Not Another Jungle: Comprehensive Care for Extraordinary Houseplants

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They don't cover much of the same ground really because they're very different books, but I think the two of them together give you a really fascinating insight into houseplants. This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, The Road We Use To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku and Overthrown by Josh Woodward. From growing his own collection, Tony Le-Britton of Not Another Jungle, shows you how to grow and care for the world’s most sought after plants. But the amazing photographer Jason Ingram did the photos and he did the most amazing job and I think Jason and DK the publisher and me were a little worried about working with me you know me as a photographer working with another photographer.

Tony Le-Britton is a self-taught grower and prolific houseplant collector of some of the world’s rarest plants.But let me tell you, as I've been doing every week in the run up to the launch of my book, another fact from Legends Of The Leaf, this week's fact concerns Dionaea muscipula, the venus flytrap. More than most houseplant books, Not Another Jungle goes into the science behind growing, explaining photosynthesis, pollination, and thigmomorphogenesis – where plants react to movement. But otherwise, all of that information will be going up very very soon because I know some of you love your deep dives into the topics covered in the book. If you give your houseplant too much of one nutrient, it can cause ‘nutrient lock’, stopping the plant absorbing other nutrients, warns Tony. And the troughs, I think some some of the troughs probably had to be looking at the myths and trying to source that really accurate scientific information to backup what you were saying.

He also disputes the idea that there are some plants that will thrive in ‘low light’, pointing out that at best they will just die slowly.Not only is this expertly written and backed up by Tony’s only experiences, but the photography (by Jason Ingram) only adds to making this a book of real importance for the houseplant community. In person is best as it gives you a chance to check over your purchase and there’s a warning about online scams. It goes into great detail about things like light conditions, without dumbing down the science which is really fascinating to read about! And I feel like we've been on parallel journeys with this, I'm not going to go on about my book, because that's not what this episode is about.

It has a huge reaction on on Instagram, it went viral the first time I posted it, because not only does it have the most fascinating flower, it's incredibly small, but its leaves look like anthurium leaves, you probably can't see it in that picture as it's laid really flat. Well, that's a great metaphor for the overall amount of hard work that goes into producing a book like this. So it was a real combination between obviously what is looking really good at the time, I wanted to show a really wide variety of plant, not just our aroids, we've got orchids through the book, we've got beautiful begonia, we've got cacti and succulents as well. After teaching himself how to grow indoor plants and becoming a prolific collector, Tony has learned better than most not all advice on maintaining plants rings true.Taught to garden as a child by his grandparents, this book brings together 30 years of growing experience and plant knowledge. The music you heard in this episode was Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, The Road We Used To Travel by Komiku, and Overthrown by Josh Woodward. If you prefer to support the show in other ways, please do go and rate and review On The Ledge on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen. Because as you know, in when you have a lot of plants, it can sometimes just become a bit of a burden or just becomes a lot, right? Covering all the things you’d expect from someone with such a wealth of knowledge such as advice around light levels, watering, propagation, pests and more.