Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Seedfolks, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Gardening and Community
Nature, Mental Health, and the City
The Immigrant Experience
Family, Memory, and the Future
Summary
Analysis
Florence’s great-grandparents walked from Louisiana to Colorado in 1859. They were freed slaves and wanted to get as far away from cotton country as they could. That’s how Florence’s grandpa, father, and she and her sisters came to live there, the first Black family in the country. Her father called Florence’s great-grandparents their “seedfolks,” since they were the first of the family to live in Colorado.
Finally, readers learn the origins of the novel’s title. Seedfolks, as Florence explains, are the first people in a person’s family to live in a certain place—they plant the seed that grows into a larger community of folks, or family. The term itself suggests that moving somewhere new is a way of planting oneself and one’s family, just as one might do in a garden.
Themes
Florence thinks of her great-grandparents when she sees the people who started the garden on Gibb Street. Those people are also “seedfolks.” That first year, the garden lacked spigots, hoses, a toolshed, or nice soil. That was back before the landlords started charging higher rents for the apartments overlooking the garden.
In this passage, Florence makes it clear that she’s narrating from at least a year after the previous chapters took place. She explains how the garden has transformed in the intervening years: now, it seems to be supported by the city, and it’s increased property and rental values in the neighborhood (for better or for worse).
Themes
Florence would’ve been working in the garden if she didn’t suffer from arthritis in her hands. She grew up in the country, so she misses “country things.” Her husband is from Cleveland, so he doesn’t know about how hayfields smell, or about eating beans off of the vine. Florence settled for being a “watcher,” along with many others. Some people sit on fire escapes or stand on the sidewalk, like Florence. One day she looks up and sees a man watching the gardeners from his rocking chair.
By describing herself as a “watcher” and making it clear that she still gets a lot out of the garden from this vantage point, Florence makes the case that it’s not necessary to dig in the dirt oneself to reap the benefits of nature. Like so many others in the novel, Florence finds that merely being close to the garden is a way for her to connect to her roots and her childhood spent in the country.
Themes
Florence thinks of her grandmother’s childhood sampler, which reads “Be Not Solitary, Be Not Idle.” Following that maxim was easy when Florence worked in the library. But now that she’s retired, it’s harder. She tries to walk every day, and this is how she found the garden in the first place. She always stopped to see what was new. Even though she was just a watcher, she was proud and protective of the garden. She almost lost her composure with a man when he tried to grab a tomato growing by the sidewalk. The man pulled his hand back and said he thought it was a community garden.
Here, Florence seems to be referring to an embroidery sampler—a piece of embroidered fabric that shows off an embroiderer’s skill and often includes little sayings like this, along with various shapes and patterns. Like many of the other narrators, Florence tries to stay busy and engaged in her old age, and the garden gives her a way to do so. As a “watcher,” Florence also acts as the garden’s protector—much like Royce and his pitchfork, who also guards Curtis’s tomatoes. Once again, the novel shows that those who participate in the garden (even the so-called watchers) feel get so much joy and nourishment out of the experience that they are compelled to give back to the garden in return. On another note, the man who nearly picks a tomato here suggests that he misunderstands the concept of the community garden—to him, a community garden means that it’s produce for the community to take, not space for the community to grow their own produce. This perhaps explains why Curtis’s tomatoes were going missing—it’s possible that neighbors didn’t know they were stealing.
Themes
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Florence thinks that it’s sad to watch the garden turn brown every fall. The first year was the hardest, especially after finally seeing people supporting themselves financially instead of waiting for welfare checks. It was refreshing to see a part of the neighborhood look better every day and to smell the growing plants. But then the green left, the frost hit, and the wind through the cornstalks made an eerie noise. All the color of the garden was gone once the boy sold his pumpkins. Some people cut up their dead plants and dug them back in, but there was nothing to do after these jobs were done.
Earlier in the novel, Leona told Maricela that nature runs on its own cycle that’s governed by the seasons. The community garden has to abide by that cycle, too, and so it turns brown and barren in the fall. In the fall and winter, then, people have to come up with other ways to connect with each other and create the community spirit that the garden did.
Themes
It was cold that winter. Whenever Florence passed the garden covered in snow, she’d try to remember how it looked back in July. Someone put up a Christmas tree that stayed up until March. In the winter, it’s hard to tell the difference month to month—it’s all just winter and cold. Florence missed many of her walks, but she always went past the garden when she did get out. Nothing was growing, but sometimes she’d find a gardener looking around, too.
The Christmas tree in the garden is an attempt to create the sense that people still care—they care enough about the garden to attempt to make it look festive, and show others that they’re still invested in the community they’ve cultivated. As Florence sees other gardeners watching the garden, it makes it clear that she’s not the only one eagerly awaiting spring and another season of gardening.
Themes
It’s impossible to see Canada across Lake Erie, but it’s still there. Spring is like that, too—people have to have faith that it will come, especially in Cleveland. They have two April snows that year, which is sad for the gardeners. When the snow finally melts, it reveals last year’s leaves in the garden. Florence is overjoyed to be able to go out without a heavy coat and boots.
The natural seasons can be difficult, Florence suggests, because people have to trust that each season will end and give way to the next. And in the winter, when life can be so cold and miserable, it’s hard to trust that Spring will bloom just like it always does. But as Leona suggested earlier, people can and should trust the rhythms of the natural world—it may get cold and dark for a while, but the beauty of the garden will always reemerge in the spring.
Themes
It’s still too early to plant anything, though. Florence begins to wonder if anyone will come. It’s possible that no one is interested anymore, or that the city shut down the garden. Then, one day, Florence passes someone digging. It’s an Asian girl planting lima beans. Florence doesn’t recognize her, but this doesn’t matter—seeing the girl digging makes Florence feel happy. She looks up and sees the man in his rocker. They wave at each other.
Here, Florence raises some concerns about what could theoretically keep the garden from thriving a second season, such as being shut down by the city. Given that the novel began with the city government being reticent to care for the neighborhood or their gardening project, it’s possible that the city still fails to see the garden as a valuable community hub. In addition to this, the novel is also bookended with Kim planting lima beans—and planting too early in the season, once again. But given that Kim’s planting interrupts Florence’s anxious thoughts, this moment reinforces the lima beans’ status as symbols of hope for the future and for connection. Seeing the beans being planted after a long, cold winter shows Florence and the man in the rocker that the garden will continue, and the community will thrive again.
Themes
