The Birth of Slow Green Death

Welcome to Slow Green Death, a houseplant blog named after what you probably don’t want happening to you or your plants.

Let me explain.

One of my favorite things about nature is that it consistently reminds us that death is a necessary part of life.

We are all dying. Every living thing races steadily towards death every second it spends alive, each at its own pace. That’s something we can’t change or avoid, but thinking about it doesn’t have to be morbid or depressing. Realizing the limits on the time we have alive can be a powerful tool in learning to appreciate the fuck out of living.

Enter my favorite daily reminder of the impermanence of life and the importance of growth - houseplants.

I’ve lost some good ones after a great run, and even the happiest of plants let their old leaves die and fall away at some point. But in the meantime, with the right environment, they will absolutely thrive and remind us that there’s really no other choice but to grow on the way out. And if they (and I) can help it, their deaths will be really slow, and really green.

So here we are.

Both my plants and my obsession with them have grown tremendously since I brought my first one home in January of 2020. A little over two years later and I’m maintaining a thriving jungle of 100+ plants in my little one-bedroom apartment, loving every frustrating and rewarding second of it. While realizing how much I still have to learn, I’ve gained a massive amount of knowledge in these short years packed full of trial and error, stored somewhere in weird parts of my brain now overgrown by many things green. 

As I venture through the planty archives, I wanted to create a place to translate what I found there into something helpful for plant parents both new and veteran. Thus the unfurling of Slow Green Death.

The goal of Slow Green Death is to help bring houseplants down to earth. You don’t need to spend hours every day tending to them to enjoy the benefits of having plants indoors, and sadly so many people are intimidated away from them. Plant care can be as easy or as complex as you want it to be, and I promise there’s a plant for everyone. Even if you think you have more of a murder thumb than a green one.