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Plant swapping: Indonesia’s latest trend promotes sharing and caring
Many people around the world have found new ways to cope with the pandemic and staying at home 24/7, including Indonesian plant enthusiasts who have taken up gardening and gone on to spread therapeutic joy through plant swapping.
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Friendly swap: Plant enthusiast Devi Natalia (left, rear) speaks to visitors at her booth during a plant swap event held in March 2021 in Jakarta. (JP/Courtesy of Devi Natalia)
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s a natural extension of gardening as a new hobby during the pandemic, plant swap communities are blooming on social media, with #bartertanaman (plant barter), #plantlover and #bartertanamanhias (decorative plant barter) just a few of the trending hashtags reaching hundreds of posts each day.
Swapping plants is something Siagawati envisioned when she formed the Berbagi dan Barter Tanaman Hias (decorative plant sharing and barter) Facebook Group with several friends in February 2021, even though the 43-year-old plant seller in Purwakarta, West Java, has been a long-time plant enthusiast.
“I saw that people were trying to find things to do, a hobby that they can do at home,” said Siagawati.
“When they have too many plants [of the same type] to tend to, most people will try to find a partner to swap their plants [with a different type], so they don’t have to spend extra money on buying new plants,” she added.
For some at-home gardeners, favoring a particular plant variety is normal and sometimes, they are willing to go the extra mile to get ahold of a particular plant they like. Color, size, shape and even the level of care a plant requires can be mesmerizing for them.
Siagawati says that gardening keeps her happy. Her favorite is the philodendron Florida ghost, a hybrid variety of the philodendron, a type of large flowering plant.
