Herbal Houseplants: Grow beautiful herbs – indoors! For flavor, fragrance, and fun

Product Description

Hey, houseplant lovers: Are you ready to up your growing game? Whether your green thumb is weathered and worn or shiny and new, get ready to branch out and step into the world of growing your own herbs—indoors! There’s no better place to start this adventure than with Herbal Houseplants. 

Inside the beautifully illustrated pages, author and expert herbalist Susan Betz lets you in on a little secret:
Herbs make great houseplants. And, you don’t need fancy grow lights, expensive potting soil, or high-end equipment to grow them. All you need is a sunny windowsill and the right plant. Learn
which herbs perform best as houseplants, how to care for them, and even
how to harvest and use your homegrown herbs for culinary creations, household cleaning products, herbal teas, handmade crafts, and more.

In
Herbal Houseplants you’ll learn:

The basics of caring for herbs indoors
How to keep indoor herbs productive and pest free
Tips for choosing the best herbs for indoor growing
Essential advice for watering, fertilizing, and harvesting
Dozens of recipes and DIY projects for enjoying your herbal harvest
How to grow exotic herbs, like patchouli, tulsi, and Corsican mint
From parsley and thyme to sage and lemongrass—and many herbs in between—
tending and enjoying herbal houseplants pays big rewards for little effort.

Review

Most homes have the odd houseplant. Whether a poinsettia at Christmas or as a centrepiece for windowsill or table, houseplants have an enlivening effect on indoor space simply by being alive, natural and beautiful. As a bonus, they improve air quality in our homes. Until recently they might have seemed like part of the furniture but now, with urban living and increasingly busy lives, it is no exaggeration to say that they can be a lifeline.

Over the past decade, sales of houseplants have boomed along with increasing concerns for health, both personal and environmental. This trend grew exponentially at the start of the pandemic when so many of us were obliged to stay home, becoming more concerned than ever about our health and longing for fresh air and contact with nature. As if addressing this shift in priorities, Susan Betz’s latest book Herbal Houseplants encourages us to take a new look at our indoor spaces and try growing herbs as houseplants. It is topical, practical and very appealing. Instead of a poinsettia, we could buy a strawberry-scented geranium and pomegranates and make a ruby-red sorbet for winter cheer. Or perhaps collect mints or sow a pot of cilantro in the kitchen? Why didn’t we think of this before?

Alongside the factual information on how and where to grow herbs indoors – “Thymely Tips and Sage Advice” – are enticing quotes that make you want to read on: “let’s go to that house, for the linen looks white, and smells of lavender, and I love to lie in a pair of sheets that smell so.” (The Compleat Angler, Isaak Walton, 1653). Who could resist?

Susan’s “up close and personal” style is bound to win friends and influence readers. She writes reassuringly about herbs as “good friends” that you can trust to make life better. Just give them a try and see what works best for you and your space. In addition to simple recipes for tempting things you can eat and drink, there is no end of other ways to use your herbal houseplants, from creating potpourri and herbal parchment paper to topiaries and ‘talking bouquets’. Some are easy enough for youngsters. Making a mint bubble bath could bring some light relief from home-schooling. And it might, come to think of it, add one or two useful skills.
But growing herbs as houseplants is not all about “how to”. All the herbs that Susan suggests are so intensely fragrant and have such interesting textures – silky eucalyptus, spiky rosemary, velvety horehound, – that you will not be able to resist stroking them and breathing deeply. “Gardens do not have to be measured in feet, yards or acres, they can be measured in inches just as successf