Apartment Garden

Garden kept by Raheni and Myrna in the apartment in Oakland. Photo by Alai Reyes-Santos. 2020.

RaheNi and Myrna’s Apartment Garden: While they were living in the city of Oakland in Northern California, as two Caribbean two-spirit healers, RaheNi and Myrna had to find ways to have access to the plants they needed to create medicines, including tinctures, salves, and teas. Their apartment garden reflected both Caribbean Afro-Indigenous plant-based medicinal practices, as well as their adaptation of plants found in Northern California and Southern Oregon. Their apartment garden also served as a teaching tool for their workshops with fellow community members, both with Caribbean diasporic communities and other communities of color in the US Pacific Northwest and the US Southwest. One of their goals wherever they find themselves is to teach that we can all sustain our traditional ecological and medicinal practices at home in accessible and affordable ways, no matter where one finds oneself, whether in rural or urban areas, at a house or an apartment.

Plant Guide for Apartment Garden

Kalanchoe, a thick and green leafy plant, grows tall in an indoor container pot sitting on a colorful rug next to a wooden desk.

Kalanchoe

Lavender, not yet flowering, grows free and abundant in an outdoor planter shared by other smaller green plants.

Lavender

Bright pink Magnolia buds are at various stages of blooming, from tiny green buds to full and open flowers, at the corner of a wooden fence.

Magnolia

Melissa, a low-growing plant with delicate green leaves, grows alongside a lavender shrub in an outdoor container.

Melissa and Lavender

An indoor orchid plant displays an abundance of nine white flowers, surrounded by colorful home decor.

Orchid

Rue, a bluish-green plant with tiny round leaves, grows in an outdoor container alongside cactuses and other leafy plants.

Rue

A small vitae, a shrubby evergreen plant, grows in an outdoor ceramic pot.

Small Vitae

An indoor snake plant, with thick striped stalks and bright yellow edges, fills a small black ceramic pot.

Snake Plant

Five different kinds of succulent plants grow in separate small containers on an outdoor windowsill, alongside a small meditating figurine.

Succulents

Sweetgrass, a plant of thin and long stalks of grass, grows in a mixture of fresh green and dried beige stalks in a small outdoor container.

Sweetgrass

A tobacco plant, with large veiny leaves, grows outdoors in a small plastic nursery pot on a bed of wood chips.

Tobacco

A Vicks Plant, with small delicate succulent-like green leaves, grows in abundant clusters in a shallow outdoor pot.

Vicks Plant

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