The Inspired Houseplant

The ultimate go-to guide for aspiring indoor gardeners, this book offers inspiration and instruction to envision and create your own gorgeous in-home garden spaces. With plentiful images and a distinctly modern and sophisticated feel, this book imparts both easy-to-follow advice and creative garden-design inspiration. Whether you are looking to pick a statement plant for your living room, create a terrarium centerpiece, or arrange an artful display of air plants, this book will provide the tools you need. You'll be tempted to thumb through it again and again--for both resource and relaxation. Includes: -Plant Basics: beginner-friendly plant care info -Plant Guide: profiles of popular indoor plants -Plant Projects: fun, easy projects with major wow factor (including trending designs like terrariums, air plants, marimo and other underwater gardens, kokedama, mounted staghorn ferns, and edible herbs) -Plant Style: ways to use plants in interior design for every style from Desert Boho to Midcentury Modern

"The Inspired Houseplant will point you toward your perfect greenery."
—Real Simple

"Gardener and entrepreneur [Jen] Stearns, who owns a plant store in greater Seattle, proves the perfect coach for the houseplant-challenged. Her simple 101-style guide discusses the basics of potting, watering, pruning, and feeding, and wisely sticks to the basics, selecting and organizing into groups plants that will reward beginners [...] Beautiful photography of lush, plant-filled spaces convincingly makes Stearns’s points. First-time homeowners or new apartment dwellers who long for green but lack confidence in their plant-tending abilities will be greatly helped by this volume." 
*—Publishers Weekly

• "If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the process of picking the perfect houseplant for your home, entrepreneur and plant-mom extraordinaire Jen Stearns is here to demystify the process."
  —Apartment Therapy

"Greeen thumb or brown thumb—either way, this book levels the playing field with tips, tricks, and easy guides to happy houseplants."
*—Better Homes & Gardens, Do It Yourself
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"Black thumb, you say? That’s not a problem with The Inspired Houseplant, Seattle-native Jen Stearns' gorgeous and helpful new book. Part advice manual, part plant guide, part DIY project tutorial, it’s sure to provide inspiration and instruction no matter your gardening level.
—Seattle Times

"Beginning indoor gardeners hoping to green up their homes will find no better resource than this stellar guide."
*—Library Journal
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"[This] book is a treasure trove of educational information and also includes some projects—terrariums, hanging gardens—perfect for crafting on long winter evenings."
*—Seattle Magazine*

"Author Jen Stearns penned this guide for indoor gardeners of every ambition level." 
—Seattle Met

"Over the course of 196 beautiful pages, [Jen Stearns] demystifies the stress many of us feel at owning and caring for houseplants [...] Stearns also outlines beautiful how-tos for terrariums and bowl gardens, water gardens and hanging or vertical gardens that will immediately have readers reimagining their home or office."
*—The Inlander

• "[Jen Stearns] is such an expert on plants that she literally wrote the book on them."
  —Seattle Refined on KOMO-TV

"Houseplants bring new life and fresh color into your living space. In her new book, The Inspired Houseplant, Seattle-based greenery guru Jen Stearns shares foolproof care advice for some of her favorites."
*—Windermere Living

• "This indoor plant book is crammed with garden-design inspiration and easy-to-follow advice that ranges from beginner plant care and watering guidelines to the most popular indoor plants to buy now. And, with its striking cover, clean layout and modern design, The Inspired Houseplant will make a beautiful addition to any coffee table."
  *—House and Leisure
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  "[Jen] Stearns is more than an entrepreneur with a green thumb and a taste for modern decor. She's well versed in the science behind gardening." 
  —Renton Reporter

Autorentext

JEN STEARNS was born and raised in the historic Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle where she spent time in her mother's vegetable garden as a child. A lifelong plant-lover, she has a BS in environmental science from the University of Washington and has found her calling empowering beginning gardeners to create spaces brimming with personality and life. She is the owner of Urban Sprouts, a plant storefront, online store, and mobile unit that offers hands-on classes, private events, and subscription services to make plant care simple and enjoyable. She lives with her husband in Renton, WA.

Leseprobe
Introduction

Most of us have memories from childhood of indoor plants that seemed somehow part of the family. Maybe it was a classic Boston fern hanging from the ceiling, or a potted cactus or bamboo, or a ficus in the corner. What many people don’t have to go along with those memories, however, is the knowledge of or confidence in how to take care of indoor plants of their own. I used to teach people how to grow food in an urban setting. Along the way, I realized how many folks of all ages weren’t ready for that because they had an outright fear of plants. “Can’t grow a thing,” they told me. “I can kill a plant just by looking at it.” And I knew the type because while my mother had a beautiful garden outside our Pacific Northwest home (with a little plot always set aside for me), she had a brown thumb indoors!

Some people consider owning a houseplant to being akin to owning a dog in terms of responsibility. I must disagree there. While it’s true that like dogs, certain breeds of plants are better suited to certain owners, a plant requires far less care and less responsibility, and it’s much easier to learn how to do it right.

After I realized it was fear holding so many people back, I made it my mission to give people the skills and the confidence to play with indoor plants and to use greenery to create a sense of home in their space. Think about what a space without plants feels like: clinical, sterile. Now add plants. Homey, right? Warm, designed, cared for. There’s real science behind all those fuzzy feelings; studies show that office production goes up when there are plants in the office and that dopamine levels rise for people with plants in the home, especially if they help handle them and care for them. An often-cited study by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) also found that certain indoor plants do a fantastic job of filtering our interior air of chemicals. While NASA studied a specific list of cultivars, all indoor plants work to filter the air and add oxygen in varying amounts, so the more plants the better! What I love about plants is that the beauty, joy, and health that plants bring to us indoors are accessible to everyone. Black thumb or no, there is truly a plant for you, and in this book you’ll find all the information to demystify plant ownership, including potting, watering, pruning, and feeding, as well as a guide to some of the most common houseplants organized by their environmental needs so you can easily pick the plants that both appeal to your aesthetics and suit your home environment and caretaking style.

But plants don’t just clean our air and generate a sense of Zen. They’re also design powerhouses, able to play into completely different looks and design aesthetics and act as statement pieces or subtle decor. Inside this book you’ll find …