TACOMA, Wash. — Inside a small but busy shop bursting with life and color Blake Mara takes care of dozens of companions.
“Plants are known to boost your creativity,” she says. “They boost your productivity and of course they clean the air.”
The Neighborhood Plant Project, located inside Tacoma’s Freighthouse Square, may look like your basic plant shop to customers but there's so much more going on. The plants sold here fund a delivery service Mara started during the pandemic.
“I just got to thinking that there are a lot of people out there that are isolated and homebound and they need some purpose,” Mara says. “And not everybody can take care of a pet, but everybody needs something to take care of.”
Jennifer English, who works for Spaceworks Tacoma which helped furnish Mara with a low-rent business space, says plants have been good company to elderly people she's known.
“They help clear out the negative energy,” she says. “They make you feel better without you even knowing it.”
“Basically I just asked people to contact me,” says Mara. “All I needed was a first name and a delivery address. Everything is kept confidential and I just started dropping plants off to people
“The very first time I did a delivery, the lady -- she cried!
“And then when they read the handwritten card that just tells them they are loved and thought of and they're not alone, it's just amazing.”
Peach McDouall asked the Neighborhood Plant Project to make a delivery to a neighbor who doesn’t get out much. She remembers how cactus plants helped her through a rough time.
“I lined them up on my windowsills because I wanted to remind myself that really beautiful things grow in the desert and that even during the hard time I was going through, something beautiful was going to grow,” she says.
The Neighborhood Plant Project is all part of the second act in Mara's life.
“It's a 180 from what I used to do before,” she says.
For years Mara wore a gun, working in protective services for the state of Texas.
“I spent years knocking on doors, frightening people,” she says.
Now when she knocks it's to deliver something green, alive and full of hope.
“It is the most beautiful feeling to give somebody something with no strings attached,” she says. “Just here's a gift because somebody was thinking about you.”
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