How to Raise a Plant and Make it Love You Back by Morgan Doane

Given the approachable tone of the book, I'd like to see a second expanded edition of this, or to have the authors bring out another book - something more bookish and less of a quick read, illustrated guide.This book is quite social media friendly, which I wasn't expecting because I had no idea of the authors beforehand. It might make a nice present for the absolute plant beginner - someone who, like me, has expressed interest in keeping plants but hasn't gone any further than being sad any plant they've owned dies. I recommend getting it from your local library - it's not worth buying and you can probably find everything online, even if its nice to have the information in one place, clear, concise and illustrated. Overall, I am glad I read this and I think it's a great basic primer on houseplants. Apart from anything else, I feel the first bit is great to read once as an absolute beginner and the second is something I might consider owning for reference. I actually think this book would have been better as two parts, or even two books: the first all the chapters except for the plant factsheets, incorporating the decor side of things, as well as propagation, repotting, light and other general tips and the second a greatly extended series of the plant fact sheets, with more detail, precision, and a far larger selection of plants. It answered questions I didn't even know I had, and the favourite plants chapter had factsheets that were so helpful I took a picture of a couple of them, even though most of the plants mentioned are not at all my thing (again, very focused on the Instagram, modern, minimalist aesthetic I'm more about florals, herbs and weird gothy plants.) I did learn a lot from reading this, certainly more than I would have thought from the length and picture-heavy nature of it, and the star rating (3.5) is almost entirely down to that. As someone with zero knowledge of plants (very much the audience for this book) this was supremely unhelpful and confusing. All the plant names are in Latin (which I like but would prefer more colloquial names too), and although almost every plant pictured is helpfully labelled nowhere does it tell you which name in the list goes with which plant.

It is picture heavy, short, has a lot of chapters, a very specific #aesthetic, and no long blocks of text.

It's neither quite what I was looking for or what I expected, though. It isn't bad, necessarily, and for some people the nods to an online community and photo tips are probably very helpful, but it's not so much my thing - my Instagram is shit and I have every intention of keeping it that way. This book is quite social media friendly, which I wasn't expecting because I had no idea of the authors beforehand.

How to Raise a Plant and Make it Love You Back by Morgan Doane