My Garden Reading List for 2020-21
I’m always reading at least one book - and usually three or four. For the past few years, I have made book lists that I’ve more or less kept to, but I’ve never put together a list by theme. I wanted to do that for 2021, but I didn’t see the need to wait until the beginning of the year to write the list and get started. There are so, so many worthy contenders, but I narrowed it down to a dozen that I’m planning to work through by the end of 2021. They include a wide mix from scientific to memoir to practical how-to and even one fiction.
Life in the Studio by Frances Palmer - This one is brand new! I ordered it for myself as a late birthday present, and it’s absolutely beautiful. Frances’ work has always held a special resonance for me. She is a potter and keeps a beautiful garden.
Bringing Nature Home by Douglas Tallamy - Tallamy is an entomologist and advocate for backyard conversation. He pioneered the idea of the “Backyard National Park” - a movement based on the premise that we simply don’t have enough land under conservation to support the biodiversity of our native flora and fauna and that if we are to preserve them, we each need to do what we can (which is a lot!) in our own backyards. I heard Tallamy speak earlier this year, and I was riveted. I’m almost done with the book now. If this topic is a depressing one to you because the problems feel so huge (it can be - and they are) he does a great job of breaking down simple steps to take action.
Wilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm by Isabella Tree - I’m really looking forward to reading this one. Here’s an excerpt from the description: “At a time of looming environmental disaster, Wilding is an inspiring story of a farm, a couple, and a community transformed. Isabella Tree’s wonderful book brings together science, natural history, a fair bit of drama, and—ultimately—hope.”
Holy Shit by Gene Logsdon - If that name doesn’t win you over, I don’t know what will. Here’s an excerpt from the description: “With his trademark humor, his years of experience writing about both farming and waste management, and his uncanny eye for the small but important details, Logsdon artfully describes how to manage farm manure, pet manure and human manure to make fertilizer and humus.”
Uprooted: A Gardener Reflects on Beginning Again by Paige Dickey - Paige is a gardener and landscape designer, and this memoir recounts her transition from Duck Hill, her beloved garden of three decades, to a new home on seventeen acres of Connecticut countryside. I’m especially interested in this one after our experience last month of putting an offer on twenty acres of rolling field and woods here in SC. Sadly, we didn’t get the land, but the situation did make me start thinking about how difficult it would be to leave what we’ve already made - but also how rewarding and fun it would be to start again.
A Southern Garden by Elizabeth Lawrence - Lawrence lived and gardened in North Carolina and is one of the few garden writers whose climate and soil conditions are similar to mine! I’ve started this one and am really enjoying it. Her recommendations will be especially helpful to anyone in the southern to mid-Atlantic states of the US. I spent a chunk of last summer gardening in England, and as inspiring as it was, I can’t expect employ most of the plant combinations in the same ways with the same results because conditions in SC are so different.
Organic Gardening, The Natural, No-Dig Way by Charles Dowding - This book is a modern classic and has already run to several additions. Dowding bucked all convention several decades ago when he started promoting the idea of “no-dig.” “No-dig” is essentially the opposite of conventional farming methods which require extensive manual tilling and working of soil year after year with each successive crop. I’m familiar with this practice and how it works in a perennial borders with more permanent plantings, but am also very interested in reading about this approach as applied to annual crops.
How to Prune Fruit Trees by R. Sanford Martin - This book is in it’s twentieth edition, a fact which says everything I needed to know when trying to pick one specifically on this subject. I’ve taken a botany class and I’m currently in a tree care class, but we don’t go into much depth on the practices of pruning for fruit production. We have fruit trees on our property now that had been neglected for several decades and we’ve tried to rehabilitate them without much success. I hope someday to tend a small orchard, and I want to know how to care for the trees appropriately from day one.
Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew - I’m somewhat embarrassed that I haven’t read this book already. It’s another modern classic that revolutionized the way people thought about growing food, especially in home gardens. From the description: “When he created the "square foot gardening" method, Mel Bartholomew, a retired engineer and efficiency expert, found the solution to the frustrations of most gardeners. His revolutionary system is simple: it's an ingenious planting method based on using square foot blocks of garden space instead of rows. Gardeners build up, not down, so there's no digging and no tilling after the first year. And the method requires less thinning, less weeding, and less watering.”
The Earth in Her Hands by Jennifer Jewell - Jennifer is the host of the wonderful podcast Cultivating Place. I discovered it and her about a year ago, and her conversations with gardeners, food activists, farmers, designers, and horticulturists are deep and thought-provoking. This book is a profile of 75 women currently making an impact in different areas of the green industry.
A Gentle Plea for Chaos by Mirabel Osler - I already know that this one will be straight up aspiration for me, like watching “Escape to the Chateau” or “I Capture the Castle”. Osler has time and money and space and the enviable English climate on her side. The fact that she magnanimously recommends that we all be a little more chaotic with our gardens seems to be her bid at being relatable. At least, this is what I am led to believe by the reviewers, some of whom think this memoir about gardening on a somewhat lavish scale delightful and others who find it absolutely pretentious. We shall see.
A Place On Earth by Wendell Berry - Berry writes about people and land in a way that only someone who truly loves people and truly loves land ever could. His stories about the ordinary lives of ordinary people are raw and powerful and make me feel down deep the same way as reading Harriett Beecher Stowe or Zora Neale Hurston. Here’s a quote from the book: “The earth is the genius of our life…. The final questions and their answers lie serenely coupled in it.”