I have to admit, I thought this chapter so important that it could have been one of the first in the book.

I would be cautious though on spending on the more complex of these plants without fully understanding how to look after them; which of course is the point of the book. If it’s working for you, fine – but for someone who hasn’t dealt with plants before, top watering is really going to help, or if you consistently overwater plants or have plants with root rot, top watering is going to help,” Tony says. If you are looking for a new book on plants for yourself or as a gift, this is the one to choose, as it is excellent value for money. So I found one grower in the Netherlands that had one plant in that stage and they allowed me to borrow it. The cover tells us that this is a book of ‘ comprehensive care for extraordinary houseplants‘ and it is exactly that.I realised that Tony Le-Britton was houseplant obsessed when I interviewed him some years ago for a feature. Maybe it's just that, you know, Kew's got a lot of plants, you've got a lot of plants, but maybe on a scale that when you can keep particular, yeah, you're gonna take particular care of it. I got it from I can't remember how many years ago, but I got it a while ago and I grew it from tiny little few tiny little leaves in the sandwich bag. And maybe you want to get a houseplant, or you want to learn about your own house plants a bit more.

I never imagined I'd ever be sitting here writing a book guide from a council estate in Newcastle with the biggest gardening publisher in the world is nuts. And the Corybas caudatas is an extremely rare orchid, which my wonderful friend Rogier had bottled it to hold aside and gifted to me a while ago. The rest of the book is devoted to advice on the best way to care for your plants from light, watering and humidity to how to feed and what soil, or substrate, to use.And it just these little nuggets of really interesting things just inspired me and helped me plough on with the book as well.