Who is the Plant Parent Success Recipe Guide for?

SHORT ANSWER: If you own a houseplant, this guide is for you.

We often think that becoming a plant parent is a conscious decision.

Like arriving home with a beautiful houseplant (or two) in your arms when you only popped out to your local store for groceries – this happens to us more often than we’d like to admit!

But, sometimes, you might have stumbled into the role of a plant parent quite unexpectedly.

Perhaps a leafy friend arrived at your doorstep as a housewarming surprise, or you’ve lovingly adopted a plant from a dear departed one, intertwining their memory with the growth of this new green companion.

No matter the path that led you here, you’re now the proud caretaker of a charming plant baby, embarking on an exciting and, at times, nerve-wracking journey of being a plant parent.

Don’t Know Where to Start?

We get it.

The prospect of caring for your new plant baby can seem daunting.

But what if that overwhelming feeling is, in fact, the thrill of embarking on a new adventure?

What if it’s the precursor to one of the most rewarding experiences of your life?

You’re on the brink of joining countless others who have trodden this path before you. The good news is that they mastered indoor plant parenthood, and you can, too.

All you need to kickstart this journey is the right guidance…perhaps a recipe for success. 😉

This is precisely what the Plant Parent’s Success Recipe offers—a foundational course that will help you take your plant parenting skills to the next level.

You’re in Good Hands

Here at the Garden Bench Top, we’re not just about plants but also people.

We aim to guide every new and experienced plant enthusiast to flourish in their plant parenting skills.

So, let’s roll up our sleeves and dig into this adventure together – your plant babies are counting on you!

What is the Plant Parent Success Recipe?

The Plant Parenting Success Recipe is a collection of foundational rules (like lighting and watering) that every plant parent needs to learn and master to raise houseplants successfully.

You’re probably thinking…

“Hang on – isn’t that what you get on those care instruction tags that come with each indoor plant? Why do I need the Plant Parent Success Recipe?”

Here’s the secret – those little tags don’t tell you that these care instructions (or rules) are interrelated.

This means that two or more things are connected and may affect or influence each other. It’s like the pieces in a puzzle; how one piece fits can impact where the others go. The Plant Parent Success Recipe is the missing puzzle piece.

One change to your care regimen (or puzzle piece) can have knock-on effects and completely change the dynamic and approach of how you should be caring for your plant baby.

To become a successful plant parent, you need to understand how these rules interact, which is the purpose of the Plant Parent Success Recipe.

By mastering the Plant Parent Success Recipe, you will be:

• Training your inner Plant Parent instincts.
• Learning how to recognize your plants’ signals and decisively adjust their care.
• Develop the confidence to care for any indoor plant.

The Recipe – A Perfect Analogy

There is a good reason why we have named our approach the Plant Parent Success Recipe.

It is the perfect analogy to explain the intricate dynamics between the rules you need to know as a plant parent for your indoor plant to thrive.

Okay – are you ready to become a green thumb? Then let’s bake a chocolate cake!

No – that wasn’t a typing mistake. And yes – you are in the right place to learn how to become a better plant parent.

Bear with us as we explain why.

Baking a Chocolate Cake

Believe it or not, the above scenario is exactly how some plant owners parent their indoor plants.

Think about the last time you gave in to your impulses and brought home an indoor plant.

Perhaps you thought it would brighten a corner of your room. Or maybe it was too pretty to leave at the store, and you just had to have it.

You know that your houseplant needs light and water, but you may not know the specific requirements for the type of light or the ideal amount and frequency of water it needs.

It’s like being handed a list of ingredients to make the chocolate cake without knowing the precise measurements or when to combine them.

To extend this analogy, adding too much of one ingredient can throw off the taste or even ruin the cake. Similarly, providing your plant with too much light or overwatering it can lead to health issues or, worse yet, its demise.

What you need is a recipe.

A recipe that tells you not only the specifics of how to make the perfect chocolate cake, such as the amounts of each ingredient and the process, but inspires you to create your own variations.

This is the perfect segue into our next reason why we love this analogy.

Every Plant is Different – Every Plant Parent is Different

Returning to our chocolate cake analogy, let’s imagine your mom doesn’t like overly sweet desserts.

Naturally, you would reduce the sugar, right? But then you’d need to balance the flavor profile to compensate for it. Maybe you’d add a shot of espresso to bring out the chocolate’s bitter notes—it’s a game-changer, trust us!

Alternatively, could you increase the dairy or butter to mimic the richness of sugar? It’s not just about taste—this also keeps your cake moist.

You had to tweak and adjust your recipe to maintain a palatable cake. The Plant Parent Success Recipe teaches you the same principles for caring for your houseplants.

Each plant has different preferences and each plant’s environment changes.

Your responsibility is to understand how to care for your plant baby and adapt those care requirements as things change in the ambient environment.

Our Success Recipe tells you how to care for your houseplants and how to adapt your care if something changes.

So, when you repotted your Monstera Deliciosa into a bespoke chunky soil mixture, you will understand that your watering frequency will have to increase from your old schedule because the old nursery potting mixture retained more water due to the higher moss content.

Or it may be as simple as learning the intimate relationship between lighting and feeding your plants. How seasonal changes can affect the quality of light a plant is exposed to, which triggers different feeding responses. Summer light is stronger causing your plants to become active and grow faster, meaning they need more nutrients from fertilizers. While in winter, there is limited light available causing plants to become dormant and require less food.

What’s Next: Getting to Know Your Plant Baby…Intimately!

We hope you are beginning to appreciate the interrelatedness of caring for indoor plants, and that there are no hard and fast rules for caring for your plant babies.

Every plant is different and will respond to different environments in its own unique way.

We hope you are as excited to learn about the Plant Parent Success Recipe as we are about teaching you this new way of approaching plant parenthood.

Let’s get our hands dirty!

NEXT: MODULE 1 – Increasing your PLANT AWARENESS