Gift books for Gardeners (and Yourself)

It’s that time of year again!  And this year has some good reading to offer for gardeners and their friends.

First, I’d like to mention a new basic guide to take the place of all of the outdated “how to grow veggies” advice we learned from our mothers, from Rodale Press, from newspaper articles, and from decades of gardening tomes over the years. If you or a loved one is a vegetable gardener, The HEALTHY Vegetable Garden by Sally Morgan should be the new bible. So much research has come forth in the past few years concerning soil health, the dangers of chemicals, and alternative pest management that it truly IS time to learn a new set of basics and throw away the old ones. This is the best new volume I have found that leads the way from the old to the new. It’s a necessity for veggie growers.

This year saw Harvard’s publication of another charming gift book for readers who want to sink their minds into the forest or the garden – Lessons from Plants, by Beronda L. Montgomery. It is not by any means a teachy, preachy set of lessons. Rather, it is a joyful little hand-sized hardback that encourages the reader to consider the sense of a living community that we gardeners learn from plants. Another bedside book, or a guide to gardening mindsets, or perhaps a brief philosophical discussion, it is above all a pleasure.

Here is another very pleasant, contemplative read that combines the bedside books with The Nature of Oaks: James Canton’s The Oak Papers. I shall simply quote from the inside cover. “Professor James Canton spent two years sitting with and studying the eight-hundred-year-old Honywood Oak in North Essex, England. A colossus of a tree, it would have been a sapling when the Magna Carta was signed. Inevitably Canton needs to slow down in order to appreciate it fully. He examines our long-standing dependency on oak trees, and how that has developed and morphed into myth and legend. The Oak Papers is a stunning, meditative book about the lessons we can learn from the natural world, if only we slow down enough to listen.”

A lovely “bedside book” came out in 2019, but I only found it this year: Walking with Trees by Glennie Kindred. It sounds as if it might be a tree guide, and in fact it is loosely organized into topics of interest in each of 13 tree families native to Europe. But actually this is a book into which one dips for a relaxing moment spent in one’s forest of the mind, to relax and unwind. Folklore, crafting, poetry, legends, and reality all pop up in brief essays and moments. It’s one of those books to put by the bedside in the guest room, knowing that your guests will find something amusing to discuss at breakfast the next morning.

Every year I recommend a coffee table book or two, illustrated with wonderful photography. This year I recommend the story of Fred Landman’s twenty-five year (and still going) revision of a beautiful Greenwich property: Sleepy Cat Farm, A Gardener’s Journey, text by the accomplished garden writer Caroline Seebohm and photos by Curtice Taylor. It’s just lovely. Buy it for someone who needs something inspiring and pretty this season.

Here comes the year’s most important book: The Nature of Oaks by Douglas Tallamy. You have heard me carry on about this author, and you have heard Cynthia Druckenbrod suggest watching his Zoomcasts – this year’s talks came from this book primarily. If you want to understand ecology, here is the perfect place to start. If you want to understand oaks, this is the obvious place to start. If you want to conserve our natural world, start here AND join Tallamy’s Backyard National Park. Doug Tallamy is a very engaging author – anyone who receives this book will enjoy reading it, once you convince them to open it and let his prose carry them away.

Finally, just for fun, if you like historical fiction or mysteries, you may enjoy The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly. It’s one of those books that covers multiple lives, in this case all tied together by an historical garden designed in 1907, reworked by the World War II land girls in 1944, and eventually under restoration in the present day. It’s a well-written piece of fluff, and I am a sucker for those.

Happy Gifting, Happy Holidays, and Happy Reading!  And don’t forget, if you buy these on Amazon make sure you use Amazon Smile to give a percentage back to the Shaker Lakes Garden Club!