Pop star Miley Cyrus has likened gardening to a “medicine” that has kept her “grounded” as she marks five years of sobriety from alcohol.
The “Flowers” singer has been sober for several years now, having stopped drinking in 2020 and quit smoking marijuana in 2017.
Cyrus, 32, told Pamela Anderson for CR Fashion Book that the simple things in life have kept her on the straight and narrow.
“Gardening is something you do for yourself,” she said. “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.”
“Having that has been the medicine that’s kept me grounded in my sober lifestyle,” she added.
“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.”
Cyrus said that seeing flowers grow on a hillside in spring is a “genuine win” and also thanked friend and photographer Vijat Mohindra for introducing her to the hobby.
“He [Mohindra] 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?’”
She described the hillside in question as looking like a “princess fairy garden” and that it has been amazing to be “surrounded by beauty in a different way”.
Earlier this year, during an interview with Apple Music 1’s Zane Lowe, Cyrus said that sobriety is something she “needs.”
“I live for it. I mean that it’s changed my entire life,” she said. She also reflected on her decision to briefly drink again in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, before officially quitting.
“I know I needed to fall one more time,” she said. “And I just, I had to. It just never would have happened this way. I just never would have been sitting here.”
Cyrus released her new album, Something Beautiful, in May but barring sporadic performances, hasn’t been on an official tour since 2014.
“It’s really hard to maintain sobriety when you’re on the road, which is kind of a pillar of stability in my life,” she told Good Morning America in July. “None of this that I create would even be possible without the way I think about things.”
