From Soil to Sky

Featured in Evermore Magazine: Issue 4

By Texas Tech University

June 7^th, 2023

The distance from the earth to the stars is great, but for Vikram Baliga, horticulture lecturer and the manager of the University Greenhouse and Horticultural Gardens, the distance closes quickly.

Many know Baliga as the hilariously quirky guy who adds googly eyes to plants and garden tools. He is locally famous for his interesting approach to teaching, his original podcasts, Planthropology and In the Grow, and his presence on multiple social media platforms. He doesn’t take himself too seriously; on any given day, he may be teaching a class of 100-plus students, mending irrigation lines, working with plants or making TikTok-style videos while dressed as a T. rex. His research seeks to increase the efficient use of plants and resources in an urban environment.

“From improving the soil to landscaping with edible plants, I’m interested in finding ways to make our home and urban greenspaces more beautiful, efficient and productive,” he says.

Baliga’s love for horticulture is rooted deeply in his childhood.

“My mom and I lived with my grandparents until I was about 10 years old,” he recalls. “Some of my earliest memories are of learning about plants and gardening with my granddad. He was a doctor in a lower-income community in East Lubbock, and I vividly remember him accepting homegrown fruits, vegetables, eggs or whatever people could give as payment for his medical services. He taught me that growing plants and harvesting your own food was a path to power and dignity for so many people, especially the disenfranchised.

“I miss him, but keeping that in mind is a way to remember him and keep him close. I find that being able to teach other people that same concept is fulfilling for me in a way I couldn’t have imagined.”

After days spent teaching classes, tending to his research and the greenhouse and gardens, in the evenings, Baliga’s eyes turn from the soil to the sky.

His love for photography, sparked as a teenager, has always had a profound impact on how he sees the world around him.

But a few years ago, he began to expand that beyond the borders of our world. On a trip to New Mexico with his wife, Baliga decided to try astrophotography and, before long, he was hooked.

“I love the weird balance of peace and tension,” he explains. “Being in the middle of nowhere at 2 in the morning, especially on a calm night, is quiet, restful and starkly unnerving. Sounds are intensified in that profound quiet in a way that makes you very aware of how much we don’t know and can’t see. I like getting lost in that.

“It’s a powerful companion in my mind to the beautiful chaos of the Milky Way. So many of the colors and lights we see are the violent births and deaths of stars, often happening thousands of years before we see them. In spite of that, it looks quiet and serene from here. It makes me feel small in a way that makes me also feel like an important part of something limitless and incredible. I love the tension.”