Tropical Plants and How to Love Them

I was not a careful reader of the blurb so I didn't expect this to be a planting guide for tropicals in temperate gardens i.e. Zone 5+. While I don't have the space to include tropical plants (and tend to focus on veggies/natives for outdoor gardening anyway), I enjoyed Willburn's organization of the book. It can sound twee-grouping plants by relationship types- it was handled really well with sound arguments and tips for overwintering your summer garden and designing gardens to include tropicals.

Really good information about different house plants! Shows different ways to take care of them and the conditions they need to be in. Really useful for beginner plant lovers

Tropical Plants and How to Love Them is a great gateway book about getting started with tropical plants.
I really liked how the different categories were explained (as best friends, summer romances, etc.) - it's easy to understand and friendly to beginners. There were a lot of beautiful pictures, explanations and the overall flow of the book was very nice. At the end of the book, there's a list of common plants and what category they go into - what is something to put in your garden for the summer, then let die, and what you can get in for the winter months without issues and get back out when it gets warm.

I definitely recommend the book if you're interested in getting some tropical plants.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group – Cool Springs Press for providing me with an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.*

Tropical Plants and How to Love Them is a technique focused gardening guide by Marianne Willburn. Due out 13th April 2021 from Quarto on their Cool Springs Press imprint, it's 208 pages and will be available in hardcover and ebook formats.

Gardeners have always tried to stretch the limits of what will grow in their local climates. We all know someone who has absolutely gorgeous dahlias, tuberose begonias, caladium, and other tropical beauties which they carefully lift and store before the cold weather kills them. This is a well written and solidly useful book *full* of tips for choosing, keeping, and helping tropical plants to thrive for temperate climate gardeners.

There are many ways to use tropicals in the garden and the author explores them: seasonal (let them die and replant next spring/summer), ones which are indoor/outdoor to suit the season, dormant overwinterers (like my beloved cannas), edible/usable tropical plants, and high-maintenance divas for whom we sacrifice much effort and sometimes tears. Each of the chapters includes some overlap and much of the value of this book for me came from the author's tips for evaluating each type of horticultural relationship and deciding when to pull the plug on a plant which has become too demanding of time and effort or expense.

The last section contains an abbreviated A to Z of selections by genus with lots of ideas and inspiration. There's also a useful list of "honorable mention" plants, online/mail order nurseries, and a short bibliography for further reading and investigation. The index is cross-referenced and includes both botanical (Latin) names and common names. The entire book is beautifully and lushly illustrated in color.

Well written, comprehensive, creative, and inspiring. Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

This book is a love story between the author and tropical plants and it is written beautifully as such. The chapters take us through this relationship from early beginnings to learning how to say goodbye to these plants at the end of the season. Some plants are seen as fleeting relationships and some are defined as best friends. I really enjoyed this approach, it spoke to me.

The images in the book are of high quality and became a shopping list of 'ooh I want that one', and 'I wonder if I could grow that?'. This is always the sign of a good book. There is a section on 'mocktrops', those plants that look tropical but are not really. What I really liked is the warning that some plants can be invasive when not in their home conditions. This is a very important warning and one that all gardeners need to be aware of.

The advice in the book is excellent, the writing is clear and accessible and the images help show you what you need to know. This book is so comprehensive it even tells you how to eat your edible tropical plants.

The plant directory is of the same quality as the rest of the book, giving knowledgeable information to help you choose the right plants for your garden. The book finishes with a list of resources and suppliers that, as the book is written for the US market are all US based. I did not see this as an issue for me here in the UK as what matters most to me is the plant name and horticultural information.

Reading this on the NetGalley app was difficult. You didn't have pages to turn it read like a printout. That being said I skimmed it and it looks like an informative book. Love all the photos and different plants. Next, I suggest offering it for the kindle or a different format within the NetGalley app.

The book is amazing has lots of information, defiantly a book to keep and look at as a reference, would recommend to anyone how loves tropical plants and wants to konw more about them, easy to read.

A beautiful book with fabulous photos and full of useful information on growing tropical plants for the temperate gardener.
The first part of the book explains which plants fall into which category of how much work is involved, are they short lived, provide extras or can do without a greenhouse. There are various methods of growing in the garden for impact, and lastly there is a catalogue of plants, photos and plant needs for a truly tropical look garden.
A great book, suitable and adapted for worldwide use, it is an excellent book for the garden how strives for something different

Marianne Willburn provides an incredibly useful guide to growing tropical plants indoors and outdoors in non-tropical areas in this book. Gorgeous photos illustrate her points throughout as she provides advice on plant types, planting indoors and outdoors, garden design and overwintering plants.

I really appreciated her system of ranking plants by ease/use and her honest guide on when to say goodbye to a plant that you’ve fallen out of love with.

I’m excited to try growing some of the edible tropical plants she features in the book, which I’d never have thought I could grow otherwise.

I’d recommend this book to anyone looking to add some flair to their garden or houseplant collection. It’s a book I will continue to refer back to for guidance.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.