Sarah Durber - Make Your Own Indoor Garden: How to Fill Your Home with Low Maintenance Greenery

THANKS

Thank you to Max and Frankie for always being there, for supporting my plant obsession, and for allowing our home to become an indoor garden.

Thank you to my wonderful friends and family who have supported and encouraged my change in career direction from fashion to plants and for lending a hand either by painting my shop spaces (Dad), building furniture (Mum and Dad), being some of my first ever plant customers (Kat, George and Bobsy) and just generally cheerleading me along the way.

Thank you also to Maxs family for forgiving me when I was unable to visit due to plant commitments and for supporting me also.

Thanks to Christina Wentworth for her beautiful photography and helping to make the book come to life.

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by

Pen & Sword WHITE OWL

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Sarah Durber, 2021

ePUB ISBN: 9781526774590

Mobi ISBN: 9781526774606

The right of Sarah Durber to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

Design: Paul Wilkinson

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WHEN I STARTED OUT on a quest to fill my home with greenery, I had to visit lots of different plant shops and garden centres and learn about the plants I had purchased by searching online for tips and by making mistakes along the way. I hope with this book I am able to answer some of the most commonly asked questions raised by new plant owners and help people who want to have more greenery in their lives but dont know where to start.

Once my interest in plants began, I found my own plant collection started to grow pretty quickly. It was hard to choose just one plant when I was surrounded by choice in the plant shops I visited. Even though I wanted plants to clean the air in my home, I didnt only buy these, and sometimes this was successful and sometimes this ended in tears. This book aims to help you start a plant collection that is going to last, and to help you avoid making the mistakes I made when I first started out. Ive included a whole chapter on succulents and cacti later in the book, as it felt as though they needed their own section. I also think that as long as you have enough light for succulents and cacti these are a great place to start too, so you dont have to only stick to the plants I have mentioned below.

Owning and maintaining an indoor garden can be possible for anyone, and this book will give you step by step guides to creating and designing your own closed and open terrariums, air plant displays and even kokedamas (Japanese for moss ball). Included are descriptions of the equipment needed, and how to find this inexpensively so that the hobby is accessible to everyone. I am hoping that by reading this book you will discover a new-found joy of plants and nature as well as learn a brand-new skill.

Start off with a few lowmaintenance plants. Left to right: Sansevieria cylindrica, ZZ Raven and Snake Plant

For absolute beginners (or busy plant owners who want greenery with minimal input)

Id recommend at least one of the following plants for a first-time plant owner, and also for people who dont have a lot of time for plant care. All of the plants suggested below need minimal water and can survive an element of neglect. It is a good idea to group plants in your home based on their care needs at first, so that when you come to water one, you know that the other plants in that spot in your home need watering at the same time, that way you will avoid making the over or under watering mistakes discussed in Chapter Two.

When I talk about feeding your plants, I recommend an inexpensive seaweed plant feed that you can buy online or in homeware stores. It is usually organic, although not all of the homeware stores advertise this, and is the best plant feed for your house plants. Just search online for seaweed plant feed and you will find a few options.

The ZZ plant can withstand a lot of neglect.

ZZ PLANT AND ZZ RAVEN (Zamioculas zamiifolia also known as Zanizibar Gem)

I have been a fan of ZZ Plants for a long time. They really are one of the toughest house plants going and need limited care from their owners. They have beautiful glossy leaves and with the right amount of care they will grow new shoots for you. They are actually a bulb plant, and therefore do not like to be overly watered.

Water

I would recommend watering these plants no more than once every two to three weeks, but if you were to forget to water this plant for a month then it still should survive!