I love gardening books. Over the years my gardening library has grown to epic proportions and many of the books I reviewed for Big Blog of Gardening have become indispensable references season after season. Some have profoundly changed the way I think about gardening, soil, and plants, and the interdependence of all of the species that live in our communities.
Below are 13 of the most important books on gardening I’ve reviewed that now have a permanent place in my gardening library. By important, I mean that the book is either an essential reference, or one that changed the way I think about my garden and the species (besides me) that depend on it. In any case, all of these books should be on your essential reading list. They’re in no particular order, as each gardening book has its unique merits.
Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard by Douglas W. Tallamy
also The Living Landscape
Doug Tallamy and Rick Darke’s 2015 book, The Living Landscape, was a seminal work on the importance of restoring biodiversity to our local landscapes. In it, they called on homeowners to create larger gardens with native species, remove invasive species, and reduce the size of their lawns. In Nature’s Best Hope, Tallamy continued his argument that America’s obsession with clear cut lawns and non-native plants is destroying the regional ecosystems that plants, insects, animals, and humans depend on. Read our reviews: Nature’s Best Hope, The Living Landscape.
Growing Perennial Foods, A field guide to raising resilient herbs, fruits, and vegetables by Acadia Tucker
Growing Perennial Foods is squarely aimed at the beginning gardener with the basics on how to grow the most common perennial vegetables, fruits and herbs like raspberries, strawberries, beans, rhubarb, sage, sweet potato, tomato, peppers, lemon balm, and more. Many of these plants are thought of as annuals, but if you know how to overwinter them, they can be grown year after year, which defines them as perennials. Read our review.
Teaming With Nutrients by Jeff Lowenfels
also: Teaming With Microbes and Teaming with Fungi
The “Teaming” triad of books from Jeff Lowenfels are required reading for any gardener. Lowenfels’ impressive research reveals the breathtaking amount of life that occurs in your garden soil and how plants depend on us maintaining that ecological balance. These books will change your entire perspective on soil and plants. Read our reviews: Teaming With Nutrients, Teaming With Microbes, Teaming With Fungi.
The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
Pollan, one of America’s great writers on the intersection of food, plants, and social policy, explores how and why humans domesticated four plants: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. And how this domestication was at times less intentional and more of a co-evolution. While not a gardening book, per se, it will definitely help you understand the journey plants took from the wilds of jungles and forests and the top of the Andes, to your backyard. Read our review.
The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible by Ed Smith
Ed Smith’s classic gardening book provides step by step instructions for building your raised garden beds, ideas on garden design, interplanting tips, crop rotation, cold frame gardening, soil conditioning, dealing with pest problems, and growing the most common garden vegetables. Read our review.
Botany for Gardeners by Brian Capon
Talk about illuminating. Capon, a professor of botany, breaks down complex plant processes into easy to understand concepts. Honestly, this book took my understanding of plants to an entirely new level without paying for a college course. Botany For Gardeners will help you understand why plants do what they do in your garden. Read our review.
Backyard Berry Book / Backyard Orchardist by Stella Otto
Stella Otto is a professional horticulturist and former orchard and farm market owner who’s grown just about every fruit possible. In The Backyard Berry Book and The Backyard Orchardist, she shares her expertise in simple, clear terms that the novice gardener will understand, and the intermediate gardener will appreciate. Each book is full of illustrations, charts and specific instructions for growing the most common fruits in North America. Read our reviews.
Gardening For The Birds by George Adams
Gardening For The Birds opened my eyes to why and how I need to invite birds into my garden and backyard and not chase them away. It’s a great reference book, with general guidelines for attracting birds to your garden, the best native plants for attracting birds, and a substantial bird directory with how best to attract specific species to your backyard. It’s also loaded with tons of photographs to make identification of visiting birds quick and simple. Read our review.
Fresh From The Garden by John Whitman
John Whitman has been a professional grower and backyard vegetable gardener for better than fifty years, and it shows. In Fresh From The Garden, An Organic Guide to Growing Vegetables, Berries, and Herbs in Cold Climates, he shares his vast knowledge in a tome that could hold a tarp down in a hurricane. It’s packed with all you need to know for gardening anywhere in the U.S. where winters have freezing temperatures. Read our review.
