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Miley Cyrus has been open about her drug and alcohol use, as well as her sobriety journey. She was sober for almost a year, beginning in late 2019, but relapsed sometime towards the end of 2020. She gave some really great interviews in which she talked about her addictive personality and how she accepted her relapse for what it was while continuing to move forward. Miley has been back on the wagon for almost five years and has worked hard to maintain her sobriety.
Miley is on the cover of CR Fashion’s Fall/Winter Issue. Pamela Anderson did the interview, which you can read in full here. At one point, Miley brings up how much she loves gardening. She finds gardening to be therapeutic and considers it a “very personal process” that you see through from start to finish. Gardening also helps keep her grounded, which is an important part of her sober lifestyle.
“Gardening is something you do for yourself. When we’ve shared so much of ourselves, having those little precious times with something simple — like putting a seed in the ground and nurturing it — it becomes a very personal process,” Cyrus tells Anderson in the interview released on Sept. 22.
She then gets deeper into the positive impact gardening has had on her, including how it has become like a “medicine” for her in her sober journey.
“Having that has been the medicine that’s kept me grounded in my sober lifestyle,” she adds. “It’s part of a practice, the way yoga might be: getting out into nature, doing something with my hands, and having a creative outlet that isn’t about fame or success.”
She notes how it’s a “genuine win” to put seeds in the ground and actually see flowers grow in the spring. She was inspired to do that at her own home, she says, thanks to photographer Vijat Mohindra.
“I did that on a hillside a while ago. I was leaving for a tour, and I just threw seeds out, thinking maybe when I came home something magic would happen. And it did,” she explains.
Referring to Mohindra, Cyrus adds, “He threw these seeds, and I swear it never would’ve happened without him. When I came back, there were 10,000 daisies. I was like, ‘We didn’t even throw these out—why do I have 40 species of roses in my backyard?’ I came back and my whole hillside looked like a princess fairy garden.”
She also credits her mom, Tish Cyrus, for exposing her to gardening and always having plants in the house while she was growing up.
“My dad always said our house looked like an old folks’ home, because she’d have flowers in every single room — that was very ’90s, with all the potpourri,” she recalled. “My mom always loved flowers; she always had them around the house. But it was simple gardening.”
Miley adds that her mom started to become an “incredible gardener” during the COVID-19 pandemic, when “she really discovered something unique” about her gardening abilities.
“A plant could be dead for a year, and she’ll bring it back to life,” the “Something Beautiful” singer says.
Sing it with me: ”She can grow herself flowers…” Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. I love that song. Anyway, I think it’s awesome that Miley’s taken up gardening. This past summer, she revealed that her sobriety is a big reason why she is not touring right now. She needs structure and going on tour messes with her stability. It makes perfect sense that gardening would be such a positive, grounding force in her life. It’s also wonderful that she’s put in the work and is sharing that with fans who may need encouragement on overcoming addictions.
When Miley mentioned that her mother was also into gardening, it got me curious. Tish used to smoke a lot of weed and Miley once admitted in a 2018 interview that after taking a lengthy break from pot, her mom got her hooked on it again. As it turns out, Tish quit smoking last year and has credited Miley with helping her through her own sobriety journey. Good for both of them! It really sounds like Miley is in a great place right now. I truly love that for her.