Celebrate National Indoor Plant Week with "Indoor Plant Décor" (A Giveaway!)

It's National Indoor Plant Week and no one is happier to celebrate this than my co-writer, Jenny Peterson, and me.  We wrote a book about houseplants - Indoor Plant Décor: The Design Stylebook For Houseplants - which was released by St. Lynn's Press in April of this year.

I'm sure that the fact that this specially designated week is in September is no accident.  It's this time of year that we begin to take more of the gardening fun indoors if you live in the north.  I've already begun to bring in some of my tender plants (a.k.a. houseplants) that spend their summer vacation on the patio, the deck, the front porch, and in the garden.  For me, here in Ohio, first frost is just a few weeks away, give or take, according to the whims of Mother Nature.

Jenny and I decided it would be fun for each of us to do a giveaway on our blogs in celebration of houseplants.  We'd like to help you use them in your décor in stylish and fun ways.  So, we are each giving a copy of our book away!

To be entered, leave a comment on this blog post, telling me what your favorite houseplant is and what you like about it so much.  If you have more than one favorite, you can tell me all of them!  Do it by midnight EDT on Sunday, September 22, 2013, and on Monday, I'll use Random.org to pick a winner and announce who gets their very own copy of Indoor Plant Décor: The Design Stylebook For Houseplants.

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I suppose some of you are wondering what my favorite houseplant is.  It changes for me, and right now, I'm enjoying this trio of bromeliads.

These were a gift from Lechuza, makers of those great stylish self-watering planters.  Several of their containers are featured in our book and we got to present a signed copy to them when we visited their booth at the IGC (Independent Garden Center) Show in Chicago last month.

These bromeliads belong to the genus Guzmania.

Bromeliads aren't hard to grow and are one of the plants listed in the "Moderately Manageable" chart in our book. These bromeliads shown at the right (Guzmania sp.) do like water in their "cups," so even though these are growing in a self-watering planter, I will fill them up every now and then, taking care not to overwater.  They don't like direct sun (it will burn their foliage), so they're ideal for growing in the house.

They're also readily available, inexpensive, and as you see, come in a variety of colored blooms.  (Actually, the colored parts you see aren't the blooms.  You can see a bloom starting to peek out from the reddish-orange one.  The colored parts are leaves that change color when the plant is ready to bloom.) Other bromeliad types have gorgeous spotted or striped foliage.

Did you know...

...that tillandsias (sometimes called "air plants") are a type of bromeliad?

...that the pineapple is a bromeliad, too?

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So now, tell me your favorite houseplant and you're entered to win a copy of our book!  For your second chance to win, go over to Jenny's blog - J. Peterson Garden Design - and enter there!