There are plenty of top-tier plant and garden books to choose from, so we asked leading garden writers, designers, and horticulturists: garden writer anna Pavord, organic food producer claire ratinon, the errol reuben fernandes from the horniman museum, the garden designer isabel bannerman, the writer alice vincent and the director of the museum of gardens christopher woodward – to create a selection for lovers of gardens and plants. treat yourself or give a book to someone else.
the best gardening books to read in 2022
animal, vegetable, miracle by barbara kingsolver faber & faber, £12.99 isbn 978-0571233571
chosen by claire ratinon, organic food writer and producer
You are reading: Best gardening books 2020
This book was recommended to me by my rhs level 2 horticulture tutor and was the first text I came across that described the act of growing food and the edible growing season as a narrative. Best known for her novels, Kingsolver is a master storyteller and deftly depicts a year in which she and her family try to live off the land, save for a handful of luxury items. By employing the lightest of prose, deft interrogation of the systems that feed us, and necessary acknowledgment of the dedication, skill, and hard work that goes into growing food, this book somehow manages to inspire while exploiting romantic notions. of bucolic self-sufficiency with a generous dose of realism. I bought several copies of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, but now I don’t have any because I’ve given them all away to my friends, urging them to read it whenever I can.
rootbound: rewilding a life by alice vincent, canongate books, £9.99 isbn 978-1786897725
chosen by claire ratinon
rootbound is a book that tells the story of going from heartbreak to healing and back to love, all while discovering how the alchemy of growing plants can stabilize a wayward soul. this book deepened my appreciation for the green spaces of london, the city where i realized my food growing ambitions, while also offering tidbits of botanical information and gardening history, all woven together through a very human and very grounded story. the heart. i read rootbound at a time when i was coming to truly understand the intimacy i felt with the plants i tended and was beginning to write myself about the role growth had played in helping me see that i am a being that needs to feel deeply my connection with the natural world to feel complete. if alice vincent hadn’t written rootbound, i’m pretty sure i would never have found the courage to write my own story, and for that, i’m eternally grateful that rootbound exists.
don’t miss Alice’s Column in Illustrated Gardens.
dictionary of british and irish botanists by ray desmond, crc press isbn 978-0850668438
out of print, but look online for secondhand copies. chosen by anna Pavord, garden writer
The first is the book I asked to have with me when I was a castaway on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island records. It’s Ray Desmond’s Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturists, published in 1994. A bit dry you might think. . but you would be wrong. Desmond is the kind of miracle that no longer exists: meticulous but never dry, scholarly but totally captivating.
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I love the history of gardens in all its forms and I can dive into any part of the 800 pages of this book and be engrossed. why is the baron de soutellinho here? he rediscovered narcissus cyclamineus in the wild. Who else remembers Sarah Coleman, who ran a nursery school in Tottenham in the 1820s? Gradually, the dictionary entangles you in a vast and intricate web of plant breeders and gardeners spanning 500 years.
the art of botanical illustration by wilfrid blunt and william t stearn, acc art books, £35 isbn 978-1851491773
chosen by anna Pavord
Of various shelves of books on botanical art, I most often seek out the botanical illustration art of Wilfrid Blunt and William Stearn (1994). This is not an instruction manual, but something much rarer: a history of flower painting from a wall painting of a Madonna lily at Knossos dating to around 1550 B.C. c. to the anatomically accurate watercolors of arthur harry church made in the 20th century. He is particularly good at the Renaissance, giving a wonderful insight into the gradual shift from myth and magic to the microscopic precision of the paintings of Nicolas Robert and Georg Ehret. It’s not only restorative, it’s comforting to look at these images from a pre-Instagram era, to abandon for a while the nervous practice of clicking and forgetting. the images displayed in the hard-hitting book showcase centuries of care, love, and a wondrous delight in the intricacies of nature.
elizabeth and her german garden by elizabeth von arnim, penguin, £6.99 isbn 978-0241341292
chosen by isabel bannerman, garden designer
mary antoinette beauchamp, born in australia, grew up in europe in bohemian circles. In 1898 she wrote this instantly best-selling novel under her married name, although she is now best known for her later books, in particular Charmed April. a fictionalized account of living with her children and her german husband, “the man of anger”, in pomeranian, this book is a semi-autobiographical account of how to make a garden, though not in the same way that you or i make gardens like it would have been ‘indecent’ to be stuck as an important lady at the time, although later in life she did take up gardening. von arnim, fun and vibrant, discovers that the path to joy lies in having a garden, instead of a room of one’s own, to escape from the husband, the family: “relationships are like drugs, useful at times, and even pleasant , if taken in small quantities and seldom, but terribly pernicious in general, and are avoided by the truly wise’ – and the servants, mocking their gardening mistakes, their love of lilacs, madonna lilies, and roses is absolutely captivating.
a gentle plea for chaos : reflections of an english garden by mirabel osler, bloomsbury publishing, £12.99 isbn 978-1408817896
chosen by isabel bannerman
Writing a little book on how to make a garden in our new house, I came back to this text. Memory told me that Osler’s ethos was remarkably similar to mine. Written in the late 1980s, a decade in which haughty female horticulturists had exported the English ‘super garden’ in books and reality around the world, this book was a breath of fresh air. Osler began writing about gardening in my middle years, living near Ludlow, writing for Hortus magazine as well as award-winning books. timeless and evocative, vivid and dreamy, headstrong and dryly funny, this book has never been out of print. In not-so-kind language, it’s an intimate story of how she and Ella’s husband, Michael, let the garden take over their lives. she advocated controlled disorder, less mastery over things, more intimate understanding and enjoyment. this lesson is more important than ever.
planting in a post-wild world: designing plant communities for resilient landscapes by thomas rainer and claudia west, worker, £25, isbn 978-1604695533
chosen by errol reuben fernandes, head of horticulture at the horniman museum and gardens
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a truly innovative guide to horticulture and garden design. It speaks to the zeitgeist of contemporary gardening practice, guided by observations in nature, our understanding of the soil, sustainable approaches and climate change, all under the veil of good design. thomas rainer is a landscape architect and claudia west a wholesale perennial grower, so they know the subject inside out. His advice is applicable to both larger and smaller landscapes, even window boxes. his fundamental message is to think in terms of “vegetation”: communities of plants that thrive alongside each other. It’s not a new message, but it’s from a design perspective. the ideas take into account not only the appearance, but also the soil, the topography and the local climate in summer and winter: dry, wet, mild, etc. – an idea championed by grand dixter and beth chatto and a growing number of growers. everyone should read this book.
the well tempered garden by christoper lloyd, orion publishing, £16.99, isbn 978-1780227825
chosen by errol reuben fernandes
I return to this book again and again, sometimes for insight and advice, but more often for the late Christopher Lloyd’s dry sense of humor and entertainment. lloyd writes very well about his experience with gardening in his house, great dixter, effortlessly conveys his color, personality and opinion within the pages. Lloyd was a character who was larger than life, often sporting a colorful shirt, a hand-knitted vest, and an avant-garde approach to gardening. he clashing colors, playful juxtaposition, great knowledge, but he never takes the topic of gardening too seriously and always shows the confidence to rip the rulebook apart. this is a wonderfully conversational read that leaves you feeling like you’ve wandered the paths to his peacock garden, discussing the best time to prune with the great man himself. The best time according to Lloyd, of course, is when you have the time and the inclination, and the tool in your hand.
we made a garden with margery fish, pavilion books, £9.99, isbn 978-1849943642
chosen by alice vincent, garden writer
It was only after reading this book that I learned how the legacy of the great margery loomed in British horticulture. This was a happy accident, I think, as Margery’s frank and often amusing record of redefining the modern English country house garden at her home at East Lambrook Manor in Somerset is best played out when you don’t quite know which one. will be the result. Mrs. Fish’s Garden, as those who still care for it still call it, is full of visitors most weeks of the year, but this book allows the reader to conjure up an exquisite image through her words. Fish writes with the clean and simple passion of the plant: devoted and determined, and what I find most inspiring about her account of the garden is her growing confidence as the years go by and, following the death of her husband Walter, a furlough- concession to take the garden as their own.
the morville hours: the story of a garden by katherine swift, bloomsbury publishing, £14.99, isbn 978-0747598237
katherine swift’s the morville hours is like one of those plants you learn about and then see in the best gardens, silently amazed that it took you so long to find it. was published in 2008, and is usually on the garden shelves of bookstores, but I didn’t read it until 2020, during that closed winter, finding myself transported from the very walls of south london to the cool lawns and moonlight of new years eve in sleepy shropshire, where swift begins her rich history from the garden of the dower house in morville. the chronology of the book spans years and hours simultaneously; swift bases its structure on the ancient hours of divine office, used by monks. but in gardening, time is both everything and nothing, which also makes it an ideal summer read. as swift writes: ‘in the garden, where i was acutely aware of the passage of time, paradoxically i had the sense of having all the time in the world, of hours and days stretching out and expanding into a shimmering pool of now’. p>
constance villiers stuart: in search of paradise by mary ann prior, unicorn publishing group, £30, isbn 978-1914414435
chosen by christopher woodward, director of the garden museum
the story of the garden has a new heroine in constance villiers-stuart. Mary Ann Prior’s biography begins with a surprise discovery at a Norfolk country house where Villiers-Stuart lived until her death in 1966. Diaries and sketchbooks fell out of a suitcase, revealing an extraordinary life. She heiress to a cotton fortune, she married a soldier and, when he was sent to India, she became an expert on Mughal gardens and befriended the Maharajah of Kashmir and the Begum of Bhopal. Hers Hers Illustrated Gardens of the Great Mughals (1913) concluded with a request that the gardens of New Delhi be in the Indian, not English, style. During World War I, Ella Patrick’s husband was sent to Thessaloniki (now Thessaloniki in Greece). And that gives us one of the most amazing garden images she’ll see all year: photographed from a biplane, ornamental flower beds put up by soldiers around their garrison tents. a reminder that the most interesting gardeners are never just gardeners.
Becoming a Gardener: What Reading and Digging About Life Taught Me by Catie Marron, Harper Collins, £40, isbn 978-0062963611
becoming a gardener, writer catie marron describes planting a garden around a new family home in connecticut. she shares her garden as a sequence of decisions, starting with choosing the right type of fence (something I’m obsessed with). it is a self-effacing perfectionism born of reverence for a garden as sacred. Widowed shortly after buying the house, Marron feels the spirit of her late husband as she digs with the hand-forged trowel, which was one of her last gifts. What I also loved is how she turns to her favorite writers for advice, from Cicero to Anna Pavord, as if they were her friends. Beverly Nichols is, as ever, the most quotable: ‘You cannot prevent a garden from flowing, in spirit, to a gardener’s house, any more than you can prevent the sea from flowing, in spirit, to a sailor’s house’. a generous book and a beautiful garden.
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