Diary of a Korean Plant Parent: Four Seasons of Growth

Acclaimed writer Kim Keum Hee invites readers into her sun-soaked Seoul apartment, where the daily ritual of nurturing her many houseplants becomes a moving meditation on resilience, hope, and the evolving seasons of a life.

“Where there are roots, there is hope.”

Kim Keum Hee is a self-confessed and proud ‘plant parent’. She lives with her (human) husband and seventy-plus houseplants in her small apartment in Seoul. When life feels overwhelming, it’s her plants that keep her going. Her mood instantly improves when she watches the delicate leaves of her acacia dealbata finally flourish and she feels more hopeful when she discovers new roots on her dying ghost cactus.

Through summer, autumn, winter, and spring, Kim Keum Hee shares everyday observations about her family of houseplants and how they struggle and thrive through the shifting seasons. There are moments of deep profundity, and moments that will break your heart, but it’s hope and joy that lies at the heart of this book.

Written in intimate, elegant prose by one of South Korea’s most acclaimed contemporary writers and published for the first time in English, this book is a “tender, funny, and quietly resilient” (Darryl Cheng, author of The New Plant Parent) celebration of growth and change, love and loss, and holding on and letting go.