a handmade garden

by Eleanor Perenyi

This book is, and always will remain, a sentimental favorite as it was on Ms. Perenyi’s strong opinions, erudite language, and blunt admonishments, that I first honed my horticultural reading chops.

by Madeline Wilde, edited by Mike Dillon

Madeleine Wilde was a gardener and a writer. Together with her husband, David Streatfield, a professor in the school of Landscape Architecture at the University of Washington, Wilde tended a woodland garden above the southwest slope of Queen Anne Hill. And, beginning in the 1990s, for more than 20 years her “Notes from the Garden” column appeared in the Queen Anne & Magnolia News. I knew Wilde as a loyal nursery customer and can attest to her horticultural expertise as well as her gift for finding beauty in every sense and season.

by Jennifer Jewell

The author is a plantsperson with a deep abiding love for gardens and plants and for those who tend their plots thoughtfully and with respect for natural systems. Jewell pours this passion into her new book which profiles contemporary women who are planting spaces, exploring, and preserving the botanical world, and those who spend their days creating and crafting with words, images and blossoms, including, how shall I put this: me. I’m both honored and grateful to have such good company on my journey in plants.

by David May Masumoto

“Frustrated and desperate, I wrote about my peaches and sent the story to the Los Angeles Times.” Thus begins this beautiful story of a man’s Herculean effort to save his family’s Sun Crest peaches.

by Derek Jarman

There’s a terrible, bleak beauty in the windswept seaside garden of filmmaker Derek Jarman. It’s easy to love a pretty garden and live a comfortable life, but that’s not this book. A varnished black fisherman’s cottage sits on a shingle beach within sight of a looming power plant. The garden emerges from carefully arranged stones, flint, driftwood, and seashells. Dog roses, screaming red Flanders poppies, and resilient sea kale survive the demanding conditions, thriving even as Jarman’s health fades.

by Monty and Sarah Don

Monty Don wasn’t always the horticultural hotshot on the British gardening scene that he is today. He once was a hotshot jewelry designer. But then he lost everything—home, business, and peace of mind. This is the story of a family’s move deep into the English countryside to a 500-year-old Tudor on two scrubby acres of land and the garden they built there. It’s a tale of making peace with the messy past and finding a passion for life in the garden.

by Richard Goodman

Who wouldn’t want to run away from the rat race to putter in a Mediterranean garden? Well maybe if all you’ve got is a bike, a few hand tools, a bucket for carrying water, and a rented 30 by 40-foot parcel of land, you’re in for more of an education than you anticipated. This book is Goodman’s love story to his garden, and it made me fall back in love with the vegetable garden. I’ve never been without a patch of peas, beans, tomatoes, and greens since.

by Christopher Lloyd and Beth Chatto

This endearingly fond exchange of letters between two of horticulture’s great heroes is filled with tales of their personal gardens and woven through with thoughts on food, opera, pets, travel, and the night sky.  Lovely.

edited by Robert Phelps

Everyone needs a garden book to dip into at will, trolling its pages for a seasonal snippet or a brief passage to mark the passing days. Kept on the bedside table, such a book is best enjoyed in short sips. My old copy is well marked and underlined: ‘“Rather common but dignified. Self-satisfied, with a fierce brow.  And quick to degenerate…In short,” she concluded, “all the qualities of royalty!”’  –Colette recounting her mother’s description of a velvety black pansy.