Houseplants, Properly

Houseplants, Properly is the book Marcus Bell wanted to hand every customer during his ten years running a Brooklyn plant nursery: the few principles that keep plants alive indoors, explained once and clearly, followed by profiles of 120 plants, the difficult ones included. It covers light you can measure, watering by feel, mixes you can make at home and what a yellow, brown or crisp leaf is telling you.

The first part, about 100 pages, sets out what every plant needs: light and how to measure it in foot-candles, watering, humidity and winter heat, pots and potting mixes, repotting, feeding, pests and propagation. The second is a symptom index that starts from what you see, such as yellow lower leaves, brown tips or sticky residue, and leads to the likely cause and the fix. The third holds the 120 profiles, each with light range, watering rhythm, mix, propagation method and whether the plant is safe around cats and dogs. Cross-references send you from a profile back to the chapter that explains the problem.

It won’t make a fiddle-leaf fig happy in a dark hallway, and it says plainly which popular plants are hard work in most homes, such as calatheas in dry winter air. The advice is written for real apartments, with radiators, small windows and pets, not for greenhouse conditions. The Indoor Garden Masterclass shows the hands-on work, like repotting and air layering, on video.