Our Plants Are Being Affected By The Music We Listen To, And Here’s How It Works

Your beloved house plants probably don’t come into mind when you’re blasting music in the house, right? Well it turns out they’re also listening, and reacting to, the music that we play around them. Maybe take that into consideration before you go blaring Lizzo again for the 40th time this week – unless, maybe, they like it.

[jwplayer 4UZemIVU]

Back in the 70s, a producer named Mort Garson fell in love with a very specific (and really weird) synth called the Moog. They’re a beautiful instrument that seemingly bends sound into the strangest shapes.

Once he found this new love for the Moog he created the one album that went on to become a cult classic, Plantasia, which is actually music not for humans, but for plants.

What made Plantasia so special to the seemingly-inanimate suckers growing in your house, and back garden? Turns out it utilises a lot of wild theories that plants react to sound wavelengths, by using that creativity to be more productive.

Sounds like a whole bunch of psuedoscience hooey, huh. We kinda thought so too so PEDESTRIAN.TV spoke with the head researcher for Plant Life Balance, Dr. Dominique Hes from the University of Melbourne, about how exactly plants are effectively listening along to our bad karaoke nights, house parties, and other music-listening sessions, and what it’s doing to them.

According to Dr. Dom, plants react to the energy that music produces, and the right level of noise has shown to help plants be more productive with overall growth.

“Plants seem to thrive around between 115 and 250Hz,” Dr Dom said.

So it’s less about the beats per minute (BPM) and more about how the vibrations of the music emulates what is produced in nature.

I definitely just checked what it feels like to listen to a tone between 115 and 250Hz, and it’s like this gentle, low hum. I maybe also scared my cat trying out a tone at 5,000Hz, so don’t make the same mistake as me.

The thing is, is that that bracket of vibration is pleasant to the human ear as well, so Dr. Dom suggested that if we’re listening to music that we like the sound of, it’s likely that our plant babies are going to enjoy it too.

Dr. Dom said research shows that music that manages to mimic other things in the wild – especially pollinators like bees – helps release a molecule called ribonucleic acid, which encourages plants to do everything it needs to survive and thrive.

But like with everything else in nature, plants get exhausted too, so Dr. Dom recommends that you only expose plants to high-frequency music for small periods of time so we don’t stress them out too much through their stomata – which are essentially the plant’s pores.

“You want to expose your plant to music for no more than one to three hours a day,” she said.

“You can imagine that continually being stimulated to open their stomata, and drawing stuff through, that could have long term effects.”

So if you’re planning a big house party or something, where the music’s going to be on for hours, maybe shift your plant babies into a quieter room so they can chill out.

Next question, what music actually works best for plants?

“Jazz seems to work well,” Dr. Dom said.

“They don’t seem to care either way for country music and classical seems to do really well.”

Welp, turns out they simply do not care for Old Town Road, then. Soz Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus.

In a study done by You Had Me At Gardening, it seems that classical music resulted in bushier, greener plants with healthier stems, but heavy metal increased the mass of the plant and made its fruit taste better.

Back to Mort Garson, his Moog synth, and Plantasia. For me it held this really warm feeling of nostalgia, but I couldn’t quite place what it made me nostalgic for.

Dr. Dom reckons that’s because it lies within that golden, plant-friendly wavelength, which humans love to hear as well, because it’s essentially the vibrations of nature.

“An Indian research paper called it ‘Green Music’. It’s music that either mimics, or includes, or is based on natural sounds,” she said.

“It may not sound like that directly, but the same amplitude frequencies are used to inform the way the music sounds.”

Green Music, Dr. Dom tell me, is essentially triggering biophilia – a theory that humans have an innate need to connect with nature, because up until the huge advancements of modern technology, we were out and about, amongst nature and all of its sounds.

plants listening to music
I can hear this gif and it is….so chill.

So though the science isn’t quite 100% legit just yet, there’s definitely studies that show that plants are absorbing the sounds around them.

I guess if you’re trying to grow the hell out of some fruit trees in the yard, blast them with some Deafheaven and you’ll end up with a good harvest this year.

Plant Life Balance will also be touring around the country over the next year to help you keep your plant fam in check, so keep an eye out for when it’s cropping up near you.

More Stuff From PEDESTRIAN.TV