You're Overwatering It!
A Plant Guru's Guide to Houseplants
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
A maximalist, humorous guide to growing and caring for houseplants—whatever your space, whatever your personality—from a plant fanatic who has transformed his home into an indoor jungle.
Water your plant every 7 days? Rubbish. Misting increases humidity? Barely. All plants go dormant in winter? Not if you control their environment. And don’t even get me started on the "just put an ice cube on your orchid" people. You monsters.
New from social media sensation The Bearded Plantaholic (known as Jonny Balchandani IRL), You're Overwatering It! helps readers choose houseplants to fit their lifestyle, personality, and taste—leading them to plants that will work for them, rather than what’s in style. This fun, funny, and gamified guide helps readers perfect their plant parenting skills, working through levels from Plant Noob to Budding Botanist, Plant Whisperer to Plant Curator, and then finally to Plant Mystic.
This is a wildly comprehensive yet eminently accessible guidebook from a peer expert, with a fresh voice that brings humor and irreverence to the indoor gardening space. Readers will learn how to grow plants better, what they're doing wrong, and why to ditch the tempting yet distracting myths that send many houseplant growers badly astray. Balchandani teaches plant stewards not just how to care for their beloved houseplants, but how to understand them—so caring for them stops being a chore and starts becoming second nature.
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Balchandani, creator of the Instagram account @thebeardedplantaholic, debuts with a funny and practical guide to caring for houseplants. After nearly killing a "scrappy little vine" with neglect, he watched it miraculously bounce back, an experience that helped him understand plants are living things with unique needs and behaviors. He was hooked and began filling his home with greenery. Asserting that "most of the plant advice out there is absolute nonsense," he shares the tips he's learned. For example, houseplant labels that urge buyers to "water once a week" or keep in "low light" are misleading. Plant parents should instead trust their instincts and observe their plants to understand their needs (if a plant is stretching toward a window and its leaves are getting smaller, it needs more light). To help readers find the best plant for them, he offers "personality tests" determining "what kind of plant parent are you" and "what's your plant soulmate." Elsewhere, he guides readers through how to handle common pests, propagate houseplants, design verdant displays, and care for rare flora. Balchandani writes with wit and energy, warning about "divas in disguise" and "care instructions that are so ridiculously vague, they might as well just say: ‘Good luck, sucker.' " Aspiring plant whisperers will find this a windfall.
