Houseplant Care Guide

Keeping houseplants alive is the whole job of this 42-page printable handbook, written for people who are still learning. It says early on that it’s not a planner and not a logbook. Apart from one notes page at the back, there’s nothing to fill in: you open it and it tells you what to do.

Start with the basics

Part one takes five pages to cover the six things every plant needs: light, water, temperature, humidity, soil and nutrients. The light page includes a shadow test for working out whether a spot is direct, bright indirect, medium or low light. The water page explains checking the soil with your finger rather than watering on a schedule, and the soil page compares terracotta, plastic and glazed pots.

Twelve plants, two pages each

The profiles cover monstera, snake plant, pothos, fiddle leaf fig, succulents, cactus, rubber plant, spider plant, calathea, alocasia, philodendron and ZZ plant. The first page of each gives the Latin name, a difficulty rating, light, water, temperature and soil at a glance, how big it grows, and where to put it and where not to. The second page has care notes on feeding, pruning and propagation, a list of symptoms with their likely cause, and what to do season by season. Before the profiles, a quick reference table matches plants to the room you have, such as a dark hallway.

When something goes wrong

Part three is for rescue work: a yellow leaf chart that you follow from top to bottom, four common pests with how to spot and treat each one, step-by-step root rot first aid, and how to repot. The reference section adds a month-by-month calendar and a glossary of plant-shop terms.

Printing

The 6 x 9 in file is for a pocket-sized book or a print-on-demand service, and the printing guide suggests spiral binding so it lies flat on a windowsill while you work. The guide is designed for cream or ivory paper and prints fine in grayscale.