by Melissa Serenda I met the [botanic] love of my life around fifteen years ago, at the greenhouse of my local garden store. I always loved visiting greenhouses, with the lush leaves in all shades of green and the delicious scent of plants, earth, and fertilizer; the whirring fans and the huge variety of plants. I had just moved into an apartment with my future husband, and was always on the lookout for new houseplants to adopt and bring home to furnish our nest. A small shel

by Buddhini Samarasinghe I am a regular visitor to Kew Gardens in London and I was shocked one day when I was in the Princess of Wales Conservatory to see a fluorescent green flower-like thing dangling from the roof. The colour was a bluish-green with purple bits, and I initially thought some pesky kids had hung it up there as a prank. It was only when I got closer to it that I realised it wasn't plastic or fake, it was actually a real flower attached to a real plant called t

by Carrie Perkins I chose Vassar College in part for its stunning library. With stained-glass windows, long wooden tables lit by little lamps, and secret passageways, it reminded me a little bit of Hogwarts. Whether camping out with coffee and snacks to study for exams or just curling up with a book on a rainy day, it became my favorite place to study. So it was to my great surprise that I found an even better study spot toward the end of my time at Vassar: the college’s gree