Plant Portraits from the Garden of Stories explores plants as carriers of memory, community, and communication within shared spaces. While speaking with my parents, neighbors and other individuals in my community, I came to understand not just the local species of plants but also the intricate system of exchange that exists within our neighborhoods. Plants in our region are rarely purchased from nurseries; they are gifted, traded, or shared—a transaction rooted in relationships and trust. This practice transforms plants into objects of connection, embedded with the stories and labor of those who nurture them.

Each plant in a garden carries the marks of its journey—grown by one person, exchanged with another, cared for by yet another, and eventually pressed, dried, or replanted. The act of asking permission to pluck a flower or take a cutting often becomes a starting point for communication, opening up conversations about place, belonging and memory. The garden, over time, becomes a living archive—a tapestry of shared histories and geographies.

Through these portraits I aim to document and extend this organic mode of connection by sharing plants and the stories they carry. This act of exchange speaks of the shared spaces, companion species where the garden becomes a metaphor for community—a collection of people, stories and lived experiences that intersect through acts of care and collaboration.