A free-living commune in Tennessee used TikTok to attract new members, but the strategy may have backfired

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In January, users scrolling through TikTok started to notice videos inviting them to join a commune on their For You pages. Half a dozen accounts featuring a red-headed Brit, a man with a tear-drop tattoo, and a woman with a matte of dreadlocks calmly invited strangers to visit 8967 Galen Road in Lafayette, Tennessee.

"You're welcome to come at any time and leave at any time," one of the TikTok users, TreeisAlive, said in a video that has been watched half a million times.

These short videos offer a snapshot of life at The Garden, a community devoted to a "low impact" lifestyle that composts and recycles everything on site. While the TikTok posts were meant to attract like-minded, ecologically friendly users, hundreds of thousands of digital bystanders were served the videos by TikTok's algorithm. The unexpected attention threw the community into disarray.

While some viewers have accepted the invitation and visited, others have questioned the commune's motives, labeling The Garden a cult. Now, some of The Garden's inhabitants say they are facing harassment and are fearful of legal intervention.

The Garden grew out of the Rainbow Gathering movement

The 21-1/2-acre plot of land located near the border of Tennessee and Kentucky has been providing off-the-grid housing to those tired of the outside world — dubbed "Babylon" by its inhabitants — for the past 12 years. The Garden website describes the area as "a place to sprout, bloom, and grow in harmony with nature," with a purpose as a "network of mutual aid and a hub where traveling people and caravan communities can collaborate at."

The collective was started by Patrick Martion as part of the Rainbow Gathering movement, a congregation of people who assemble for weeks at a time to live in remote places. The Garden was originally named "Shut Up and Grow It" with the message of living off the land and off the grid. This appealed to "addicts and people without anywhere to stay," Martion said in an interview on YouTube.

"I had this vision where we'd get this land, I'd put it out there on the internet and let people know what we were planning on doing, and that people would flock to it," Martion said in the video. A public Facebook group created in 2015 and blog posts from 2016 showed life on the commune and invited others to visit. Since the beginning, they have published their address online.

According to records, Martion purchased the plot of land in 2009 for $52,500 and is the sole owner of the property. He has paid $80 a year in taxes on the land since 2015. Martion did not respond to a request for comment.

Over the years, a rotating group of wanderers and eco-friendly visitors have come to stay. When 60 people stayed for two months, Martion said in a YouTube video that it put "a strain on our water system and outhouse." He says at times the group size approached 100 members. Over the past decade, Martion has recruited others to come through Facebook and blog posts.

The TikTok videos show the compound's buildings and landscape, which are constantly evolving with new structures as residents with different interests and needs pass through. There's a barn for gatherings, compost toilets, a showering hut, an office building, a kitchen, a chicken coop, a greenhouse, and a schoolhouse on-site. For lodging, cabins or recycled buses are available. One of the oldest structures is a library full of old books and magazines.

Chores like building, farming, and taking care of the animals are divided up among those staying there. All the food is grown on-site, with every member eating mostly vegan, with the goal being to live off the land in an ecologically sustainable community. To discuss issues on the collective, The Garden has established a committee that meets every Wednesday and Sunday.

When new people show up, they can stay for 10 days before needing council approval for a longer stay. Anyone who has stayed at The Garden for over two weeks can ask anyone new to leave. According to a 2018 Facebook post from Martion, the rules were created "to help build a sustainable alternative to the mainstream society by living simply, cooperating to provide our own necessities, and contributing to the minimization of the need for money."

Outreach on TikTok appears to be working. Rel Gumson, a member of The Garden who spoke with Insider, said about 40 people had shown up after seeing it on the app, with 10 to 20 people having prolonged stays. She said there were currently only 30 people in the commune.

TikTok has attracted eclectic personalities to the commune

A collection of interesting people with varied backgrounds live on the commune.

The TikTok user TreeisAlive has amassed 76,000 followers since he started posting in late January and was the first and most successful member of The Garden on TikTok. Insider has agreed to identify him by his username because of harassment concerns, though his identity is known. Born in Liverpool and growing up in Ireland, he says he busked on the streets of Europe, toured Africa, and visited communes in Costa Rica before landing in The Garden.

Five years ago, he says, he stumbled across his first taste of communal living at Rainbow Gatherings, which he described to Insider as a "load of hippies living in the woods, cooking over fire, living in tents, and playing music."

"That really changed me — I started to understand who maybe I am more and more as an activist and went vegan," TreeisAlive said. "I've been trying to figure out how we can de-escalate the impacts of climate."

Through these gatherings, TreeisAlive found The Garden, where he's been living for the past two months with a goal to "showcase sustainable living and really make an impact on climate change." It was his idea to start a TikTok account — he had always been interested in video editing and has a YouTube channel that he's been posting on for the past three months.

The second-most-subscribed-to TikTok account at The Garden belongs to Rel Gumson, with 42,000 followers. Contrary to Tree's positive, vegan-focused mission, Gumson is a lot more controversial on the app. Her videos feature candlelit seances, a skirt made from the carcass of her dead pet dog, and an eerie video of her passing around a wine-filled jug labeled "Kool-Aid" (which she says is a reference to the 1960s movement of the controversial figure Ken Kesey and not the massacre at Jonestown).

Gumson has lived at The Garden for four years, previously selling art at music festivals and working customer service at a grocery store. Asked why she preferred the off-the-grid lifestyle, she said, "I just don't like electricity, and I can feel it when it's around me." Those who live at The Garden have access to generators and an internet hot spot.

"I've always been kind of into just theater and stuff like that, so it's fun to make TikTok videos," Gumson continued. "We're busy farmers, so it's a little ridiculous for us to even be on there, and it's consuming."

The commune attracts people who say they don't fit into mainstream society

Anyone can come to The Garden, and background checks are not conducted, though the group has the ability as a 501(c) nonprofit.

"We're pretty good at mediating the people who come through, so there isn't much disruption within our community because we all communicate really clearly to each other," Gumson said.

Blake Thomas, a former member who stayed at The Garden for three weeks in March 2020, said in an interview with Insider that the "clique" of those staying there was "creepy" and that there were "9/11 truthers, anti-vaxxers, and Q-Anon believers" at The Garden.

While no COVID-19 cases have been confirmed at The Garden, the county where it is located, Macon County, does not have a mask mandate, and those at the commune are not forced to wear masks. Gumson has shared memes on Facebook calling masks "mind control devices" and claiming the "virus is engineered."

Asked about how she feels about the virus and masks, Gumson said: "I recognize it and I feel for all the people who are being affected by COVID, but I'm trying to not instill that fear within myself. I feel like fear and negativity feeds off of itself, and I feel like if you think those kinds of thoughts, it's going to come."

According to Gumson, children have lived at The Garden at various times. She says their parents believe in "unschooling," or learning through natural life experiences and not with traditional school.

One of the most prevailing storylines about The Garden stems from a livestream in which TreeisAlive said a feral cat was eaten by members of the commune. In a now-deleted Facebook post, Martion said that the cat was shot after they failed to trap it and that it "tasted like chicken."

"If you're going to kill it, you should eat it," Gumson said. "I don't see why somebody would kill an animal if they're not going to eat it, if it's edible."

The Garden is seen as a cult by some TikTok users, who are fighting against it

An entire community of TikTok influencers believes The Garden is a potentially violent and unsafe cultlike environment. Being in a cult is not itself illegal since speech is protected under the First Amendment. Law enforcement focuses instead on groups' activities and any specific behavior that could be harmful.

"The address is publicly listed and they're advertising it in an idealized and unrealistic way to a young body on TikTok," said Renee Worley, who runs the 16,000-follower TikTok account Cultmaker. "They've essentially doxed themselves on a volatile platform that a huge large young audience like TikTok, it's kind of wildfire waiting to happen."

TikTok accounts like Worley's have made videos warning people against visiting The Garden. On the chat app Discord, entire channels have been created to chronicle each member's online presence and attempt to uncover wrongdoing.

Over the past three weeks, some TikTok members overstepped the boundary between willful observer and active saboteur, sending hateful messages to TreeisAlive, Gumson, and other members. Worley has now "stepped back" from making videos about the commune so as to not cause "any more harm" or to "start a witch hunt."

"They just need to be more responsible about who they're advertising to," Worley said.

Most TikTok accounts have moved away from posting about The Garden, but not all.

On March 8, Edie Santos, who runs the 260,000-follower TikTok account Book of Edith, told Insider that she called US Immigration and Customs Enforcement on TreeisAlive.

"He's abusing our visa system," Santos said. "If you're going to come here, be respectful. Contribute to our society, be a respectful person, but don't prey on people during the pandemic, in the middle of an economic recession."

Amillianze and Britt Livingston, who have more than 18,000 followers on TikTok, moved to the commune at the start of the pandemic with their two children after their business closed down. They told Insider they recently left.

"Our family has suffered greatly from the death threats and general chaos surrounding where we once called our home," they said over email. "It's heart wrenching and scary."

The main three accounts for The Garden have either stopped posting altogether or stopped sharing information over the past two weeks. According to Gumson, they are taking a break from posting because they "just can't deal with all of that drama on there."

Members of The Garden say they want to get back to basics

One of the most common threads among commenters and onlookers is the question of whether The Garden is a cult. Though the bits and pieces might look odd to an onlooker, there's little evidence to prove it is.

"We don't define ourselves as a cult — we don't force people to stay here," Gumson said. "We don't force any kind of belief system on people."

The harassment and attacks have scared TreeisAlive, whose brother said he was "terrified" over being deported and had "completely locked himself down" because it's "so dangerous." On Wednesday, he returned to TikTok after a two-week hiatus.

"All we're trying to do here is grow food and educate people about community living and how to be self-sustainable," TreeisAlive said. "It's strange for us to have this experience where we're feeling like we're being attacked for trying to help people, to educate people about self-sustainability and off-grid living."

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