Holiday Gifts for Book-Loving Gardeners

First of all, we shall start this column with a guest review of a book that at least two of us in the club have indulged in – Gardening Can Be Murder, by Marta McDowell. Cindy Elliott and I talked at our last board meeting (thank you, Caroline Borrow and the Exec Board for a lovely wine-and-goodies party!) about what fun this book is to read. Here is Cindy’s Review.  Welcome to the Book Reviews section, Cindy!

As our days in the garden become limited this winter, do you love curling up and reading a good murder mystery? What if you can combine both your love of gardening with a good mystery read? Marta McDowell, renowned writer and teacher of both landscape history and horticulture, has done that research for you! In her latest non-fiction book, she presents the history of murder mystery authors, their sleuths, story settings and the role horticulture has played in centuries of stories. Over 100 books are referenced, including 19 Agatha Christie novels, from the first horticulturally inclined detective, Sergeant Cuff, back in 1868 to recent novels from 2020. Many detectives and mystery writers apply the techniques that we use in our gardens as we hunt for clues as to why one plant flourishes and another dies out. Her gardening expertise and humor will keep you engaged as you make a list of mystery titles for your winter reading enjoyment!

Next on the list for this year is another new read of a totally different sort, also from an author with whose work I became familiar through her online presence, Wildscape by Nancy Lawson, whose work you may recall from The Humane Gardener, assuming you’ve been lucky enough to have read that. If not, try it. If so, you’ll probably love this one, too. Lawson weaves photography and modern science with her excellent prose to present an understanding of the natural relationships we acknowledge without understanding in our own backyard. How do all of the lives there interact in ways we, as humans, cannot necessarily sense? How do the trees communicate with other plants? How do the squirrels nesting in them smell that some foods are poisonous? How do bees see flower pollination signals that we are not even aware of? Why do sparrows in the city sing love songs differently than sparrows in the country? This book is one to dip into and out of again and again – it’s a bedside treasure.

Now let’s delve into actual dirt gardener territory, for those whose hands lust to get back into the earth during these cold months. Here’s an excellent book to prepare yourself and your garden desires for spring: The Regenerative Landscape by Erik Ohlsen. Most of us have read some pieces about regenerative landscaping, a holistic method of gardening which seeks to restore ecological health and balance within a planned landscape. It is often applied to “new” and forward-looking small farms like The Chef’s Garden in Huron, but in this book you will find a soup-to-nuts approach for applying its principles in your own home landscape. Very specific methods from Hugelkultur (a favorite of mine) to pond installation, drainage management to seed-banking, and a vast number of others are explored. In many cases step by step instructions and construction drawings accompany the text. Truly, regenerative landscaping principles seek to rebuild working ecosystems, not to restore them – this book teaches you how.

This year has seen a surge of interest, and consequent publications, on regenerative landscaping. For those gardeners who are not ready to dive into large scale active rebuilding right away, I have found two smaller books that attack the study from the edges rather than diving in headfirst. Stephanie Rose’s The Regenerative Garden is subtitled “80 Practical Projects for Creating a Self-sustaining Garden Ecosystem”. That’s it in a nutshell – small scale projects you can take on at home, without being concerned with the science of what you are doing. It might make a fun gift for young adults just beginning to build a home landscape on a newly cleared lot of lawn – or, as Doug Tallamy calls it, “green concrete” – lawn provides no service to our ecosystems except as a play surface for children, let us recall. The projects here are a great place to start, but I do need to insert a caveat: Rose’s planting suggestions are not appropriate for true regenerative gardening. Use her ideas, but get your plant lists from Nature in my Backyard.

The second small regenerative book is far more of a soil scientist’s desire:  The Regenerative Grower’s Guide to Garden Amendments by Nigel Palmer.  This is a deep dig for a snowy February reading immersion.  Use cover crops, compost, mulches, even common weeds to restore your soil to health.  Learn why some minerals are essential to better soil, which ones, and how to source them – many from materials easily available to you.  The final third of the book presents specific recipes for soil improvements you can make from garden “waste” (not wasted anymore!) and household products.  Everything begins with testing your home soil, see OSU.

Here is a gift for a friend who loves trees – Amy-Jane Beer’s A Tree A Day. With lovely photos and illustrations to accompany the story of each type of tree, and in some cases each particular famous tree, the reader meets 365 important tree stories from around the world. Begin the year with the Emancipation Oak in Virginia, or the southernmost trees in the world in Tierra del Fuego. On October 15, learn how to measure a tall tree using a short stick. The Plymouth Pear, an endangered species from Western Europe, is commemorated on a British stamp. Celebrate Bodhi Day (December 8) by reading about Buddha’s enlightenment while sitting beneath the Bodhi Tree. On November 14, see a photo of a tree grown from a cutting off the original Bodhi Tree and now growing, 2300 years later, later in Sri Lanka. Fun stories.

Finally, let’s close this year’s list with a silly book for the families that are not necessarily supportive of gardeners, Amber Share’s Subpar Parks. This little charmer devotes a few pages each to many of North America’s greatest national parks, illustrated in color and with added recommendations of what to see, or stories of happenings in the park, by park rangers. But every one begins with true negative comments from the public about the park. The Everglades: “Miles and miles of nothing”, “Just a bunch of gators.” Grand Teton: “All I saw was a lake, mountains and some trees.” Yellowstone: “Where do you turn off the geysers?” Grand Canyon: “A hole. A very very large hole.”

It is sad to imagine there are people who do not love nature.  They need a good book to start them on a better path.