Learning As You Grow With The Easter Gardener

Whether it’s the preservatives and pesticides found in mass-marketed produce or the genetic mutilation of strawberries the size of your hand, visiting a grocery store in 2026 can feel as though you’re sacrificing money to prioritize nutrition. While the desire to grow your own vegetables may seem unrealistic — especially for those living in a city — local gardener Rebecca Easter is burying that narrative underneath mounds of nutrient-dense soil nestled neatly in sustainably-sourced planter boxes. With the aid of social media, community resources and the guidance of other gardeners, Easter has transformed her rental home’s backyard into a lively space decorated fruitfully with wildflowers, pollinators and fresh produce.

One would never suspect that a quaint Salt Lake City home conveniently located to the immediate south of a Smith’s parking lot would actually be the perfect location to nurture a small greenhouse, eclectic rows of colorful pots and whimsical makeshift beds and planters growing veggies, flowers and herbs. Easter, known through her social media as The Easter Gardener, has been practicing self-sufficiency through gardening ever since reading the literary classic The Secret Garden. “It changed my life,” Easter says. “I closed the book, went to Walmart, bought two little pots and filled them with one flower each. I was just done after that.”

What began as a patio filled with flowers at her home in Tucson, Arizona led to Easter continuing to plant as she and her husband moved to Utah in 2020. At the height of COVID-19, Easter recalls feeling, “desperate for a community. I thought, ‘I should start an Instagram that is just plants.’ I didn’t want all of the negativity. I just wanted plants and gardens and loveliness.” That same evening, Easter remembers her husband finding an old bookshelf in the trash, which he repurposed to become Easter’s first raised garden bed planted with tomatoes and herbs.

“I didn’t want all of the negativity. I just wanted plants and gardens and loveliness.”

“I’ve been able to learn through my Instagram,” she says. “That’s what I wanted. I wanted to learn from other people because we don’t have this ancestral knowledge passed down from generation to generation anymore.” Easter notes that she’s found a community of gardeners online that have answered questions, offered support, lent out tools and helped her feel less alone as she continues to build her garden through trial and error. “Fail fast,” she advises. “The quicker you know something’s not working then you can fix it and redirect. Every time you fail, you learn.”

Beyond social platforms, Easter also credits community gardens as being a great resource for those interested in learning to grow. She first rented a plot at Wasatch Community Gardens as a way to — both literally and metaphorically — get her hands dirty. If newcomers prefer to learn at home, however, Easter emphasizes using what you already have to get started, motioning around her yard toward the number of repurposed buckets and older pots with sprouts already visible. While you may need to drill a drainage hole yourself, the only other items you really need are dirt and seeds (which you may also be able to grab for free through local seed libraries found at any public library near you!).

“The quicker you know something’s not working then you can fix it and redirect. Every time you fail, you learn.”

From a quick scroll through Easter’s current gardening journey, viewers can find plenty of handy tips and tricks including recycling old cardboard and bundles of sticks as weed barriers under soil, utilizing fabric grow bags to produce potatoes, collecting dandelion heads to steep your own dandelion tea and plenty of candid shorts that capture her badass determination to continue failing upward — all while likely wearing a heat-protectant hat and flowy sundress.

Currently, Easter is working on her certification to become a Master Gardener from Utah State. As she prepares for the spring-to-summer transition, her backyard is littered with pots, planters and seed trays containing strawberries, tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, peppers, watermelons, lettuce, peas, cilantro, dill as well as many flowers and wildflowers to support pollinators. Follow her Instagram and TikTok @theeastergardener for gardening tips and updates following a fruitful harvest!

Read more about local educators and activists:
The Educated Tree Hugger: Content Creation With Justin Davies
The Borderlands Conference: The Divide Where We Come Together