The Green Side of TikTok

This discussion includes a List (alphabetically-sorted and annotated as to topics) of garden-related and green-industry accounts I’ve encountered on TikTok. Skip to the List of TikTok gardening accounts.

TikTok as a Platform for Plant-related Content:  Gardeners, botanists, farmers, nurserymen, landscapers, plant collectors – plantspeople across the board, have come to communicate in the many digital and social media platforms available, each venue having its particular character and configurations.  For short-form video, an extensive, far-flung, and varied community has emerged in the TikTok (TT) ether, with channels established by people of diverse backgrounds and levels of interest.  Some Creators come with experience from other social media platforms, posting extracts of previously-developed, typically scripted and highly-edited material. Those contributors often host websites as well, and may depend on social media as professional outreach or marketing. At the other extreme we encounter people who develop content original to their TikTok accounts.  Those endemic TikTok natives may use on-board TikTok video and editing capabilities with little reference to other platforms.  At this end we see the free-range nature of TikTok, often raw, frequently copycat, and at times, unaffectedly genuine. As far as I know, this platform doesn’t enlist AI to soft-edit content as we learn is quietly built into YouTube curation of posts. The complete spectrum is diverse, with video and stills recorded, edited (or raw), and downloaded from many software sources.  

Regardless as to origin, work is easiest when videos conform to a 9:16 portrait (vertical) aspect ratio (though accounts can post in landscape, and even square).  The preferred format is MP4, with recommended duration of 1-3 minutes and a 10 minute time limit.  I capture video with my iPhone using the Apple software and then post directly to TikTok.  It’s a no-hassle three-step process.  It’s uncomplicated; with a solid connection to the internet, posting can take less than a minute.

The attraction of TikTok to many contributors is the single-take ethos, a legacy of its amateur-hour beginnings.  Unedited recordings remain common, though many authors will capture a sequence of outtakes, splicing them together with any of various editors (I use Adobe Rush).  High-end channels show more professional production and editing, particularly characteristic of: 1. Creators who post on other platforms, 2. institutional sources that require finished professional-level outreach, and 3. commercial industries using the platform for product or service promotion.  

Much TT gardening content is evergreen, but TikTok thrives on trends.  Useful and engaging, the continual shift in dynamics means people rush to keep up. Copy-cat posts drive a frenzy, but are often a flash in the pan as some new craze emerges.  When I first encountered TT, shanty songs abounded.  A noted Creator quit his postal job to build his empire, only to vanish completely and abruptly from the scene the following month.  One of this year’s most persistent trends had scores of Creators copying Keith Lee’s style of critiquing fast food restaurants from the driver’s seat of a car.  What’s hot in TT news is also quick-moving.  In early August the platform was flooded with commentary about Jesus Christ Superstar at the Hollywood Bowl, on the heals of Superman.  The following week was dominated by South Park, soon replaced by Gavin Newsom’s trolling of Trump who was occupied bending the knee to Putin.

Those trends reflect how politics have come to plague TikTok. The most discomforting change over my 5 years on the platform has been the flood of far Right commentary, both by people and bots, evincing far Left responses.  That surfaced, of course, when the current Administration promoted TikTok to MAGA followers as a way of diluting what had been an obviously liberal-lean.  The fallout for the Left has been militant engagement, such that accounts are serially-reported for rules violations, precipitating automated censorship.

The News and Political commentary are complicated by TikTok’s natal lack of timelines or effective anchoring to calendar dates (unrelated to the date of posting).  Any post you encounter could be recent or ancient information, here or there, original or reposted, since Creators can plagiarize sites, assume pseudonyms and avoid specifying dates and location. This may be based on the capricious and trending ad hoc nature of the app as it first exploded, but now serves to blur, even eliminate context, establishing false relevance and generating TikTok-specific chaos.  Viewers get charged up about information that turns out to be old or even fabricated.  Ironically and regretfully, misinformation serves as clickbait, prompting response and egging on the algorithm to spread the poison further.

Because Creators tend to obscure their identities (especially women with families), even adopting the identity of someone else, there are real authenticity and veracity issues.  Account identity appears to be unregulated, non-standardized; thousands of accounts use Elon Musk as the banner name, including his likeness in the profile image.  I don’t know how this is allowed.  I’ve blocked over 100 of those typically-angry contributors, and several more appear in my feed daily.  If you’ve ever grown Ipheon, it’s hydra-like; the more you chop it up, the more it multiplies.  Where is Heracles when you need him?

TikTok isn’t plagued simply by anger.  Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, people commonly copy postings by other Creators, or grab video content from other media, posting it as though original.  There are verified cases in which a creator posted original content that garnered a modest number of clicks, followed by another account holder who copied and posted the entire video, just to see that go viral.  There are even reports of the originating Creator being penalized for attempts to reclaim ownership.

Atop issues of transparency in origination, behind the curtain we have the typically arcane algorithm.  From the viewer perspective, we focus on that programming logic because this intelligence determines what content is served to us.  My impression is that the TikTok-rithm assumes a short interest span.  A subscriber checks boxes to indicate the kind of programming desired, but the fickle TikTok algorithm continually analyzes the kinds of programming it perceives most engaging to the viewer and shifts to present that content with a goal of holding the viewer’s attention, re-sculpting the For You Page (FYP) from one moment to another (despite preferences in checked boxes), quickly taking a viewer down a rabbit hole. Though your main interest might be gardening-related, and post after post in one session coincides with that interest, you can suddenly find yourself entertained by a sequence of sourdough specialists, or more commonly buried in an avalanche of political posturing by simply “liking” or responding to click bait, or even replaying something to gain a better understanding of the message.  When this happens, I’ve discovered one out is to switch to “favorites” for escape or re-set the algorithm by searching some horticultural creators and exploring their pages.  That usually clears the memory and sets things right.

Given these many complicated and serious issues, why does TikTok flourish?  Why, despite the abuses, are there so many wonderful Creators and postings on “how-to” gardening, big-time farming, and a wide range of green industry topics available on this platform?  Well, the TikTok interface remains straightforward, intuitive, and free. The interface is uncomplicated and chronological indexing of content (which seems unlimited) is unrivaled in the industry.  For the Creator, quick and easy TT posts address a potentially massive audience that readily accepts raw, unscripted footage.  Moreover, though “views” for many Creators are modest (just a few hundred), almost every Creator has had at least one  post go “viral”  – a real adrenaline rush.  One of mine, from two years ago, has reached 1.7 million views and remains active. I actually suspect the algorithm conspires to push the occasional post to viral status.  Like hitting a jackpot on a slot machine, this goads the Creator into mining the ether for another gold nugget.  The optimism is encouraged by “pinning” – a Creator can pin up to three older posts to feature at the top of their page.  For some reason, a curious case of false modesty perhaps, I haven’t pinned any postings and take no advantage of offers for enhanced publicity.  Or, maybe my reluctance relates to the realization that baked into instant success of a single post is the pleasure and pain of reading countless comments.  Some are gratuitously hateful, even threatening – one reason people are cautious about including much personal information. 

Thankfully, the tenor isn’t so vicious in the backwaters of gardening. Creators who have found a solid niche move along, building their “brand” in a community that appreciates, even anticipates new content.  The ability of the audience to ask questions, elaborate on topics, and co-create is simultaneously personal and public.  Creators with character, charisma, energy, and a message can garner real income from “clicks”, further commercializing their accounts with “merch” and sales referrals.  Thousands of people have built content equity and audience fidelity in TikTok and other social media platforms, producing streams of income unimagined in past centuries. This industry has upended and democratized outreach, changing the ways we socialize, learn, and equip ourselves.  It’s one of the core reasons so many powerful and competing forces are aligned in destroying American access to this platform.

But what seems to be the final storm arrived in December 2025 with transfer of ownership to US ownership and oversight. How TikTok may change is unclear, but most likely those changes will impact the political sphere; gardeners and gardening are hardly challenged since the greem world is background to those who pose and argue. Regardless as to what changes we may witness, there’s little chance Creators will quit their efforts.  For many, their livelihoods are now based on outreach.  For everyone, their social communities have morphed to digital webs of relationships.  Once the platform is repositioned, it will be curious to see whether Creators and Viewers abandon and move on.  Studying TikTok at this moment is important, a useful way of knowing the landscape before some future diaspora; recording the addresses for existing accounts may be vital for those who wish to reconnect when the great Index that is TikTok is dismantled.  Knowing the handles (the brands, including Linktree and Substack info) and nature of content for the existing assembly of Creators will be essential as a way of following them in the future.  Certainly, many will bother to post a link to their new platform addresses, and most will retain their names/tags. But we know little about what will happen.  As we saw earlier in 2025, TikTok can go dark at a moment’s notice, like a great brain suddenly died.

How do I rate or explain the significance of a Creator’s profile?  One obvious criterion would be “Followers”, which many people may not understand.  A Follower is someone who added your profile to their list of Creators that show up in the ‘Following’ feed (versus ‘For You’, ‘Shop’, or ‘STEM’ feeds.  Having 21k followers does not mean items I post will ever be seen by those people.  So the Followers number simply tells me how many people have seen one of my posts and wouldn’t mind seeing another in the future.  As a measure, Followers also reflects a changing base; some well-developed accounts are new to the platform, and haven’t amassed the likely audience; it’s a huge field in which discovery is quixotic.

Another data point is “Likes” – I’ve accumulated 446.4k Likes, which means that over the past 5 years people have hit the “heart” icon regarding one of my several thousand postings.  That also reflects odd biases. People who want to let me know they are watching, or just want to support the kind of information posted will hit the Like button, even on rather dreary content. At that level, it’s a Kilroy was here note, or at best an Atta’boy. Overall, however, I believe Likes better reflect engagement than Followers.

More useful data come from examining the page that indexes a Creator’s postings; include an extensive Listing below.  In your browser, follow the link for an account and you’ll land on a particular post in TikTok.  You do not have to sign in to view the post or gain access to the full range. Simply click on the Creator profile (just below the video frame) to see visit the account and see their videos in chronological order.  Each video will bear a date (which simply reflects the date the video was posted) and a number reflecting the number of “Followers” for a particular post as well as the current number of “Views”.  Followers, as mentioned earlier, are simply people who linked that account to their Following feed. A View reflects the fact that the video was opened on someone’s account (even if briefly).  Note:  Views are a unique record; if someone viewed the same video five times, TikTok records only one instance. 

The number of views reflects how aggressively the algorithm has served up your content, which is that magic formula balancing responses from the first few people who interacted.  This means, of course, the opening few seconds and the prestige of an author are crucial.  If someone glances at the opening, then scrolls right past, there’s less chance the post will be offered to others.  If someone watches it fully and interacts, the algorithm amps up the level at which the post is dished out to others.  Creators who have conquered this trick and show consistently high viewership are those who transition from Creator to Influencer – an Influencer may not necessarily have superior knowledge of a topic.  

What is needed to better-consolidate and understand this Community?  To address this question, one first has to define “community” – which isn’t easy. There seems to be no way to “know” the broad garden-related Community because the algorithmic brain that serves out content on TikTok redirects my browse on the fly, bombarding me with content tied to some arcane thread tied to the video the AI has decide just captured my interest (even if I was distracted and allowed the post to play out).

The sheer number of accounts makes exploration and documentation daunting. Though seemingly straightforward, getting my arms around TikTok plant and garden related content would demand reviewing the output of thousands of Creators, perhaps tens of thousands.  A competent summary may not be possible. However, through general survey (anecdotally) I infer that many of the more active home gardening Creators are young to middle-age homeowners, while the population of agriculturists skews toward those professionals more interested in technology.  Regardless, Creators are passionate and energetic, some speaking to lifestyle, others using the platform to showcase their own trials and lessons learned. Creators who emerge as Influencers seem to have an upper hand with the algorithm, like judges in ice skating who cut the acknowledged doyen a bit of slack sometimes.  

Additional to home gardeners and farmers, plant-related content comes from environmentalists, researchers, educators, commercial nurseries, and institutions.  Together, these Creators constitute are a barely-connected community of informed, motivated, opinionated, and vocal personalities. They share many goals and ideals, one of which is the inevitable drive to capitalize on investment of effort or increase marketing. 

It has always been true that horticulturists and plant collectors grow into a role of cottage industry and small business.  Sharing expertise and materials is fulfilling, but it doesn’t pay the bills.  Leaders are noted for turning their hobbies into a business, if for no other reason than to write-off related costs against their taxes as business expense.  We see that trend magnified in social media and web-based efforts.  Almost anyone who dedicates considerable effort to posting videos will succumb to commercialization; it’s unavoidable.  The passion to connect successfully and extensively inspires people to drop their “day jobs” and gain income from what was formerly a hobby.  Who doesn’t prefer to work in a field they love? These former lay horticulturists are now “professional” educators and venders.  That’s not avaricious; it’s natural.  People need to make a living; there’s nothing scurrilous about the trend. 

Even for the calm topic of gardening, there are perils.  News travels fast in Social Media, the more recondite the matter, the faster it moves and metastasizes as conspiracy. Jealousies are magnified; criticisms erupt as fighting words. People love a good brawl. That means any profile should be well-considered, with a soft-touch, and sufficient pondering….

Reviewing information available from the great range of gardening and green-industry Creators, I believe there are real gaps that could stand champions, gaps become more obvious in review of the listing below. This modest attempt to sample and categorize TikTok profiles seems to hit on many themes:  1. Home Gardening (Urban and Rural) focusing on productive gardening, featuring Traditional Plots, Raised Beds, and Hydroponics; 2. Homesteading, Permaculture, and Small Scale produce; 3. Agriculture, both huge farms and commercial support systems; 4. Forestry;  5. Native Plants and Conservation; 5. Nursery and Landscape installation; 6. Specialty Plants (Bonsai, Orchids, etc.); 7.  Design and Landscape; 8. Basic Science, STEM; 9. Arts & Crafts (Photography, Illustration, Woodworking); 10. Home skills such as canning and cooking.  Noticeable scarcities are landscape architects (as different from landscape designers), experimental research botanists, plant pathologists, and cutting-edge agricultural researchers.  As I expand and explore offerings, I should be able to identify other areas that could be developed.


 An Alphabetical Browsing Listing of TikTok Plant-related Accounts (Encountered not Summative) I removed the links because links copied from individual posts will change as a component of the algorithm. Simply highlight and search the TikTok – identifier which should take you directly to the landing page for that channel. Links copied from the home page should remain stable.

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