Succulents are some of the easiest plants to look after and are a great starter plant for beginners and this book wraps up everything you need to know to get going and to become a more advanced grower.
Sarah Gerrard-Jones, who is known as @theplantrescuer on Instagram, details 200 succulents which she calls "living sculptures" for the home. She's been on TV with Alan Titchmarsh, has exhibited at Chelsea's houseplant studio area and founded Plant Rescue Box, which sells imperfect indoor plants online.
Aptly, reviving succulents is tackled in the book. Cut off rot, which is often caused by over-watering. Feed yellow or stunted plants. Sulphur sprays can beat fungal disease. Learn to live with light-starved etiolated plants. Move back to the light and they might flower. Cut off frost damage. Brush off bugs or spray with surgical spirit or soap or nematodes.
Watering, light, flowering and revival are questions answered in this deeper dive into everything from agaves to opuntia. Our prickly friends need light or else they will etiolate, not much water in the winter, and like room temperature, though you can xeriscape (grow them outside).
Relevant more than ever in times of low water availability, there are 13,000 species across 80 plant families that display 'succulence' (having tissues that store water). Cactaceae is the biggest and has been used as food (eg prickly pears), tools (arrow heads) and medicine (aloe), as well as spiritually (hallucinogenics), for thousands of years. But poaching is a problem, as is importing rarer varieties because of CITES rules.
This DK book is not linked to the RHS (there's a 2019 Allaway/Bailey RHS/DK book on the subject and a 2022 RHS/Mitchell Beazley 'little' one) but there's British Cactus and Succulent Society involvement and profiles that give the book weight and a point of difference. Photos by Jason Ingram from West Dean's succulent collection are welcome in this comprehensive guide.
