Garden reading

Books — March 20, 2020May 25, 2023

I have a great weakness for garden books. I sometimes find myself reading through works largely intended for reference. One of my favourite reference works is Adrian Bloom’s Bloom’s Best: Perennials and Grasses, (2010), another splendid book from Timber Press. For practical uses and quick reference I like the Taylor’s Guide series, with culture advice and clear photographs, sometimes of various seasonal features. A truly inspirational reference that changed how I garden is Adrian Bloom’s Gardening with Conifers, (2002). If you are skeptical about the sheer variety and multi-seasonal interest in conifers, I highly recommend it. Apart from many reference works I also enjoy garden memoirs. Currently on my bedside table: Penelope Lively’s Life in the Garden, (2017). Also books more widely about our relationships with plants: Charlotte Gill’s Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe, (2011). A wonderful book that deserves to be more widely known is Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, (2013). Read it and embrace abundance.

BraidingSweetgrassSmall — Pointing the way through multiple ways of knowing to celebration

Garden Journal

Lost Horizons farewell

Inspirational nursery, treasure trove of botanical diversity, enticement to garden adventurously, vendor of plant delight. With much appreciation, thank you!

Early Spring Pleasures

When bees come to visit the earliest flowers, I know that spring is truly here. … Read More

The Lowly Spirea at its Loveliest

Even the lowly (because ubiquitous) spirea can surprise you with loveliness on a blustery day in April. My main complaint is that it has too many merits, requires too little of us, which seems churlish just now, when spirea is the first shrub to leaf out most bravely. … Read More

Spring of 2020

Galanthus, more commonly: snowdrops, are one of the earliest garden pleasures in the year, often breaking through the snow long before February is over. And now in mid-March they are still looking splendidly sturdy. They are a welcome sign that spring is indeed progressing and that renewal can happen. Again. … Read More

Garden reading

Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass (2013) is a book that will astonish in its subtle weave of forms of knowing our world and in its homage to the generosity of the plants that surround us, made us, and can save us. … Read More

Garden Journal

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Lost Horizons farewell

Early Spring Pleasures

The Lowly Spirea at its Loveliest

Spring of 2020

Garden reading