Love plants, but struggle to keep them alive? This beautiful and highly accessible book offers in-depth guides to ensure you have healthy houseplants.
'It's one thing to see amazing indoor plant images on Insta and another thing altogether to make it happen at home. The Plant Book is your perfect guide, an instruction manual that holds your hand and leads you through the challenges of becoming a competent plant parent. Tammy will help you get a good report card at plant parent-teacher night.' Costa Georgiadis
'As a nervous indoor plant grower, I'll be keeping this book close at all times!' Hannah Moloney
Award-winning horticulturist and Gardening Australia presenter Tammy Huynh covers the essentials of indoor plant care in this stunning book featuring an abundance of colourful photos and illustrations.
Many plant parents are frustrated by conflicting advice online, or simply don't know why they keep ending up with plant casualties. With this book, you can finally discover what each plant needs to thrive, the common problems they face and their remedies.
The Plant Book cuts through the noise with clear information that will help you grow and nurture healthy, resilient indoor plants. Tammy has selected the 50 most-loved houseplants and for each profile she offers:
* a detailed description
* icons to indicate ideal care conditions
* a list of cultivars
* a list of common problems for that specific plant with photos to help you visually recognise and diagnose plant issues.
In addition, the 'Houseplants 101' chapter covers general tips on lighting, potting mix, watering, fertiliser, humidity, pests and diseases, buying plants, hydroponics, and pots and planters. There's a heavy focus on troubleshooting with diagnostic flow charts, allowing you to identify and resolve plant problems, even for species not covered in the book.
The Plant Book will empower you to confidently spot and solve your plant problems, so we can all become super plant parents and avoid further plant casualties.
Number Of Pages: 264
About Tammy Huynh
Tammy grew up in Cabramatta, Western Sydney, where her family had a large productive backyard teaming with a variety of productive crops and fruit trees. Tammy says this garden - and her grandmother, who was a talented gardener – was a big part of her becoming a horticulturist.
She is now dedicated to sharing knowledge and inspiring people to get growing. She’s worked across digital and print media, runs workshops, provides garden and design advice as a consultant, and was recently awarded Horticulturist of the Year 2021 by the Australian Institute of Horticulture.
“My family always grew their own, so I had the luxury of home-grown food growing up. My grandma started it and parents tend to it now. They just grow what they want and need, which is really different to more western new gardens that prioritise aesthetics. We’ve always had chooks that roam around doing their own thing, and bees now. I love to just be able to potter and pick my own things, especially after a long day inside, I can go and look, touch, getting lost in the space.”
Even after studying horticulture, she is envious of her parents’ ability to just “put something in the ground and it just works, and I still can’t get it to work! It’s amazing what they did with what little they had.” When her parents arrived from Vietnam, they quickly started growing for their own food and to sell food at local markets for an income, “it’s all they knew”.
She’s added her own touch with an “ornamental space built out of scraps and things for workshops. When I eventually buy some land, I will have a lovely, beautiful, productive garden, not just this collection!”
Part of the decision to study in the first place was her parents’ sudden decision to start a bamboo farm at Peats Ridge, 1.5 hours from Sydney. Tammy helped her parents plant out a new property with bamboo – a long, tough gig that became the focus of her honours thesis on bamboo. “I wouldn’t call myself an expert, but I know a fair bit about them, it’s a very interesting grass. We have two main edible types of clumping bamboo.”
“Restaurants and most consumers go for canned bamboo shoots for convenience but fresh is best. We harvest young shoots, and it’s a very manual and physical process. You cut, prepare, peel back leaf shoots, and then have to boil them to get rid of a small amount of cyanide that makes them bitter. The funny thing is I hate eating them!!”
Tammy is “trying to cover as much horticulture as possible”.
“Writing is what I enjoy the most, which seems dull, but I enjoy inspiring people. And the other aspect is the teaching – you can meet so many people who say they can’t grow anything, but they just haven’t been given the right tools; I love seeing that lightbulb moment go off and they come back saying, ‘Look it’s working!’ I want them to go on and not need me in future, I want to teach them skills to build on. I’m still learning too of course.”
“I always like to remind people I do believe everyone can grow – you can always make space for it! Once people do get into it, they realise how much better off they are and that the plants are taking care of them too – they’re less anxious, stressed, the whole process of helping them is healing us.
“I also think everyone should be able to grow their own food. I still have to go the supermarket, but just a crop of lettuce, or spinach, there’s really something in being able to grow your own and it’s easier than people think.”
For Tammy, gardening isn’t just about having something pretty or productive, it’s about discovering your own abilities and confidence, and being empowered to be creative.
My Garden Path - Tammy Huynh - Gardening Australia
