Get Plants: How to Bring Green into Your Life
Reviewed By Janet Mawdesley February 24, 2018
Author Katherine Price
Distributor: New South Books
ISBN: 9781842466278
Publisher: Kew Publishing
Release Date: January 2018
Website: https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au
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At last, a book designed and created for people who love to, or would love to garden, but have not got a clue. The desire to have something green, something luscious and growing in or around your home is one most people relate to, but so many manage to kill off, one way or the other, the pot of green they have so lovingly installed in their home. So how or what is the best way to become far more familiar with that plant you loving bought, so that it may have a long and happy life with you.
Katherine Price was fortunate enough to be able to work in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew for more than ten years and it is from this basis she offers an insight into plants, their backstory, the best species to choose and best way to keep them happy and healthy.
Throughout the book many of her former work colleges offer helpful tips, little snippets about what drew them to their love of plants and the plants that are their personal favourites.
Jammed packed full of practical advice and helpful information, this is the ideal book for the beginner, the lover of plants and those with or without a green finger, as it offers options and solutions which will encourage and underpin your desire to have a wonderful collection of delightful ‘friends’ in your home and surrounds to add pleasure and colour to your days.
Why you need plants in your life is something that can often be overlooked in today’s mad, fast paced world. Sure you get the chemical thing about oxygen, food also, medicine, textiles and the like, but what about the sheer pleasure of simply looking at a beautiful, living thing and the relaxation, joy and wonderment it can offer. Simply put, plants in all their formats and uses make your life so much richer, so much more pleasurable, and relaxing. They have simply got to be good for you.
Chapter One: What Plants Need – its elemental, sets the tone for the entire book as it is well presented with the lavish use of glorious colour photography that is a pleasure in itself, but also sets out the basis of elements required such as fire, water, earth air and Lurve, of course, with each topic being presented clearly and simply, even to the point of talking to your plants, which is naturally, a part of the Lurve bit.
The chapters then move on to plants and effect you are trying to achieve, with the use of these flamboyant and sometime shy individuals, as it is important to decide from the beginning what you want and what plants will be best selected to achieve this purpose. Edibles come next, which can also be used as decorative, but have a secondary purpose, such as chillies and strawberries.
Air plants, cacti, and a host of succulents need to be selected carefully to make the best use of their amazing characteristics, as do the plants for the great outdoors of your gardens, in order to offer the best and most stunning effect for your hard work.
The final chapter deals with Buy, Care and Share which offers the technical details needed now that you are on fire and satisfied that yes, you too can be a gardener, even if you only have a windowsill, a coffee table or flowerbox.
In a nutshell, or rather a pot plant, Get Plants is a wonderfully down to earth, totally practical, gloriously riotous, book on gardening, gardens and the people who love and tend them every day. It also offers hope, lurve and encouragement to go ahead and have a go, you will be pleasingly delighted.
Fabulous.