Book Review: Urban Botanics by Maaike Koster and Emma Sibley

This beautifully minimalist book is aimed at people wanting to add plants to their urban environments, such as living and work spaces.

After the brief introduction, the book has 4 chapters: Succulents, Cacti, Flowering Plants, and Foliage Plants. Each plant gets a double page spread, the left contains the simple and easy to follow growing instructions, which vary in length, written by Emma Sibley. On the right page, each plant is treated to a wonderful illustration from the paintbrush of Maaike Koster.

While I do like the minimalist nature of this book, I do feel that a bit more information could have been added to enrich the readers relationship to each plant. However, I liked seeing the native location information for each plant and the use of metric and imperial measurments, which is sure to keep everyone happy.

An example of the book layout.

The section on Cacti is very loose with the term, including cactus-like plants such as Euphorbias in the curated list. While some old common names are mentioned, there is nothing mentioned of the scientific name of the plant - something that can often arouse deeper interest in plants.

The book is great to look at and has been well written to be easy to follow. A wide selection of plants has been chosen from both hemispheres and I feel that there's a plant for most situations here. Cetainly a nice and brief read to feel closer to plants, either those you already have, or those you soon will!