BOOK REVIEW

THE NEW PLANT PARENT Develop your green thumb and care for your house-plant family.

Style: a scientific approach to plant care Focus: everything you need to know about indoor plant care Specificity: contains a houseplant journal on tropical plants By Darryl Cheng, 2019

PEOPLE VIEWS

“Finally a modern book focusing on houseplant care!”

“This book is like a training program to make you a better plant parent.”

“It’s made for plant owners who want to up their game and finally understand their houseplants.”

BOOK SUMMARY In this well-illustrated book, you will be taken on an indepth journey through the vegetal universe. You’ll learn both the big picture and the details of house plant care in urban homes, from the nursery stage up to a healthy maturity in your home. With great accuracy and logic, the author, a plant expert with an engineering background, delivers a ton of useful plant care advice and methodology to keep your plants healthy. A gold mine of knowledge that he accumulated over the years, thanks to research and experimentation. A remarkable modern book for everyone to become a better house plant parent!

WHAT I REALLY LIKED I really liked that the book is full of insightful photographs and beautiful illustrations, making it easy to understand the concepts and avoid typical mistakes.

WHAT I LEARNED So many useful things! I use guidance from the book now every time I buy a new plant and it seems to be working pretty well in my flat in London. For example, I learned that every plant has to go through an adjustment period after you bring it home from the nursery. During this period, the plant might drop a few leaves, but it’s just temporary as the conditions in our homes deviate substantially from the ideal conditions set in garden nurseries. The “aha” moment for me was on the chapter dedicated to choosing the right spot for your plant, where we are encouraged to think about how much light the plant will “see” in this corner and choose a plant accordingly. As you double the distance from the window, the light intensity decreases drastically, which can be a problem for most plants. So, when it comes to choosing a spot for your plant to have a happy life, the light should come before the style basically.

SPECIFIC ADVICE FOR TROPICAL PLANTS As Darry Cheng reveals in the book, he’s got a thing for tropical plants. So, if you have tropical houseplants, this book is for you. Many common and rarer indoor plants from the tropical type are covered in detail in the book, from a care point of view.

Plants parents owning the following specimens will be delighted:

• dracaena, jade plant, kangaroo paw fern,

• money tree, monstera, oxalis,

• philodendron, prayer plant, pilea,

• ponytail palm, & more…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR If you read this blog you may recognize the author, Darryl Cheng, who is the one behind the famous @ HousePlantJournal account on Instagram. Now an author, he has been helping people with houseplants countless times on his profile, sharing his house plant experiments on a day to day basis. If you haven’t checked his account yet, I highly recommend it. You’ll find particularly amazing time-lapse videos with plants performing a “dance” with their leaves. Isn’t nature beautiful?