A ledger, not a magazine

Leaf Ledger is a notebook that got out of hand. It began as a shared list of which plants had died, when, and what we thought we had done wrong.

That framing still shapes everything here. Most houseplant advice is written from the plant's point of view — ideal humidity, ideal light, ideal soil. Useful, but not much help when the reality is a rented flat with one decent window and a radiator under it. So we record what happened in that flat instead.

Which means the notes include failures. The fiddle-leaf fig section exists because we killed two of them before accepting that the position was wrong rather than the watering. That kind of detail rarely survives into polished care guides, and it is usually the part that would have helped.

Nothing here is sponsored and there is no shop. Plants are described by what they did on our windowsills, and where our experience runs out we say so rather than paraphrasing someone else.

How to read the advice

• Light beats everything. Where a note conflicts with your room, believe the room.
• Watering guidance is a range, not a rule. A cool north room and a warm south one differ by weeks.
• Difficulty is domestic, not botanical. It means "difficult in an average home".