Whether you are an ardent horticulturist or a fresh beginner in gardening, a good knowledge resource can be an excellent way to sharpen your knowledge.
How better to learn about being an indoor plant owner than reading a book on the subject?
A good encyclopedia or guidebook can carry a wealth of information and expert advice on various houseplants to help you become the ideal plant parent. Even better, it allows you to read and reread the information at your convenience.
But finding the right book can be challenging, so we’ve put together this detailed review of the best books on house plants to help you through your journey.
Best Books on Houseplants
- The New Plant Parent—Best Book for Beginners
- Wild at Home: How to style and care for beautiful plants—best plant styling book
- Jungalow: Decorate Wild: The Life and Style Guide –Best houseplant book for creative inspiration
- The Little Book of House Plants and Other Greenery—Best quick-reference guide on indoor pants
- How Not to Kill Your Houseplant: Survival Tips for the Horticulturally Challenged—Best houseplants guidebook with an index
- How to Houseplant: A Beginner’s Guide to Making and Keeping Plant Friends –Best indoor plant book for beginners
- Houseplants: The Complete Guide to Choosing, Growing, and Caring for Indoor Plants
- The House Plant Expert—Most detailed houseplant book
- Houseplants for Beginners—Best houseplant guidebook for beginners
- Propagating Plants: How to Create New Plants For Free—best manual for frugal gardeners
- RHS Practical House Plant Book—Best book about plants
- Urban Jungle: Living and Styling with Plants–best DIY guidebook on indoor plants
- A Beginner’s Guide to Succulent Gardening—Best step- by-step guide for beginners
- Essential Succulents: The Beginner’s Guide—Best care book for succulents
- Grow in the Dark: How to Choose and Care for Low-Light Houseplants—Best care book for low-light plants.
- Air Plants: The Curious World of Tillandsias—Best book on growing tillandsias
- Leaf Supply: A Guide to Keeping Happy House Plants—best practical care guide for houseplants
From houseplant guidebooks to plant care books and everything in between, this article reviews the best houseplant-related books on the market today.
Read along to learn about the best books for beginners and seasoned indoor plant owners.
1. The New Plant Parent—Best Book for Beginners
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The New Plant Parent by Darryl Cheng is an excellent piece for beginners but offers a wealth of tips that the more experienced plant parents will find incredibly valuable. If you are an experienced gardener looking to improve, this book may be ideal.
It provides handy ways to grow healthy houseplants right from the start. In addition, the book helps you understand plant needs and how to satisfy them to ensure happier healthier plants.
Reading the New Plant Parent can help you discover your passion for houseplants through Cheng’s personal stories, friendly tone, and rich gallery of photographs. In the process, you learn everything plants need and how to give it to them.
It is replete with details covering everything you need to know when growing house plants, including the following:
- How to find the right light for your plants
- Caring for plants by watering them
- Fertilizing
- Container options for various plants
- What plant species to consider
2. Wild at Home: How to style and care for beautiful plants—best plant styling book
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Wild at Home is the best place to get inspiration and how-to knowledge for people who want to create beautiful lush jungles within their urban spaces.
Through Wild at Home, Hilton Carter takes you through an apartment jungle and multiple other lush areas brimming with happy, thriving houseplants.
The author does not just let you marvel at all the beauty and leave empty-handed. Instead, the book offers clear and straightforward ways to convert your space into a similar jungle—recreating all that beauty in your own space.
This book provides you with the knowledge for caring for your plants, propagating them, finding suitable pots, and how to measure plant pots, and much more.
You will also learn where to place your plants and how to arrange various types and species to look their best. Wild at Home is truly a book for inspiration and knowledge.
3. Jungalow: Decorate Wild: The Life and Style Guide –Best houseplant book for creative inspiration
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Here is a book by renowned artist and designer Justina Blakeney, who shares her expert ideas on creating the wildest interiors using a layered and free-spirited style.
Jungalow is a detailed blueprint for decorating interior spaces using houseplants. Each chapter contains the author’s ideas on how to obtain inspiration from the heritage of various plants and use that to create authentic patterns within indoor spaces.
The book will teach you how to break existing or assumed rules and come up with something original and authentic with your plants.
As you read, you learn to be bold, encouraged by the illustrative personal stories of the author and the stunning beauty of the accompanying photos. The stories are relatable and encouraging, making the book ideal for plant parents who are willing to try new ideas.
4. The Little Book of House Plants and Other Greenery—Best quick-reference guide on indoor pants
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The Little Book of House Plants breaks down the essential information regarding the most popular 60 plant varieties you are likely to own.
The book provides information on planting, growing, nurturing, and everything in between for every plant.
If you are new to in-house gardening, this may be the best handbook for you. Each plant comes with a magnificent photo that makes it a breeze to identify. Alongside the photo is a concise breakdown of all the plant variety’s essential requirements.
This style makes the book your go-to reference for information regarding the growth, size, and flowering of all 60 houseplants. To top it all, the guidebook provides additional tips on caring for each specific plant.
Regardless of your knowledge level of plants, you’ll quickly find this guide useful, with troubleshooting advice, plant care tips, and more information presented in an easy-to-access manner.
It can be a perfect resource for a beginner learning about plants. It can also be a great reference guide for knowledgeable plant parents looking to do a quick check on information regarding different indoor plants from time to time.
5. How Not to Kill Your Houseplant: Survival Tips for the Horticulturally Challenged—best houseplants guidebook with an index
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As the title suggests, How Not to Kill Your Houseplant is the perfect book for those who have made a few mistakes along the way.
It provides incredibly practical tips and easy dos and don’ts of plant care to help anyone trying to get it right. It is a perfect resource for anyone who prefers to err on the side of caution and give their best to their beloved plants.
The tips in this book include:
- How best to water and feed plants.
- Lighting for houseplants
- Matching house plants with available indoor spaces to meet unique needs
- Saving plants from impending dangers
How Not to Kill Your Houseplant contains individual advice on more than 100 indoor plant types. This arrangement allows you to easily access the section with your plant type and identify what you should do better.
You will find various illustrations in each section that help you diagnose potential problems likely to affect your plants. This can go a long way in helping you catch looming problems before they materialize.
6. How to Houseplant: A Beginner’s Guide to Making and Keeping Plant Friends –best indoor plant book for beginners
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This book takes a fun approach to indoor planting instruction, likely to make the process far more entertaining. If you are just starting out on your indoor planting journey, this book will easily make you fall in love with house plants and everything about them.
This fun guide teaches you how to grow and care for the 50 most popular indoor plants. You will find the information related to each plant alongside a luscious photo for identification. It covers the care requirements in a highly accessible manner.
For a beginner, this guidebook is incredibly useful as it introduces you to houseplants by explaining all the basics. You get to learn all there is to know about the following:
- Potting soil
- Common pests
- Troubleshooting problems
- Watering
- Additional caring tips for plants
With this resource in your hand, you will have the confidence to hit the ground running.
7. Houseplants: The Complete Guide to Choosing, Growing, and Caring for Indoor Plants
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As the name suggests, this book provides a complete guide to selecting the right plants for your space, growing, and caring for them properly.
This detailed indoor plant guidebook is highly suitable for novices looking to enter the plant society, thanks to a wealth of practical advice. The book covers how to care for house plants and summarizes everything you need to know about popular indoor plants that you can purchase at the local gardening center.
If you already have some plants at Home, you will likely find a concise profile of each in this book.
Indeed, other books present their plant photos slightly better, but the information in this guide is unparalleled. Each plant profile includes:
- The standard and botanical name of each plant
- The plant’s light preference
- Guidelines on watering plats
- Recommended whether conditions for growing and flowering
- Plant sizes
- Expected growth
- Plant propagation guidelines
- Cultivars available
8. The House Plant Expert—Most detailed houseplant book
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For many people, The House Plant Expert, first created in 1987, is their house plant bible. The book’s detailed presentation of information makes it the best encyclopedia of house plants ever created.
It is highly detailed, with valuable information on all aspects of indoor planting. This knowledge resource has been updated over the years since its initial release to become a must-have for most plant enthusiasts.
Perhaps the only limitation of this book is its density, which makes it better suited to knowledgeable users than beginners.
The House Plant Expert may have no competition for those who want to keep the fewest possible books in their indoor houseplant collection.
The author, Dr. Hessayon, has sold more than one million books on indoor plants. This volume alone speaks to the resourcefulness of this incredibly well-written, informative piece.
9. Houseplants for Beginners—best houseplant guidebook for beginners
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Here is another practical, handy guide to choosing, growing, and caring for houseplants to help the plants thrive.
The book provides a straightforward guide to shopping for beautiful plants, choosing the best place to put them indoors, and potting and repotting them. It is an excellent tool for developing a green thumb in no time.
It also addresses different issues related to growing indoor plants, including dealing with pests and diseases.
The Houseplants for Beginners has profiles for up to 120 common household plants, making it one of the most detailed on our list. The plants appear in order of their maintenance levels, from low-maintenance houseplants to high-maintenance ones.
This way, the guidebook can help you choose plants that best suit your lifestyle. Each plant has its individual needs detailed alongside it to let you familiarize yourself with them easily. This resource can help you buy more manageable plants when just starting out with indoor plants.
10. Propagating Plants: How to Create New Plants For Free—best manual for frugal gardeners
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Here is the best book for gardeners who want more indoor plants without spending on new purchases. Instead, it offers detailed and practical knowledge on growing new plants from scratch, which can help you save money.
The guide is highly informative and detailed, breaking down each process into easy-to-follow steps. The concise explanations in the book make things a lot easier for gardeners who find large volumes of text overwhelming.
With this book, you can propagate practically any plant and save money. It has over 1,800 detailed illustrations of what you need to know about propagating plants. These illustrations include photos showing plants and the practical gardening techniques for each.
11. RHS Practical House Plant Book—Best book about plants
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The Practical House Plant Book boasts a whopping 175 plant profiles, each of them containing wide-ranging information on the respective plants, including the following:
- Caring for the plant
- Repotting the plant
- Plant propagation tips
- Dealing with pets and diseases
- Plant toxicity
- Decorating the plants
Unlike the highly detailed The House Plant Expert, this RHS Practical House Plant Book has a far better design, making the information friendlier to newer and aspiring plant parents.
A decent mix of pictures and text, along with a good layout, makes the information in this guidebook easier to consume.
12. Urban Jungle: Living and Styling with Plants–best DIY guidebook on indoor plants
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The Urban Jungle is an excellent choice if you are looking for DIY ideas to inspire your indoor gardening.
It contains some of the handiest tips on planting and styling your own indoor jungle. The book contains a rich catalog of plant-laden homes in up to five countries across Europe. All these illustrations capture different styles and creative ideas to inspire your own gardening style.
With endless styling options and ideas from a community of bloggers, the Urban Jungle is more than an encyclopedia of creative ideas. It offers countless care tips for living with your plant babies and unmatched inspiration for beginners or new plant parents and seasoned plant lovers.
Inspiration from this book can help you lift your Home’s décor with artistic ideas that help create unity in how your indoor plants look together.
13. A Beginner’s Guide to Succulent Gardening—Best step- by-step guide for beginners
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If you are passionate about succulents, this guidebook can take you through the process of becoming an ardent gardener.
Unlike many alternative guides, this book takes a step-by-step approach that makes it an excellent learning resource for a beginner. It is just all you need to learn how to grow beautiful succulents and care for them for long-lasting outcomes.
Further, the incredible amount of detail in the book makes it ideal for experienced gardeners who wish to focus on growing, propagating, repotting, and troubleshooting various succulent species. It has everything you would want to know regardless of your knowledge level.
Most users love the accompanying pictures that help you know what precisely to look out for.
14. Essential Succulents: The Beginner’s Guide—Best care book for succulents
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Here is another perfect book for aspiring and experienced gardeners interested in learning everything there is to know about succulents.
It contains detailed information about selecting succulents for your own urban jungle or garden and caring for them.
The list of what you will find in Essential Succulents includes:
- 50 succulents that are easy to grow and in various environments
- Detailed care tips and arrangement information for each of the 50 succulents
- 8 simple DIY projects with step-by-step instructions listed in their order of complexity, starting with the least challenging.
- Beautiful photographs of the projects and succulents
- Information on what potted and indoor succulents require, including the right soil, light, and watering.
- Guidance on creating outdoor gardens for succulents.
15. Grow in the Dark: How to Choose and Care for Low-Light Houseplants—Best care book for low-light plants.
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Grow in the Dark is a book with all the information you need about house plants with a high tolerance for low light conditions. This book may be handy if you do not have a direct or good light source for your potted favorites.
It features the 50 best houseplants that will thrive in your dark or dim apartment. This can relieve you of the stress of finding light for your houseplants if your place has little.
The author, Lisa Eldred-Steinkopf, draws the advice from her own experience accumulated from tending to more than 1,000 of her houseplants. This makes the guide pretty relatable.
Grow in the Dark is easily the best resource for information size, care, pet safety, and cultivars for this house plant species.
16. Air Plants: The Curious World of Tillandsias—Best book on growing tillandsias
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Here is a book that focuses exclusively on growing, crafting, and designing with tillandsias, making it an excellent guide for this indoor plant species.
Air Plants provide a simple way to live with these easy-to-grow plants. It features numerous photos showcasing various creative ways to position or hang air plants and places to put your tillandsias, including walls and ceilings.
The book also presents different uses of these unique houseplants that you likely have yet to learn about.
Multiple step-by-step projects in the book further give you a practical side to learning about tillandsias.
17. Leaf Supply: A Guide to Keeping Happy House Plants—best practical care guide for houseplants
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Leaf Supply excels in both practical and aesthetic aspects. It presents information in a beautiful display and layout that makes it an entertaining and easy read.
The book provides practical guidelines for selecting and caring for more than 100 popular houseplants. You learn about the right lighting for your baby plants, plant food, temperature, and other critical factors likely to affect plant growth.
More importantly, the book teaches you how to navigate these tides. It also offers helpful advice on interior styling using inspiring illustrations. It teaches you how to choose the right pot for your plants and utilize your living space correctly.
Whether you are a seasoned plant parent or a new entrant, you should find this comprehensive guide useful.
Conclusion
You will most likely not buy all these indoor gardening books, but if you are an aspiring plant parent, there is no better way to get you off the right foot than with a practical guide from this list.
For a seasoned indoor plant owner, this list has some of the best houseplant books for improving your knowledge and taking things to new heights.
With detailed guidebooks and houseplant encyclopedias for beginners and experienced gardeners in this review, we believe there are multiple options for everyone. Happy gardening!
