The Life of Plants is proof that you can’t tell a book by its cover. Flip it open to reveal the soil from which sprouts a living, breathing, narrative.

Designer Yasuko Furukawa’s planter/flower pot thrives incognito, at home among the other books in your library.

Indeed a book that grows on you, on your book shelf or anywhere really, The Life of Plants is all about flourishing. Leafing through this volume will not reveal pages of text, but rather a real live cultivar.

Water and feed the seedling inside, and it will feed your imagination. Although the planter can stand alone as a single book, it tells a particularly interesting story if placed subtly on a shelf among its printed friends.

Product designer, Yuki Yamamoto is half of the Tokyo-based design studio, YOY. Together with spatial designer, Naoki Ono, they create “a new story between space and objects.” Stay tuned for more on YOY when I report back in February from Ambiente in Frankfurt. Photos by Yasuko Furukawa.