As the first early-blooming crocus peek through the snowdrift outside, I find myself in a deep chair, completely surrounded by a pile of books about gardens and gardening that you will find are bound to please non-gardeners and gardeners alike. Those of us who are “retired gardeners” - or would never dream of getting their hands dirty in the soil in the first place - will find ourselves caught up in the stunning visual images on display in the coffee table books about gardens. However, the literary gardening books I’ve chosen are filled with such joy and wit, so winning to read, that we wish we could know the author personally. Come along with me into this garden of delights of the spring season.

To whet your appetite, you must delve into this spring’s favorite: Paraiso Mexicano: Gardens, Landscapes, and the Mexican Soul. The gardens of Mexico are some of the most extraordinary of the world – and you will find yourself lingering at the photographs of the lush gardens, heavy with the varying green shades of its foliage, leaves and trees that shelter artifacts and terracotta pots filled with the most brilliant flowers, making you wish this was your own private garden today.  Marie-Pierre Colle’s written tour of the gardens makes you want to hop the next plane south! You won’t want to miss this book.

Another sight for the eyes and a definite “don’t miss” is Melons for the Passionate Grower. Feast your eyes on the melon photography first, for the beauty of the photographs almost makes you gasp. But then go back and read about these heirloom melons in stories told lovingly by Amy Goldman, acclaimed gardener and self proclaimed “melon maniac with a mission.”  She offers advice on picking the market’s best as well as the rudiments of seed saving. But best of all, she provides an exhaustive list of sources for seeds. By the time you read this book from front to back, you will find yourself sorely tempted!

If you are looking for some garden ideas that will transform your south suburban back yard into something of beauty, I would recommend John Brooke’s Garden Masterclass. Filled with photos and chock full of small ideas of garden design, this book could change the look of your open space into a private garden world of your own. Brooke makes it easy to transfer some of his ideas into your own natural world. Beautiful.

It has been a season of exemplary literary garden books – books that make irresistible reading as the authors draw us in and make us not only a part of their garden life but of their life itself.  In Two Gardeners: Katharine S. White and Elizabeth Lawrence; A Friendship in Letters, it was a fan letter written to New Yorker editor White – a letter filled with suggestions on plant catalogs from a southern gardening writer – that was the beginning of a correspondence between the two women that would last for almost two decades. As we read, we find ourselves privy to the flowering of an epistolary friendship as they discussed gardens and gardening at first. But as both age and became infirm, a warm current of affection and concern and personal confidences intertwine with the subjects of gardens. Capturing the true essence of a friendship lived afar, the letters have been collected and eloquently introduced by editor Emily Herring Wilson, and if you enjoy reading letters, I believe you will love this wonderful book.

Author Eleanor Perenyi in her just-reprinted book, Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden, writes: “The athletic tend to look down at gardens until they try it. Then I am amused to hear their moans and groans: ‘My back, I can’t believe it.’  I can. I go through it each spring and the cult of fitness has no part of my psychology. I loathe sports. But I figure my chances for a long life are as at least as good as the average athlete’s, and maybe a lot better.”  You have to love her. She’s full of opinions and prejudices, practical advice, bits and pieces of history, and you will find yourself smiling as you read her thoughts on such things as earthworms and toads. A book to cherish.

Wee gems of literary gardening books now – a foursome that will afford not only shorter reading pleasure but, perhaps, a wish to know the authors better. The smallest – pretty and attractively written (in larger print) in violet ink by James Fenton - is called A Garden From A Hundred Packets of Seed. The premise:  given an empty garden and starting solely from seed, what plants would you choose to grow? In his light-hearted but instructional way, he selects one hundred plants he would choose to grow from seed, telling us how to acquire and grow them. Read this one with a seed catalog in one hand. Geraldene Holt in her Diary of a French Herb Garden describes a year she spent restoring a curate’s ancient, walled garden in Saint Montan, a medieval village in southern France. If you are a lover of France for all seasons or you too would like some ideas for growing aromatic perennials, let the author take you along with her to this village as she works month-by-month to create a charming garden of herbs – a garden now open to the public. When we talk of literary gardening “classics,” Beverley Nichols nears the top. Two of his best books have been re-released. If you like English authors, if you like English authors who can fill books with wonderful, witty, urbane and delightful observations of gardens and people, be sure to run post haste for Garden Open Today and his last book, Garden Open Tomorrow. You don’t have to be a gardener to take Nichols to your heart. The man cannot confine himself to just gardening for long. You’ll find extremely funny passages about his cats and their “ballet performances” and a great “read” on the use of plants to commit murder, among others. What a charming, delightful man he was.

How many important figures in history have pondered the garden and its significance and reached the conclusion that a garden is nothing less than Paradise. Dean Hole, the 19th Century cleric and garden writer, reminds us that all gardeners are simply custodians, each handing on the tradition of stewardship of protecting the land and caring for the ground, until the next generation succeeds us. Gardeners are an insatiable group, always looking for new plants and fresh ideas for garden design. This spring, use some reading time as you plan the summer’s outdoor canvas.

Be at home with our library’s garden of books.
                                                                                     - Joan Larsen

RETURN TO HOME PAGE