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Brian Brigantti’s followers and fans are familiar with his hallmark cry of “abundance!” as the influencer films his bountiful harvest. But for Brian, abundance isn’t just a catchphrase, nor is it just about the garden. We talked to Brian about his gardening journey and his new book.
RELATED: Check out Brian’s top five favorite gardening tools and his best tips for beginner gardeners.
Brian Brigantti, gardener and social media personality
Brian Brigantti is the personality and gardener behind @RedleafRanch on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Through his content, he inspires followers to engage with the earth through gardening, homesteading, and sustainable living. He’s also the author of Gardening for Abundance, now available on Amazon.
So first, take us through the years that led you to where you are now and what your big influences were.
I actually have zero background experience in gardening. This is something I kind of stumbled into. I was born and raised in Chicago, lived in San Francisco for 3 years, and lived in New York City for another 3 years to pursue a career in photography. So my background is big city living. It wasn’t until I moved to New York City that I met my now partner, and he grew up gardening. He’s been gardening since he [was a kid] essentially. And he also started a nursery for carnivorous plants. He was growing all of these plants in his backyard in Brooklyn, which was so fascinating to me. He built a little 10-by-6-inch greenhouse in a random backyard lot in Brooklyn. And I just fell in love with his passion for what he was doing.
In the beginning stages of our relationship, his business was booming. It was expanding quicker than he could have imagined. So he found a piece of land here in Tennessee. [While we were in a long distance relationship, I’d] visit him and see what country life was like because it was something I had never experienced before. I just fell in love with the peace and the quiet and the tranquility. And a year after he moved here, I moved here with no plan, just to get away from the noise and the hustle and bustle of New York City and help him with his business.
Coincidentally enough, this was about 6 or 7 months before the pandemic happened in 2020. [I tried gardening] specifically grow our own food, because, with the pandemic, it was very uncertain what our food system was going to be like. And considering I had all the time in the world now that I wasn’t traveling back to New York [for] work, I devoted everything I had to it. I fell in love with it. It felt like such an—pun intended—organic transition in my life.
Even now, this is my fifth year of gardening. Every year, there is always something new to learn, to experience, to discover. And [gardening] has done so much for me, not just growing this abundance of food and nourishing our bodies, but it has done so many things to nourish my soul.
So you came into this without a lot of background knowledge or training. And you learned all of this on your own. How did you get to this place where people are now coming to you for advice?
I always tell people that I was never one to sit in a classroom and just sit and read something and take in that information. I am such a doer. I need to actually be out there experiencing whatever I want to learn and I absorb it much quicker that way. I’m also really grateful that I had my partner by my side. I mean, of course, he was focused on ornamentals and flowers and landscaping and trees and shrubs, but in terms of building a foundation for a garden, they’re very similar. So, I was able to learn a lot from him.
Ultimately, it came down to trial and error, just planting things randomly and wildly and seeing what happened. I think the most important thing is that, when you plant a garden, you need to be present with your garden. Really take the time to observe if something doesn’t go the way you planned, rather than being discouraged by it or completely shutting down to the whole experience. Learn what the mistake was, what went wrong, and grow from it. Luckily with gardening, if you kill something, there’s compost. So your failures quite literally become a part of your success. You’re able to throw whatever has died into compost, it becomes organic matter, and it can feed life into your garden.
Another really beautiful aspect of how all of this kind of transpired through social media is the community aspect. This isn’t just my garden anymore. I was growing for millions, with millions of other people. All of the mistakes and all of the joys that I had along the way were a shared experience with other people. And I learned a lot from them, too.
“With gardening, if you kill something, there’s compost. Your failures quite literally become a part of your success.”
So many people are afraid of failure and mistakes and can get discouraged very quickly.
The “you cannot fail mentality”—we have been conditioned to feel that way. That was drilled into us. Failure is not an option. So when I started gardening and transitioned to country life, I had to redefine what my idea of success was. Allowing yourself to enjoy the process and the journey for what it is makes gardening that much more pleasant an experience.
I can’t imagine my life without a garden now. So if I had given up in the beginning, I never would have experienced all of the nourishment for my body and soul that has come through the years of gardening. Letting something as small as failure stop you from experiencing that, it’s not worth it. It’s so much more worth it to keep going.
What would you say to gardeners who feel like giving up on their plots?
If things aren’t necessarily going your way, don’t be afraid to try something new. I have some people commenting, “I’ve been trying to grow peppers for the past 4 years, and it just never works out.” And I’m like, “Have you tried something else?” Is your whole gardening experience tied to just growing one pepper? There are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of other plants. You can try something new if what you’re trying isn’t necessarily working out.
So that’s rule number one: Don’t give up. What are other baby steps for new gardeners?
Don’t go at it alone. Look for community in gardening. Whether that’s a forum, an community garden group, a gardening class—[anything] to alleviate yourself of the of [the burden of] “I’m doing all of this by myself”. Find others online. Better yet, [find others] locally who are on this journey as well. You’re not alone in it.
Yes, I think we tend to think of gardening as a solo activity because you’re the one who is holding the shovel, you’re the one who’s holding the spade. But we also forget that we can create community simply by seeking it out. So that’s one misconception. What are some other gardening misconceptions you want to dispel?
I feel like one of the biggest misconceptions I see is that a starter garden is expensive. And I feel like that deters a lot of people from even attempting [gardening]. But I always say gardening is as expensive as you want it to be. What’s the intention? Of course, if you want some glamorous Martha Stewart-level garden, of course, you’re going to have to throw down thousands of dollars to start that. But if your goal is just to start growing food or abundance for you and your community, there are so many inexpensive ways to start a garden. Like no-till gardening [also known as no-dig gardening], where you repurpose cardboard, cover a patch of land that you want to grow in, and find manure through local farmers and mulch drops, which are free. Start plants from seed rather than buying potted plants. There are so many affordable ways to tackle gardening.
What are the most rewarding parts about what you do, and some of the most challenging parts?
That’s so funny because I see the most rewarding thing as also one of the most challenging things. It’s the harvests. It’s the bounty. It’s the abundance. It is so rewarding after all those months of hard work and sweat and tears and labor to finally pick that fruit, that veggie off the vine. But then you’ve got to deal with all this abundance.
I am not a professional chef. I do know just how to cook in general. So dealing with the abundance has honestly been the most challenging part. My gosh, I have to harvest tomatoes again. I still have tomatoes from the last harvest. I’m just finding ways to cook, preserve, and make sure that I’m getting the most out of that abundance. I do share with friends, family, and community. But you’ve got to get really creative in the kitchen to use some of these ingredients. This past season I grew giant cabbage [and] giant squash… literally 30 pounds of squash. What am I going to do with all of this? So I’ve been freezing a lot and cooking through it. But it is certainly a lot to deal with. [I’m] very grateful.
What has been the most memorable moment in your gardening journey so far?
There are so many. So I actually get attached to my vegetables. Every day you walk into the garden and it’s like, “Hey Audrey. Hey Bertha!” These are living creatures, these are living things that you are building a relationship with in your garden. Building relationships with your plants makes the experience overall very memorable.
What are your favorite crops to grow?
In terms of plants that need care and attention, I really love growing tomatoes and squash. These are plants that can do very well on their own, but they thrive off of your care and attention, especially tomatoes. If they’re unmanaged, they can get wild and grow absolutely berserk in the garden… Similarly with squash, when you have a trellis or an arch that [tomatoes] latch on to and you have to go in and train their limbs and prune off suckers, it becomes an art form, like you are sculpting the plant as it’s growing. And it just comes back to you building that relationship with that plant.
So tell me about your book.
One of the greatest joys I’ve had in this gardening journey was how much people were learning. So, I really embraced the role of being a teacher. And I was doing some online tutorials, here and there. But the book really came to be as a culmination of all of the questions I got asked frequently. Once you amass an audience of three million people, you get the same questions over and over and over and over again. A publisher reached out asking, “Do you want to write a book?” And the timing was just so great. Yes, I would love to write a book. This is the perfect time.
[I hope] it would just be the greatest guide to give people [trying] to start a garden. Because I’m a beginner myself, I want to be very geared towards beginners and make it very friendly, warm, and inviting—and easy and digestible, so people gain the confidence to get out there and start a garden. I feel like I have certainly covered the technical aspects of gardening, but something I wasn’t really able to dive into [with video courses and tutorials] was the spiritual and more holistic part of gardening. [This book gets into] the philosophies [related to] gardening that have not just enriched my gardening experience, but my life overall. [Essentially, it will] teach people how to live with abundance within the garden and outside of the garden.
You can find Brian’s book, Gardening for Abundance, on Amazon.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
