Horticulture therapy drives connection at Maryland plant shop BotaniGal

Inside a garden center in Montgomery County, Maryland, a 16-year-old girl was starting her first job. She found a chlorotic plant with yellowing leaves from a chlorophyll deficiency and asked her boss, “Should we throw it away?”

Her boss replied, “Oh no, we’ll just fertilize it, and it’ll be OK.”

The girl thought to herself, “There’s no way this plant will ever look OK again.” But within a couple of weeks, the plant was beautiful and green again.

From that moment on, the girl — Hannah Brookfield — fell in love with plants, and more importantly, she fell in love with talking to people about plants.

“That was when I learned you can manipulate a plant’s environment to make it happy, and as a horticulture therapist, I’ve learned through my years of horticulture therapy that you can change a person’s environment with plants to make them happy. It comes full circle, which is really cool,” says Brookfield, now the owner of BotaniGal, a houseplant boutique in Sykesville, Maryland.

Brookfield received a bachelor’s degree in horticulture from Penn State. She is a certified professional horticulturist through the American Society for Horticultural Science, and for nine years, she was the horticulture therapy program manager for Emerge Inc.’s Maryland greenhouse, where she did job training for adults with developmental disabilities.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, she started BotaniGal and sold houseplants at a farmers market. Once she realized she could sell houseplants full-time, she quit her job and opened her brick-and-mortar location in 2022. She moved to a larger location in Sykesville, Maryland, in 2024.

“When I started it in 2020 with a little consignment space in the farmers market, I started with two little shelves in the back,” Brookfield says. “Then eventually, it evolved into me taking over a fourth of the store, and BotaniGal became this oasis for people to come and be surrounded by plants and chat about plants; it helped people during that really difficult time.”

BotaniGal carries a variety of houseplants, from common to rare and at varying price points, to cater to customers from newbie plant parents to connoisseurs with established collections. The shop carries hundreds of varieties of interior houseplants, ranging from 2 inches to 12 inches, with a few herbs in the spring.

“I don’t want to be known as a shop that has plants; I want to be known as a houseplant shop,” Brookfield says. “I try to keep it interesting for everybody because I want to appeal to everybody in the houseplant world.”

Brookfield sources most of her plants from Apopka, Florida, but she also works with some local growers. If a plant hobbyist with an established collection has a rare plant she’s interested in carrying, she’ll buy propagations from them. She’s also propagated a few plants herself.

BotaniGal also carries a custom, compost-based soil blend called Growth Spurt Dirt. It contains Mycobacterium vaccae, a soil bacterium which she says can boost serotonin production in the brain.

“Just by working with the soil, you get a little mental health boost,” she says.

Creating a memorable plant shopping experience

The shop features tons of natural light, earthy tones, wood and of course tons of plants.

Brookfield’s goal isn’t only to provide a service that customers leave after; she wants to invoke a feeling, have them remember the store and enjoy their visit beyond simply shopping.

“People want to hang out and talk at my store, not just shop; I don’t think I could ever achieve anything better than that,” Brookfield says.

BotaniGal also has a shop dog, Mooney. She greets people at the door, and customers love seeing her when they’re shopping.

“I’m curating an experience,” Brookfield says. “I want you to walk in and be amazed. I want you to tell me how pretty it is. I want you to be in love with my dog.”

Passersby can follow their noses to BotaniGal — the shop has a signature scent that Brookfield sprays throughout the store. She partnered with a local business, Unwined Candles, to create the scent, which includes lemon, bergamot, ginger and jasmine and is available for purchase as a candle, room spray, wax melt or car diffuser. “I like to tell people your entire life can smell like my shop,” Brookfield says.

Horticulture therapy

In Brookfield’s experience at Emerge, she saw how working with plants improved people’s behaviors and moods. “It was really fascinating to me,” she says.

Brookfield loves the store and retail space, but horticulture therapy is a huge part of what she does, and she incorporates it into her business. She grew up with a brother who is neurodiverse and also hired an employee who is neurodiverse.

“She is incredible and helps me with inventory and pricing,” Brookfield says. “Being able to offer a job to somebody in that population is really important to me.”

BotaniGal hosts offsite sessions, where Brookfield brings the plants and activities directly to clients. She’s traveled to nursing homes, businesses and day programs. After the retail space closes, she also hosts onsite classes, including houseplant repotting, general houseplant care, plant propagation, dish garden design, terrarium building and flower arranging.

“You can tailor any horticulture activity based on the health goal you’re trying to achieve and to any population,” Brookfield says.