Our story.

I grew up surrounded by plants. My grandmother Shirley kept a garden here in Richmond that I spent a lot of time in as a kid. My mother kept plants in the house. As a kid I used to pick roses from Shirley's garden and bring them to my other grandmother, Katherine. Growing things was just part of how I was raised.

That love of plants followed me to John Bowne High School in New York, which is one of the only specialized agricultural high schools in the country. You have to apply to get in through your academics and an essay. I graduated as an agriculture major, studied plant science, earned college credits through the program, and was a member of the FFA. That education shaped how seriously I take this.

In October 2020, during the pandemic, I started a Facebook Buy Sell Trade group for Richmond plant lovers. My father was getting sicker with heart failure at the time. He knew about the group. He knew how much I cared about it. He wanted to see me do something meaningful with the community I was building. He never got to see a swap. He never got to see what this grew into. He passed before any of that happened.

The first community meetup was organized by members John Jefferson and Lauren DeLuca at Scuffletown Park on May 8th, 2021. It happened to be the day of my father's funeral. I could not be there but I watched how it came together from a distance, and it told me everything I needed to know. This community was ready for something real.

On June 19th, 2021, we held our first official Plant Swap at Reed Square Garden in Church Hill. I covered the donation to Reed Square out of my own pocket and handled all the costs for supplies and logistics. What I wanted was for this to be more than just us showing up to a public park. I wanted a space that was officially ours, where every single person who walked in was there for one specific reason: a Plant Swap. It was a hot Richmond day and the energy was incredible.

I did not realize the date's significance until after. June 19th. Juneteenth. Our first official, permanent space as a community happened on that day. That was not planned but I have thought about it a lot since.

As the swaps kept growing, I sat down with my now-VP Maks and we had a real conversation about the future. What would it take to make this permanent? To protect it? To give it room to grow into something bigger? That conversation led us to pursue nonprofit status, and with that came the larger dream: a physical space for this community. A green space where we can hold workshops and events, where you can walk through plants, bring your kids, slow down and connect with each other. That is still the goal and everything we are building toward.

My grandmother Shirley passed in 2023. She knew I had started this organization but she never saw what it became. My grandmother Katherine passed in 2026. My father was already gone before both of them. None of them got to see any of it. But everything they gave me is inside of this. The way I learned to care for growing things, the roses I used to carry from one grandmother to the other as a kid, the pride my father had in what I was trying to build for this community, it is all here.

When I think about the space we are working toward, I picture all of them there. I want this to be their legacy in Richmond, carried forward through me, for all of you to enjoy.

That is what this community is built on. That is why I take it so seriously. And that is why I am not done yet.