It might be the most eccentric playlist ever made, not for humans, but for houseplants.
Titled Mother Earth’s Plantasia, this 1976 synth record by Mort Garson was composed entirely for the listening pleasure of your succulents, palms, and fiddle-leaf friends. The promise? Play it to your plants, and they’ll grow better.
Each track is dedicated to a different green companion. Think: “Concerto for Philodendron and Pothos,” “Symphony for a Spider Plant,” and “Rhapsody in Green.” And yes, it genuinely sounds like something a monstera might enjoy: dreamy, otherworldly, and gently trippy. But it wasn’t just a gimmick. In the 1970s, a handful of fringe studies suggested that plants might respond to sound, music, and even spoken words. Sonic vibrations, some researchers believed, could stimulate growth or stress responses, much like light and water.
Even Stevie Wonder was inspired by the movement, releasing Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants just three years later. Plantasia, however, remained the cult favourite, an ambient love letter to leaves, roots, and stems.
Its distribution was just as strange as its premise. When the album first launched, you couldn’t buy it in a record store. Instead, it was only available as a free gift, either with a houseplant purchase from LA’s legendary Mother Earth plant shop or with a mattress from Sears. As a result, the album never hit the mainstream and was nearly lost to time. For years, it floated in obscurity, passed from collector to collector, before the master tapes were rediscovered and reissued.
Now, Plantasia is enjoying a renaissance. You can find it on Spotify and vinyl, sometimes even packaged with a little packet of seeds so you can run your own experiment at home.
So… does it actually work? No one can say for sure. But perhaps that’s beside the point.
In a world obsessed with productivity and proof, Plantasia offers something softer: the idea that life grows best when nurtured with joy, intention, and a little bit of weirdness. That maybe playing music for your monstera isn’t about measurable results, it’s about ritual, rhythm, and taking the time to care.
Would your plants grow if they heard music? Maybe. But what if you did?
