Houseplant Combinations to Light Up Your Home

If you’ve ever brought home a mixed planting with high hopes only to watch each plant wither away until you’re left with very little if anything living, Steve Asbell’s book, Plant By Numbers, will help guarantee that the next mixed basket or pot you put on your coffee table thrives.

The artist and garden writer/blogger’s book features 50 houseplant combinations to decorate any space, along with sage advice for choosing the right plant combos in the first place and maintenance tips for keeping them looking happy and spiffy.

  (All photos in this article by Steve Asbell)

 “The dish gardens you find at locations such as the florist aren’t all bad, but many of them are nothing more than an assortment of young plants, each with its own unique needs, corralled together in a glass dish with no drainage holes,” says Asbell. “These often fail before long, either because some of the plants grow much faster than the rest, or because their roots rot in the stagnant water collecting at the bottom, since there are no drainage holes.”

Asbell’s book features a wide variety of eye-catching plant combinations that grow well together and gives you the ingredients for making each masterpiece. You’ll find fun plant arrangements like “The Executive” (bottom right), which features Haworthia and Sansevieria and “Jungle Glow,” with a ‘Limelight’ dracaena taking center stage (pictured top right). “Jurassic Spark” (top left) features ZZ plant.

        

A particularly useful feature of the book that will help every indoor gardener is the Plant Lists section, which provides a wide assortment of useful lists, such as temporary houseplants (those that can stay indoors for a time, but must then go outside), edible houseplants, trailers and viners, and you’ll find plants broken down by color and ease of cultivation.

Asbell also acknowledges that many plants will inevitably outgrow their living quarters in a mixed planter, and he has a solution. “I’ve included tips for re-potting, dividing, pruning and even propagating new plants via cuttings,” says the author, who thought of everything. “Just as garden plants don’t stay the same forever, indoor plants are constantly changing, and that makes growing them all the more fun.”