GLASSHOUSE GREENHOUSE by India Hobson and Magnus Edmondson

Pavilion Books, £22 ISBN 978-1911595694 A book that will appeal to anyone who wishes to plan – either in their head or in real life – a tour of the world’s most stunning glasshouses. Reviewer Jane Perrone is a broadcaster and garden writer. Instagram is now home to a growing community of houseplant growers who share their plant ‘shelfies’. Haarkon, the collective name for Indian Hobson and Magnus Edmondson, has garnered more than 200,000 followers, making them the UK’s top ‘plant influencers’. Their new book catalogues their travels around the world in pursuit of what they call ‘the ultimate botanical pedestal’, the glasshouse.

They have photographed more than 30 locations for the Haarkon Greenhouse Tour, as they call it. Each stop is grouped by type; under ‘architecture’ comes spacious domes of The Kibble Palace at Glasgow Botanic Gardens and the Adelaide Bicentennial Conservatory, while under ‘pleasure’ you’ll find the Barbican Conservatory in London and the Cloud Forest in Singapore. More humble hothouses get a look-in too, including a DIY allotment greenhouse in Sheffield.

Alongside sumptuous images of immense corrugated leaves and spiky columnar cacti runs a text that offers up some of the context and history of each glasshouse, as well as the couple’s reflections written in the collective ‘we’. They really are a team: if ever they disagreed about which fern to photograph, there’s no hint.

Green is the dominant colour (‘foliage is king’, Haarkon declares), and the book’s matte paper lends the beautiful, technically accomplished photographs a distinct patina that echoes the aesthetic of many an Instagram plant image. The book lacks meticulously detailed captions packed with botanical Latin, but that’s not really its point: its dreamy, contemplative feel will transport the houseplant lover to the warm fug of a greenhouse on the coldest winter day.