Kevin Espiritu’s Epic Gardening is all about inspiration. Founded in 2013 and designed specifically to use social media as a teaching tool, his platform now reaches millions of aspiring gardeners in all corners of the world.
The website not only provides educational resources but also focuses on sustainable growing methods like aquaponics and hydroponics. Espiritu’s goal is to show a range of experiences and perspectives from gardeners from all walks of life — proving that anyone can have a green thumb.
The platform began as a hobby but has grown into a massively popular content site with seven figure-followers on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
Espiritu’s hobby has also turned into a podcast with more than 10 million lifetime downloads and a blog that reaches double that many visits yearly.
In addition, Espiritu’s books — “Field Guide to Urban Gardening” and “Grow Bag Gardening: The Revolutionary Way to Grow Bountiful Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits and Flowers in Lightweight, Eco-friendly Fabric Pots” — teach readers how to grow food no matter whether they live in a city or the country, an apartment or a farm, or the U.S. or Africa. For Espiritu, it’s always been about eliminating barriers to growing healthy food at home.
“The mission of Epic Gardening is simple but ambitious: teach the world to grow,” he said. “Cultivating plants has been a core part of human life for thousands of years, but info on how to learn the skill set is sorely outdated and inaccessible. My aim with Epic Gardening has always been to ‘learn in public’ and showcase my growing journey on modern platforms directly to my audience.”
Last year, The Chernin Group (TCG) invested $17.5 million, announced in January 2022, to fund the company’s growth and create even greater engagement on all platforms.
“From a consumer point of view, learning how to garden with Kevin and team as your companions is an incredibly rich and rewarding experience,” said Luke Beatty, TCG partner.
Content ranges from collecting and using rainwater, what to do about crows, how seed machines work, how to grow your air plants at home, how to grow leafy greens, and whether “vine-ripened” is a myth. The bottom line is that Epic Gardening believes everyone can “grow their own green thumb” in a circular and sustainable way that benefits the Earth’s land, water, and air.
Photo Courtesy Epic Gardening “My goal is to teach 10 million people or more how to grow their own food and reconnect to nature,” Espiritu said in a YouTube video. “Whether you live in a tiny apartment, a townhouse, a front yard … or a sprawling rural acreage, there is something to be learned at Epic Gardening. And if you think you had to grow up as a gardener to know how to magically grow plants, don’t think that at all.”
