The unexpected houseplant 220 extraordinary choices for every spot in your home

Review by Booklist Review

Subscribing to the belief that, where houseplants are concerned, too much is never enough, unabashed interior-garden-enthusiast Martin extols the virtues of expanding one's indoor horticultural horizons beyond the run-of-the-mill rubber tree or puny grocery store ivy. The sheer variety and staggering range of plant material available to in-home gardeners is rewarding in its versatility and diversity. Outdoor-garden stalwarts, such as ornamental grasses and conifers, can happily coexist with indoor brethren, such as geraniums and cacti. One needs little more than a window and a watering can to transform even the most unconventional corners of a home into a lush extension of the natural world. Season by season, Martin profiles indoor-garden stars: calla lilies in fall, camellias in winter, crotons in summer, carnivorous plants in spring. Accompanied by Clineff's fetching photographs that showcase Martin's artistry in pairing the right plant with the right pot, her conversational and practical care-and-feeding guidance will boost the confidence of even the most black-thumbed houseplant owner. Martin's can-do enthusiasm is infectious, her creativity inspiring.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

For those who have tired of spider plants and cactus, garden writer Martin (The New Terrarium) suggests a year's worth of new options. She begins her tour in autumn (the start of the indoor gardener's year) and offers dozens of tempting suggestions. There are familiar bulbs and unexpected conifers, fruiting trees, and carnivorous plants. Each plant listing includes a photograph and an information box describing its flower, foliage, cultivation requirements, and potential problems. What really sets this apart from other reference guides are Martin's imaginative choices. She dares readers to invite conifer trees and summer coleus inside for the winter and explains how to help the plants thrive there. She lures readers beyond the Christmas poinsettia to the whimsical, Dr. Seussian charm of a holiday Echeveria. She offers fruit, fragrance, foliage, and flower. Clineff's full-color photographs provide plenty of inspiration for the home gardener and decorator. This is an imaginative guide to bringing the delights of the garden indoors. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

For her 15th book, garden writer and plant expert Martin seeks to encourage the indoor plant maven in each of us. With the help of Clineff's eye-catching photos, which depict how correctly chosen plants placed in creative containers can enhance indoor living space, Martin shows how imagination and use of fundamental ground rules for growing and proper placement should result in an indoor horticultural paradise year round. Martin covers over 220 plants, ranging from exotic to conventional, but her unusual plant-container pairings give all of them an artsy flavor. Her text is engaging and personable. Growth requirements, propagation advice, problems, and attributes of plants are outlined. While Martin provides a resource list, she encourages the use of even "lowly" grocery store specimens. She presents planning and work schedules within a framework of the four seasons. VERDICT As the title suggests, this is not a typical facts-only presentation of how to cultivate houseplants. All indoor plant hobbyists in every geographic area will enjoy and learn from this book. Its fresh approach deserves a thumbs-up.-Deborah Anne Broocker, Georgia Perimeter Coll. Lib., Dunwoody (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Introduction From the road, it looks like any other house. For anyone tooling through town, my home doesn't really stand out, except perhaps for its preponderance of garden beds visible from the street and the fact that it's a tad funkier than the neighboring New England architecture in the center of town. Especially in winter, you'd be prone to roll right on by without giving it so much as a second glance. But if you had reason to nose into the driveway, knock on the front door, and slip inside, it would be a whole different story.   Basically, if you don't like plants, don't bother to enter. Agoraphobics will be just as agri-challenged inside as they are in the field. Because within that unassuming exterior resides a wonderful world of roaming vines and hairy stems. Leaves of all shapes, sizes, textures, scents, and combinations of colors are given free rein. You must brush by them to deliver the FedEx box. It's necessary to engage with the flower spike of the pregnant onion before gaining entry into the converted barn, where the comfy chair awaits. Watch how you angle the groceries around the kalanchoe, because clumsily maneuvered baggage will bring it down. Only dogs with short tails are allowed in. Wherever it is possible to host plants, my house is wall-to-wall greenery. I didn't bother doing much with decorator colors on the walls; I didn't sweat the window treatments or the framed family portraits--the plants are my decor. At any given moment, I host hundreds of houseplants, give or take a couple of dozen. In autumn, the inventory might swell when I crowd more plants inside than the light venues can comfortably host. In winter, the amaryllis and other holiday cheerfuls hold forth. In spring, the accumulation swells with seedlings that are destined for outdoors. For a few brief months in the depths of summer, the head count decreases while the majority of my indoor plants sojourn outside. But I keep many succulents and all my terrariums close by because the home feels empty without their green presence. I can't live without the jungle of leafy branches and groping vines that I call home. And it's not as though I don't have green elsewhere in my life. I garden intensively and extensively outdoors in summer. Every weekend, I hop in the car and visit gardens. Then I spend the rest of the year with the enviable job of writing about summer gardens. But I still couldn't live without plants sharing my abode. For me it's all about the plants stretching their limbs, forming their buds, expanding new leaves, and responding to my nurturing (or neglect, if called for). And that sensation--that intimacy with nature--is what I strive to describe in this book. If nothing else, this is the chronicle of a romance between botany and a kid who craves green. But under that thin veneer is an ill-concealed attempt to convert you. I'm hoping you'll buy into this. I'm doing my best to demonstrate how plants can change your psyche when you welcome them into your life. It's radical. It's the difference between holding nature at arm's length and embracing it into the heart of your home. But don't take my word for it--give plants a chance. Live intimately with them. Let them connect. Experience their cycles and rhythms. Flow them into your agenda. Encourage those tendrils to meander into your everyday experience so they're inextricably woven into your life. Do it with all the style, creativity, and devotion that you lavish on the other aspects of your life. Do it with the fervor you pour on your pets, for example, and you could end up starting a sweet relationship. Here, in the pages that follow, are the tools you'll need to achieve your in-house botanical bond.   Excerpted from The Unexpected Houseplant: 220 Extraordinary Choices for Every Spot in Your Home by Tovah Martin All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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