annieb123's Review of Make Your Own Indoor Garden (Make Your Own)

by Sarah Durber

This book aims to cover the most commonly asked questions by new plant owners and will help people who want to have more greenery in their lives but don't know where to start. It will advise on the best plant for a variety of home conditions so that everyone should be able to find plants that suit their space.

Having and maintaining an indoor garden can be possible for anyone, the book will give you step by step guides to creating and designing your own terrariums, cacti & succulent gardens and even kokedamas (Japanese for Moss Ball). It will include descriptions of the equipment needed, and how to find this inexpensively so that the hobby is accessible to everyone. Readers of the book will discover a newfound joy of plants and nature as well as learn a brand-new skill.

The book will go into detail about what may be causing damage to a plant, and how to look after plants so that they last. It will also focus on how plants can improve physical and mental health, to encourage readers to fill their homes with greenery for practical and aesthetic reasons.

The innate human need to be around nature is called Biophilia, and this book will tap into that need without over complicating things. The focus will be on low maintenance, good-looking greenery.

Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Make Your Own Indoor Garden is a tutorial and style guide to decorating with plants and helping them to thrive indoors. Due out 31st March 2021 from Pen & Sword on their White Owl imprint, it's 112 pages and will be available in paperback format.

This is such a beautifully presented, encouraging, beginner accessible book. The author is upbeat and positive and the book is graphically very appealing and easy to understand. She starts with a few good selections - low maintenance plants which are attractive and can withstand a fair bit of neglect - to begin readers' collections. Further suggestions will expand the readers' home indoor greenery to a modest collection. All of the plants she recommends have many (many) variations in foliage and habit, so a fairly large collection can be built up with just the plants she recommends in the first chapter.

The following chapters contain instructions for terraria (open and closed) and include a fair selection of plants which are suited to both. There's a chapter devoted to cacti and succulents (my favourites), troubleshooting problems and how to avoid many of them, hanging plants (with suggestions for culture and display), kokedama, air plants (tillandsia), propagation, siting your plants, plants and our well being, and improving air quality with plants.

Four stars. There are beautiful photographs on nearly every page. The typeset is good contrast and easy to read. This would be a superlative acquisition for school or public library, for gifting, or for a beginning indoor gardener (especially people who claim they can't succeed with indoor plants).

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes

Make Your Own Indoor Garden (Make Your Own)

by Sarah Durber

Reviewed by annieb123 on Mar 10, 2021

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