Seedfolks takes the form of short stories, each narrated by a different person. It follows a community garden in Cleveland from its first crops planted in April through the March of the following year.
The day after her father’s death anniversary, nine-year-old Kim takes a handful of dried lima beans from the kitchen, fills a jar with water, and sneaks outside. It’s a blustery and cold spring day—but it barely seems like spring to Kim, who is from Vietnam and is accustomed to much warmer weather. She wades through the trash in the neighboring vacant lot and finds a spot behind an old refrigerator. As she digs, she thinks of her father, who was a farmer in Vietnam and died before she was born. She doesn’t know if his spirit even knows who she is, but she believes that if she shows him that she can cultivate plants like he did, he’ll be proud of her.
Ana has lived in the same apartment on Gibb Street since she arrived in the country in 1919, at four years old. It’s changed over the years, but it’s always been an immigrant neighborhood and nobody stays long. Looking out the window, Ana notices a little girl (Kim) digging in the lot. Since the neighborhood is a violent one, Ana assumes Kim is burying drugs or a gun. She watches for several days until one day, Kim looks up into Ana’s window before running away. Knowing that Kim will move her treasure now that she’s been discovered, Ana hobbles down to the lot to see what Kim buried. Ana feels horrible when her digging turns up sprouted bean seeds. She replants the seeds and buys binoculars.
One morning, Ana wakes up Wendell, a neighbor on the first floor, with a concerning request to come upstairs quickly. Wendell is angry when he finds that Ana is just upset that Kim’s plants down in the vacant lot haven’t been watered in several days. He identifies the parched plants as beans and grudgingly agrees to water them. Wendell realizes that the beans have survived the cold thanks to the nearby refrigerator bouncing sunlight down onto the soil. After he waters the first one, he hears something behind him. It’s Kim, who’s come to water her plants, and she’s terrified of Wendell. Wendell smiles and backs away. When he returns later, he decides to plant a garden for himself.
It took Gonzalo two years to learn English after emigrating from Guatemala, while none of his older relatives can function in the English-speaking world of Cleveland. This is why Gonzalo has to watch his great-uncle Tío Juan after school—Tío Juan doesn’t speak English or Spanish (he speaks a regional dialect) and gets lost if he wanders away. One day, Gonzalo loses track of his great-uncle and finds him trying to talk to Wendell, who’s digging a garden in the abandoned lot. Gonzalo leads his uncle home. But Gonzalo’s mother asks him to take Tío Juan back with seeds. Tío Juan was a farmer in Guatemala and as Gonzalo watches him plant, he notices his great-uncle seems focused and competent for the first time.
When Leona notices people growing gardens in the vacant lot, she decides to grow goldenrod in her Granny’s honor. But Leona also knows that few others will want to grow gardens until the garbage is removed from the lot, so she spends two days on hold with various government officials. On the third day, she takes a bag of smelly trash from the lot to the local health department office. This gets her a meeting almost immediately.
Soon after, 87-year-old Sam sees a crew clearing the garbage to make space for a community garden. He tells a woman watching that it’s “paradise.” Sam has spent his retirement trying to connect people in his neighborhood by smiling and starting conversations. He decides to start a garden. Sam is too old to do much manual labor, so he hires a Puerto Rican teenager to prepare the soil and convinces the boy to grow pumpkins instead of marijuana. Sam remains convinced that the garden is akin to the Garden of Eden until people begin fencing in their plots with barbed wire. It is, he concludes, just like the rest of Cleveland.
Virgil is excited to spend is first day of summer vacation sleeping, but Virgil’s father has other ideas. A Haitian taxi driver who’s fond of get-rich-quick schemes, Virgil’s father makes his son help prepare six plots in the community garden in which to plant baby lettuce, a hot commodity for fancy restaurants. Virgil is embarrassed to take up so much space, especially when Virgil’s third-grade teacher, Miss Fleck, calls them out for their selfishness. It’s even worse when Virgil’s dad lies that the plots are for family members. Virgil grows disillusioned as the lettuce fails to thrive—and eventually, Virgil’s father learns that lettuce doesn’t grow well in the heat of the summer, though he continues to try.
Sae Young immigrated to Cleveland from Korea with her husband years ago, hoping for a better life for their future children. But though their dry-cleaning business was successful, they never conceived—and then, Sae Young’s husband died of a heart attack. Not long after, a man robbed and violently assaulted Sae Young. She’s spent the last two years terrified isolated in her apartment and terrified of other people. As she passes the community garden one day, she decides she’s ready to change. She plants a small plot and slowly makes friends with the other gardeners, especially Sam. Sam organizes a contest to figure out an easy way to water the garden. The winning idea is to collect rain from downspouts in garbage cans, but Sae Young notices that people struggle to fill their watering cans from the big containers. She buys funnels and it makes her feel warm to see people use them.
Curtis comes to the garden in a final bid to win back his ex-girlfriend, Lateesha. They broke up when Lateesha found out that Curtis was unfaithful Curtis has changed since then and to show Lateesha that, he plants her favorite beefsteak tomatoes where she can see them from her apartment window. He finds that he loves gardening—until someone starts stealing his tomatoes. Fortunately, Curtis discovers Royce, a teenage boy, sleeping in the garden. He gives Royce food, money, and protection in exchange for guarding the tomatoes at night. Curtis also fences the tomatoes and makes a sign that says “Lateesha’s Tomatoes.”
Nora always tries to get her patient Mr. Myles out for walks, no matter the weather. She firmly believes in the healing powers of fresh air. But despite her beliefs, Mr. Myles—an elderly Black stroke patient, who is now wheelchair-bound and nonverbal—seems to be losing interest in life anyway. This changes on the day they pass the community garden. Mr. Myles raises an arm to ask to go in and seems bright and alert. The next day, Nora helps him plant flowers in a raised barrel, which helps him regain some zest for life.
Maricela wants to die. She feels like everyone hates her—she’s 16, Mexican, and pregnant. She’s secretly been praying that she’ll miscarry for months now. She’s part of a program that helps pregnant teens get their GEDs, and the program leader, Penny, gets the teens a spot in the community garden. They all hate it, especially since Penny makes them grow vegetables they dislike. One day, as Maricela sits in the garden with Leona, she opens up about not wanting to be pregnant. Leona encourages Maricela to see herself as part of a natural system—and for an instant, Maricela doesn’t hope her baby will die.
Amir is used to city living after growing up in Delhi, India, but he hates how in the U.S., people don’t know their neighbors. The garden changed that in Cleveland as people, brought together by their desire to grow vegetables, got to know each other. Over the course of the summer, Amir helps other men chase purse thieves. He sees Royce go from a frightening presence to a beloved member of the garden community. At the end of the summer, all the gardeners gather for an impromptu harvest party. At the party, Amir speaks with an Italian woman who called him a “dirty foreigner” last year in his fabric store. When Amir asks the woman about it, she apologizes and says that back then, she didn’t know who Amir was.
Florence explains that “seedfolks” are the first people of a family or a community to put down roots somewhere. Her “seedfolks” walked from Louisiana to Colorado after being freed from slavery—and Florence thinks that the people who started the community garden are also “seedfolks.” Though these days the garden has new soil, water spigots, and a toolshed, that first year was a struggle. The first winter was especially difficult. Florence was worried that no one would come back to garden in the spring—but one early spring day, she saw Kim planting lima bean seeds, and she knew the garden would thrive again.
