amount of comments I saw say, "Man, I watched till the end, because I was waiting for the shenanigans and there were no shenanigans and I'm still happy and I watched it again." I was like, "Oh, score man. Well, I hope you have a great day."
Shelby Stanger: You are happy guy. It's not like you're trying to sell something. You're just trying to I guess preach positivity,
Marcus Bridgewa...: Preach positivity. Oh, shucks, man. I have to tell that to my mom.
Shelby Stanger: Marcus' life changed in a matter of just days as his following exploded. His gardening TikTok became a national sensation. Within months, he was featured in major press outlets like The New York Times, Vogue, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications. When we come back, Marcus talks about the lessons he's learned from growing sweet potatoes, tips for people like me who struggle to keep plants alive, and his advice to anyone interested in getting into gardening.
Shelby Stanger: Marcus's TikTok videos show footage of hundreds and hundreds of plants in his lush backyard. The clips share information about how to take care of plants during different seasons and weather conditions. He also talks about how plants take care of us as humans.
Marcus Bridgewa...: In the last couple months, this pothos has grown a lot, so much that it's expanded to one of the cross planters holding some of my aloe. Now it's time for me to move this pothos, but as I go to move it, it doesn't want to move because it's so attached to the aloe. There may come a time where the things that were helping our growth begin to limit our growth and it's really important we know when to let go.
Shelby Stanger: All of this content is aligned with Marcus's personal motto, kindness, patience, and positivity. Going viral on TikTok was never about fame, Marcus just wanted to share his values, insight, and beautiful plants.
Shelby Stanger: Is there a specific example when you were working with plants where you're like, "This happened and this is the lesson that I applied to my life," whether it was with the sweet potato or a pineapple?
Marcus Bridgewa...: Yeah. I could give you, I mean, I literally have so many that it's like when you're flipping through a book and you're like, "Ah, which page do I read?"
Shelby Stanger: Pick a page.
Marcus Bridgewa...: I'm going to tell you the one, the sweet potato. The sweet potato vine I got was a eight inch basket and it had maybe like six or seven vines left on it out of 30 that it looked like it had once hand. I got it home and I thought, "Well, what's happening here? Why is this not growing compared to the other plants?" And it was, again, it was a discounted plant. So obviously they had said, "This plant has some problem, we're going to get rid of it." So thinking about how that plant was being treated, I brought it home and was like, "Well, the plant's not trying to die, the plant's trying to live, what could we do to help it live?"
Marcus Bridgewa...: So I put it in a brighter spot than it had been at the department store. I trimmed off some of the leaves that looked like they had gotten damaged and it looked like it was still trying to send energy to because that's not helpful. Right. And I made a point to put it next to a bunch of other plants like it that I had already had successfully brought back. And over time I watched it slowly put out new leaves and slowly grow to the same size as its companions.
Shelby Stanger: It's kind of interesting. There's this quote, I like by Jim Rowan, "That you're often the average of the five people you surround yourself with."
Marcus Bridgewa...: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Shelby Stanger: But I know you got something too that's probably even better.
Marcus Bridgewa...: Oh, well is just that we are our community. And what community does to us really matters often our community may mean well, but they're not necessarily being helpful and we see that in our growth. And so if we're not growing, we have to really question who we are around and why?
Shelby Stanger: I love it.
Shelby Stanger: Okay. So you're big on community and you have this really big community you fostered through your work. Any stories of people who you've kind of affected in some way who've bought plants and their lives have really been impacted for the positive.
Shelby Stanger: I've been so blessed to be in a position to have been a conduit for positivity and growth. The amount of DMs I get and stories I've gotten has been really humbling and it's been quite the blessing. One in particular, a young person in France started following me early and took the lessons to heart, reconnected with their grandparents and they together started farming and doing a garden in the village, and the whole center of that whole space has come closer together, and so they were sending me thank yous for helping their family get reconnected. That's just one of the many DMS that I've gotten that has just been really touching.
Marcus Bridgewa...: What does your mom think of all this and how is she doing?
Marcus Bridgewa...: You'd be surprised, my mom is thrilled and also not surprised because she's been saying for years that I had a voice of sorts to speak and I also have it in me to be a teacher.
Shelby Stanger: Marcus brims with positivity. You can hear his smile when he talks. He's always been conscious of spreading optimism. In fact, in 2018, he and his partners started to come called Choice Forward. They create content, offer workshops, and they also offer presentations to empower individuals and strengthen communities. The success of his social media presence has only led to more opportunities for him. Last year, Marcus was approached by several publishers about writing a book. He jumped at the chance, and his book, How to Grow: Nurture Your Garden, Nurture Yourself, comes out at the end of May. In the book, Marcus will share about his insights on improving your mental, physical, and spiritual health. He talks about how a positive mindset helped him reframe his own challenging experiences as opportunities to grow. Is your notion of failure, like you're going to kill plants, but that's important?
Marcus Bridgewa...: Yeah.
Shelby Stanger: Could you talk about that?
Marcus Bridgewa...: Yeah. I think that the lesson versus barrier is a big one. So I have these dichotomies, if you check out choiceforward.com, again Choice Forward is my company. And we created it because throughout my life, which was very tumultuous, lots of stories in there and each one of them is showing some growth of some sort. A lot of them are challenging and it's an important thing to note how we can take challenge and we can build from it or we can have challenge turn into something that becomes a bolder for us. And so one of the dichotomies I share in my book is lesson versus barrier. And the idea is that everything everywhere can be a lesson as you go through that experience, it just depends on how you decide to take in that experience.
Marcus Bridgewa...: But that same experience can turn into a barrier where you do not decide to learn anything, it just hinders you from learning anything and you decide to cut yourself off from it. Don't let yourself get caught up in the idea that you have a black thumb or that you failed a hundred times before, recognize that each one of those times is an opportunity to learn, and so stop and think about what you learned from each one of them. Even if it's already gone now, just stop and take a moment, write down what you've learned.
Shelby Stanger: So actually one more lesson I really want to talk to you about, because I've heard you talk about it before through your work and through your videos and on your interviews, but something you've learned from plants, self-care, caring for plants, caring for yourself. Can you talk to me about that concept just because we're just in a time where yeah, self-care is really important in all times of the world, but it feels like something that is a constant work in progress?
Marcus Bridgewa...: Yeah. And I feel in a lot of ways it's, we're automating it and it's a really strange thing to consider that process of automation. So I see self-care in plants all the time, especially if I get a chance to see them in their native habitat in the wild, right. And I try and mimic what I do and how I treat the plants in a little way to how they would have their natural environment. Plants are always spreading roots and letting go of the leaves that are not necessarily getting sunlight anymore. If a leaf gets too big or if a leaf is too small for the leaf that is big, it's going to let go of that leaf, it's not going to hang onto it, that's a part of self care, that's a part of its growth. We don't necessarily do that.
Marcus Bridgewa...: A plant being outside is going to go through the natural cycles and if it's in a place where it's going to be exposed to the seasons, right, it's going to let go of different parts of itself in each season and it's going to do different work in each season. Again, that's a part of self-care. Something again, I don't think we are doing enough of right. How much of our lives are so regimented we do the same thing every day, regardless of the season. So I think self-care is really important when we consider it means a regular analysis of one's wellbeing, a regular consciousness of the rotating of priority in terms of mental health, physical fitness and spiritual awareness. No one can be more important than the other, they must be balanced.
Shelby Stanger: Spending time outside around nature and plants reminds us that we're built to grow. It's not easy, but the more we practice looking at obstacles as an opportunity for growth, the less anxiety and stress we'll have when one presents itself. For Marcus, plants have been a source of guidance in the face of life's challenges. If you are thinking about starting a garden or even just caring for one new plant, Marcus has some advice. So people listening might want to go out and just buy plants right now, or take care of the plants. They already have any advice to becoming a plant parent or a beginner gardener. Where do people start?
Marcus Bridgewa...: So I would say we start in the same sphere of the kindness, patience, positivity. So here's where I'm going to draw the parallels so you can start hopeful embracing this into the everyday step. So kindness in your thought process, try to let go of whatever it is that is bothering you when you go to get your next plant. You want to focus on the plant, because you want your connection to be to that plant, right, that's a genuine connection. So you want to be drawn to whatever it is, you want to be like, "Oh, this is the one. This is the color." Whatever it is that inspires you, because each of us is different. So as you walk around and you're looking at the plants, allow it to be a therapeutic moment where you connect with the plant, so that's the first one.
Marcus Bridgewa...: The next one's patience, be patient with the plant itself and recognize that it is going to go through stages of change. You don't want to water it too much, you may want to get yourself a moisture meter or a bamboo stick, especially if you're a beginner so you can make sure you are feeding the plant when it needs to be fed.
Shelby Stanger: I have a real quick technical question, what's a bamboo stick? Just a stick of bamboo?
Marcus Bridgewa...: A bamboo straw or just, yes, a sliver of bamboo when put into a thing of soil, right, will tell you several things. One, if you leave it there for five seconds and it turns wet, right, you can see very clearly that it's wet. If you pull it out and it's got soil on it, but the soil then it's kind of moist and it might be time to water it. If it pulls out and there's nothing on it and it's completely dry, well then chances are that it's over dry and you really do need some water. And a lot of plants, right, don't need to be fed all the time, they only need to be fed after the soil has gotten a little dry.
Shelby Stanger: Okay. You've talked about kindness and patience. What's your advice about positivity?
Marcus Bridgewa...: So yeah, the other one is positivity because chances are, if it is your first plant, you are likely to have a lot of things to learn. You are not going to learn any of those things if you don't remain positive. Right? And so that's a whole thing about the kindness, patience, positivity. Our entire world and entire being is about learning. You are putting up a barrier between yourself and your own success the moment you decide that you've done a bad job and you can't do a good job the next time.
Shelby Stanger: The tenants of Marcus' practice, kindness, patience, and positivity, they're something we can all carry with us in our gardens and in our day to day lives. Marcus, thank you so much for coming on Wild Ideas Worth Living. Your energy, your enthusiasm, your authenticity, and just your love of plants is contagious. I personally can't wait to up my own plant-mama game and read your book when it comes out this spring. You can all see Marcus' videos, learn more about plants and hear more of his inspirational messages on his TikTok and other social media channels @gardenmarcus.
Shelby Stanger: To learn more about Choice Forward, which is Marcus and his co-founder Dana's wellness company,. You can also visit choicefoward.com. Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, written and edited by Annie Fassler and Sylvia Thomas, and our senior producer is Chelsea Davis. Our executive producers are Palo Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow, rate, and review the show wherever you listen and remember some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.