This ‘Plantfluencer’ Transformed Her Home Into an Urban Jungle In The Most Spectacular Way

“This amaranthus just doesn’t seem to leave my garden…this ponaganti kura is such an invader. It has claimed my entire garden. But these dragon fruits are so nice. All they need is a little bit of water, and they reward me year after year…” Madhavi Guttikonda (@mad_gardener_madhavi) engages in these delicious contemplations while standing in a 1,750 square feet garden on the terrace on the fourth floor of her house in the Indian city of Vishakhapatnam.

Dressed in a pink and purple sari, she stands beneath the crossbar wooden ceiling with tons of barrel-shaped planters dangling over her head and tons of them sitting in trays. She smiles after seeing a tabletop laid out with fresh veggies she has just plucked and pinched from these planters. Guttikonda is in love with plants. She believes that plants can talk. Affectionately nicknamed the “Mad Gardener,” she was once a homemaker whose passion for gardening turned her into one of the most renowned Indian “plantfluencers” and a celebrated TEDx speaker.

In November 2021, she was honored by the Vice President of India and the State Agriculture Minister with the “Rhythunestam award.” Countless others are sitting on her house shelves. “People recognize me wherever I go. It gives me immense joy,” she shared with the South China Morning Post. Her videos, followed by millions, offer lesser-known tidbits related to educational organic gardening, pest control, and fertilizing.

But it wasn’t fame that drove her to share all this gardening-related content. The intention was “sharing my happiness,” she said in her TEDx speech. Many days, she sat in her penthouse, sipping tea and sharing stories of her gardening with her son and his friend. It was much later that the idea of sharing her “excitement” with people struck her. With no prior knowledge whatsoever of the digital world, she started snapping pics and recording clips of her plants and flowers in her Samsung Galaxy Z8 smartphone.

Guttikonda believes that her plants are babies that need just as much attention, love, and care as human babies. “Pay attention […] attend to them,” she said. Like a mother, she pays attention to her plant babies as well as the pests and insects lurking inside them. Her plants, she said, respond to her love through harvest. If picky-eating children are made to grow their own vegetables in this manner, they wouldn’t remain as picky as they are, Guttikonda reflected in the TEDx talk.

The beautiful plant mom marries traditional Indian pesticides like “Jeevamrutha" with advanced gardening tools and Korean techniques to keep the plants around her happy and thriving, per Humans Who Grow Food. She also has a seed bank where she stores different kinds of seeds and distributes them to millions of her followers. Guttikonda’s motherly embrace is not limited to her plants and flowers.

Unfolding within her green, magical paradise is also a wild haven of bees, butterflies, and birds. In one of her videos, she walks around her garden and points at a tiny nest where three baby bulbuls are waiting for their mother. The little feathers of bulbuls are flittering, like her pink and purple sari flapping in the day breeze. The bulbul mom has not arrived yet, but Guttikonda has. It’s a place inside her heart, and it’s called “ikigai.”  

You can follow Madhavi Guttikonda (@mad_gardener_madhavi) on Instagram for beautiful gardening videos.

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