The Complete Houseplant Survival Manual
Essential Gardening Know-How for Keeping (Not Killing!) More Than 160 Indoor Plants
Barbara Pleasant · Storey Publishing, 2022
The deepest per-species care coverage on this shelf. A working manual with no styling content whatsoever.
Hachette does not describe the 2022 printing as a revised edition, and the marketing copy is unchanged from the 2005 original. The page count rose from 365 to 384, which may be design rather than new material. We could not verify that the content was substantively updated — and the house plants in circulation changed a great deal between 2005 and 2022. Worth knowing before you pay £22. Make sure you buy ISBN 9781635866605, not the 2005 edition.
What's actually in it
- A plant identification guide — a visual key at the front.
- Part One: Blooming houseplants — profiles A–Z.
- Part Two: Foliage houseplants — profiles A–Z.
- Part Three: Houseplant care — general culture, light, temperature, humidity, watering, soil, pest control.
- Glossary, resources, and a botanical-to-common-name cross reference.
- Each profile carries light, temperature, fertiliser, water, soil preference, repotting, longevity, propagation and troubleshooting.
What it actually says
Specifics from inside the book — so you can judge whether it's telling you anything you don't already know.
- Every plant gets a "personality profile" alongside its growing needs and troubleshooting — the device that distinguishes it from a straight directory, across 160-plus blooming and foliage plants.
- Three separate ways in: a visual plant-ID guide, an A–Z encyclopedia, and full-colour photographs. It is designed to be entered from "what is this?" or "what's wrong with it?", not read through.
- An A-to-Z guide to house plant care covering containers, soil mixtures, pest management, watering, pruning and staking as a separate reference section.
What we couldn't checkWe could not read inside this book — the library scan is access-restricted and no preview exists — so the above is confirmed structure rather than sampled content. And one thing the publisher does not say: the 2022 printing is not described as a revised edition, and the marketing copy is unchanged from 2005. The page count rose by nineteen. We could not establish that the content was updated, which matters for a £22 book about a category that changed enormously in those seventeen years.
Buy it if
You want the reference that actually answers the question, and you don't care what the book looks like.
Don't buy it if
Anyone who wants pictures of nice rooms.
Where it falls short
Reviewers consistently flag two real problems: the ebook is poorly navigable, and — more importantly — there are too few photographs of pests and diseases, which is precisely where images matter most for diagnosis. A few now-common house plants are missing. And the comprehensiveness can be intimidating if you own two plants. Toxicity coverage: unverified either way.
Who wrote it
Pleasant is a long-career American garden journalist — thirty-plus years writing on organic gardening, a three-time Garden Globe award winner, and a regular in Mother Earth News and Organic Gardening. She gardens an intensive terraced food garden in Virginia. Read that carefully: no horticultural degree or institutional post is claimed anywhere we looked, and her demonstrated hands-on expertise is US outdoor food growing rather than indoor ornamentals. The 2022 printing is a reissue of a 2005 book, not a rewrite.
Where it was written
US author, temperatures in Fahrenheit, US suppliers and extension-service framing. The horticulture is sound and transfers; you'll be converting units and ignoring the resources section.
The facts
- AuthorBarbara Pleasant
- PublisherStorey Publishing
- Published2022
- FormatPaperback, 384 pages
- ISBN-13
9781635866605 - LevelBeginner to advanced
Checked against publisher listings, UK retailers and library records in August 2026. If any of this is wrong, tell us and we'll fix it.
Where to get it
Buying secondhand? Match the ISBN above — several books on this shelf have editions that look identical but aren't.