The Developer Who Grows Plants at the Office

One Pot Next to My Monitor

My first month at the company, a senior colleague gave me a pothos plant. "It's basically impossible to kill," she said. I set it next to my monitor. Watered it once a week. That was the beginning.

Three months later I had 5 plants on my desk. Pothos, snake plant, mini monstera, fittonia, succulent. Coworkers started calling me "the plant developer." (My actual title is frontend developer, for the record.)

When Code Breaks, I Look at Plants

This might sound weird, but when I'm stuck on a problem, looking at a plant helps reset my brain. After staring at a monitor for 8+ hours, shifting focus to green leaves gives my eyes a noticeable break. Whether there's scientific backing for this, I don't know. But experientially, about 15 seconds of looking at a plant before returning to code does help me refocus.

The weekly watering routine acts as a micro-break. Five minutes checking soil moisture, wiping leaves, adjusting positions. These 5 minutes feel more refreshing than Pomodoro technique breaks. Something about the act of caring for a living thing has an inherently restorative quality.

But I Killed the Monstera

The mini monstera turned yellow within a month. Cause: overwatering and insufficient light. My desk is far from any window, so natural light barely reaches it. Pothos and snake plants handle low light fine, but monsteras need it.

I didn't know this and kept all of them in the same conditions. First lesson learned. For office plants, you need species that thrive in "low light plus dry air." My mistake. The $15 monstera's death stung less because of money and more because I failed to properly care for a living thing.

How the Office Jungle Happened

Once I started growing plants, colleagues got curious. "Maybe I should try one too." Three people brought in their own plants. A succulent, a pothos, a fiddle leaf fig. The fiddle leaf fig grew to 60cm within 3 months. Our team area gradually became noticeably greener.

One problem though: vacation periods. Two weeks with nobody in the office means nobody watering. After my first vacation I came back to a wilted fittonia. Now, before long breaks, I either soak the pots in water trays or ask a colleague from another team to water them. (Posting "anyone willing to water my plants?" on Slack gets surprisingly fast responses.)

My Top 3 Office Plants

After over a year of office plant experience, here are my recommendations for beginners. Pothos: genuinely hard to kill. Water every 2 weeks and it's fine. Snake plant: supposedly purifies air, though I can't personally confirm. But it's easy to maintain. Water once a month. ZZ Plant (zamioculcas): the name in Korean literally translates to "money tree," which makes it popular. Handles low light and infrequent watering like a champ.

Don't bring monsteras or areca palms to the office. In a windowless or low-light office, they'll almost certainly die. Unless you want to pay the same tuition I did.

What Plants Taught Me

Code does what I want it to do. (Usually.) Plants don't. Water them too much, they die. Water them too little, also die. Each species has different needs that you have to figure out and accommodate. In a way it's like managing teammates. Everyone needs different things, and a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work. But that analogy feels like a stretch, so I'll stop here.