I remember sitting on the couch over 15 years ago as I was beginning to study herbs and thinking, “How am I ever going to learn all of these plants?” I thought of my mom and grandmother and all the plants that they knew and had taught me to love. I remember thinking that I guess I’d just have to learn one plant at a time and over the years I’d accumulate a bank of knowledge. And that’s what I did for the next five years. I studied one plant at a time.

Then we bought our first house and for the first time in my adult life, I had a tiny flower bed to call my own. I dove head first into gardening and every flower became my friend. I studied one flower at a time as I tried to grow new things and make my flower beds beautiful.

If you had asked me about plant families at that time, I would have scoffed at the idea of learning something so archaic. I didn’t have time for that. I had a baby to care for, kids to feed and homeschool. I viewed plant families as something that was unnecessary and definitely more complicated than what I brain space for. What I didn’t realize was that what is quietly present under all that seemingly complicated taxonomy is the secret to learning plants easily.

When you understand the botanical relationships between plants and know which plants are related to one another you can make educated decisions on companion planting, water, light, and soil requirements, propagation methods, planting and harvest times, pests, diseases, and their remedies, and soil health.

You can do all this without cracking open one botany book. All you need is your own experience and observational skills. All that is required of you: Learn one plant well, find out what family it is in, and apply that knowledge to nearly all the other plants in that same plant family.

Know one plant in a family, and you know them all!

Apply what you know about your favorite plant to dozens, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of other plants that are related to it.