“Anybody can grow a plant,” he says. “Everybody’s entitled to plants.”
everything that is best about the eclectic LA enclave where designers, architects and musicians pioneered the California lifestyle. Through his workshops, pop-ups and store, Jenkins has brought his love of plants and gardening to Silver Lake’s diverse community of longtime Latinx families and striving young artists who share a common love of the natural world.
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To further this mission, The Plant Provocateur Jenkins grows and sells plants and seeds ranging from a few dollars to many hundreds in his lush home greenhouse in Silver Lake. He also focuses on plants that are particularly suited to Silver Lake’s brand of city living. “I do mainly interior plants or houseplants. I like to specialize in the funky and the strange and the unique and the hard to find,” he says. “I find the more off-the-beaten-path philodendrons or the off-the-beaten-path ferns, or the stuff that’s got really unique colors that most people don’t notice in nature that the plants are producing themselves.”
Jenkins has a passion for aroids, plants that flourish in low light, and he is currently excited about the rare black ZZ plant he is growing. “I love philodendrons. I love anything that transports me back to tropical vacations, and places that made me feel like I’m on vacation. I can check out. I feel wonderful and relaxed, like I’m in another world,” he says.
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Jenkins’ passion for gardening began at an early age. Growing up a Black kid in rural all-white Michigan, he was intrigued by ads for $5 seed packets in the back of the Sunday paper. Overwhelmed with curiosity and wonderment for the natural world, Jenkins asked for an allowance just so he could order the seeds. He soon discovered that he had a miraculously green thumb. “Once I graduated from seeds, I used to go exploring out in the woods and I would find all these wildflowers,” he recalls. “I used to dig them up and bring them home and plant them around my house.”
Jenkins soon graduated to growing corn, potatoes, and other produce on his family’s 5-acre property. In the midst of an often chaotic childhood, he found stability and satisfaction in gardening. “For me, it was an escape and very comforting,” Jenkins says. “You’re creating this new life…that is giving you these benefits of being beautiful, or if it’s something that’s edible, it’s providing you with food. If it’s something that’s fragrant, it’s providing you with wonderful scents and smells.”
In his 20s, Jenkins threw himself into the hectic world of film post-production. Between gigs, he found solace in his childhood passion. “I would end up at home in my backyard, and the best way for me to decompress was to just sit down and put my hands in the dirt,” Jenkins recalls. “That led to me going, ‘Wow, this really relaxes me, this makes me feel really good.’” Eager to share this joy with others, he went back to school, earning a degree in landscape architecture from University of California, Berkeley.
Jenkins was soon designing and managing gardens in Northern California and running his design firm Lushland. In 2011 he wrote the book Sunset Outdoor Design & Build: Container Gardening, and moved with his husband from green, rainy NorCal to the dry desert landscape of Southern California.
The two settled in Silver Lake, and Jenkins decided it was time for a new challenge. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to dig around the garden so much anymore. I want to follow my passion of bringing plants to people,’” he says. Between 2012 and 2014, Jenkins held workshops and pop-ups selling some of his favorite plants throughout Los Angeles. He decided to open a brick-and-mortar store as a home base, where plant lovers could buy plants, learn about plants and interact with each other one on one. He found a cozy little nook behind Silver Lake meeting place the Muddy Paw Coffee, off of the legendary Sunset Junction.
In 2015, The Plant Provocateur opened in Silver Lake at 3318 Sunset Blvd.. Jenkins became an integral part of the community, holding workshops on everything from Succulents 101 to Japanese wood carving and botanical essential oils. For Jenkins, his ability to serve people of all backgrounds was an affirmation of the power of plants. “I’m about all people having access to plants,” he says. “People were able to feel comfortable and feel like it was a safe space to come into and look at stuff, and not feel like ‘I can’t afford anything,’ or you know, ‘I shouldn’t be in here.’”
The store catered to the thriving first- and second-generation Latinx immigrant population, which had called Silver Lake home for decades, as well as the newer entertainment industry-focused hipster crowd. “I got a lot of clientele from old-school Silver Lake, Echo Park, Los Feliz that were like, ‘We’ve lived here for years. We love our plants. We love our community.’ And then I got a lot of new people moving in and saying, ‘Hi, my husband and I just moved here to Silver Lake with a newborn,’ — first-time homeowners, stuff like that — ‘and we wanted to bring some life to our house.’”
In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Jenkins closed his brick-and-mortar shop and pivoted to pop-ups and online sales, offering delivery and pickup. He has been heartened by the skyrocketing interest in gardening during the pandemic, seeing homebound folks taking the same comfort in plants that he has always found. “People are isolating— people want something in their lives to make them feel good, make them feel like the air is getting clean, make them feel like they can care for something that can give them beauty,” he says.
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Hank Jenkins Believes in the Power of Plants
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Hank Jenkins Believes in the Power of Plants
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A Wild West Dish Reimagined in Silver Lake
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Silver Lake, LA
A Wild West Dish Reimagined in Silver Lake
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Silver Lake, LA
Words by HADLEY MEARES
Photography by ANNIE GREGORY
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Words by HADLEY MEARES
Photography by ANNIE GREGORY
or Hank Jenkins, dedicated biophilic and owner of the online store
The Plant Provocateur, horticulture isn’t just a job, it’s a form of community activism. A Silver Lake staple, Jenkins represents
or Hank Jenkins, dedicated biophilic and owner of the online store The Plant Provocateur, horticulture isn’t just a job, it’s a form of community activism. A Silver Lake staple, Jenkins represents everything that is best about the eclectic LA enclave where designers, architects and musicians pioneered the California lifestyle. Through his workshops, pop-ups and store, Jenkins has brought his love of plants and gardening to Silver Lake’s diverse community of longtime Latinx families and striving young artists who share a common love of the natural world.