Books make a great gift for the gardener in your life, so here’s a selection of this year’s best books.
It is strange to think that the modern world owes so much to the creation of a simple portable glass box in 1829 – a type of greenhouse in miniature – that became known as the Wardian box.
Designed by a surgeon and amateur botanist by the name of Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, it allowed living plants to be transported safely over very long distances from distant lands, a technical innovation with complex and dramatically far-reaching consequences as beautifully told in Pink Case: How a Simple Box Moved Plants and Changed the World, by Luke Keogh, winner of this year’s coveted Garden Media Guild Award (Kew Publishing, £25).
Nearly two centuries later, with topics such as climate change, habitat loss and dwindling biodiversity rarely making the headlines, we find ourselves grappling with the far-reaching environmental consequences and challenges of that nascent global economy. Examples include journalist and gardening writer Sally Nicks, The RHS Low Carbon Gardening Way: Steps You Can Take to Help Fight Climate Change (DK, £12.99), a timely publication providing many useful pointers for a growing band of gardeners determined to take a ‘deep green’ approach to growing their plots.
The same is true of David Goulson Gardening for bumblebees (Square Peg/Penguin, £16.99), a trove of practical advice and information on how to create a sanctuary for these prized pollinating insects.
A new wild garden: farming the natural way and practical applicationsWritten by Ian Hodgson (edited version, Frances Lincoln), is another excellent guide full of tips on how to create a sustainable nature park that supports wildlife and nature.
Meanwhile, Beth Chatto Rethinking the green texture: a guide to a sustainably grown garden, is an updated and revised text of horticultural classics that addressed the issue of sustainability long before it became mainstream, with contributions from David Ward and Asa Gregers-Warg of the leading Chatto Garden and Nursery in Essex (Berry & Co, London, £30).
The twin issues of sustainability and seasonality are also at the heart of many excellent new books on nature-led floral arrangements and floral design.
One is Cut and Dry: The Modern Guide to Dried Flowers from Growing to Styling (Hachette, £17.99), by garden writer, designer and botanical designer Caroline Dunster, which won the 2021 Garden Media Guild practical book. A great publication packed with practical advice, it highlights the special beauty of dried flowers and shows how to use them in ways that feel fresh and contemporary.
She is well known to her Instagram followers as @lucytheflowerhunter and British garden designer and floral artist Lucy Hunter. Florist: seasonal flowers inspired by nature and collected from the garden (Ryland Peters and Small £20.99) is a step-by-step, luxuriously illustrated guide to creating beautiful, dreamy seasonal flower arrangements from the garden.
Grow and Gather: A Gardener’s Guide to the Year of Cut Flowers By Grace Alexander (Quadrille, £20) takes a similar approach. Sowing, growing and harvesting cut flowers in the author’s year-round Welsh country garden, charmingly painted, brimming with gardening tips soiled under nails and generously illustrated with atmospheric photography.
A name familiar to many, British gardener, botanist and cut flower expert Sarah Raven, writer, A year full of flowers: gardening for all seasons (Bloomsbury, £25), is an informative and lushly illustrated seasonal guide to filling your garden with flowers all year round. Raven shares her extensive knowledge and experience with each themed chapter each month including a hands-on and practical guide to a range of essential gardening skills while excellent botanical profiles of the various key species – winter-flowering irises, violas, daffodils, tulips, roses, salvias, salvias, dahlias, chrysanthemums, pelargoniums, amaryllis – includes a series of very useful shortlists with recommendations for the most suitable varieties for the garden. A modern classic, this is a book we return to again and again.
Roses and peonies are two types of garden flowers that have never gone out of fashion. in a Kew Gardener’s Guide to Growing Roses (Francis Lincoln with Kew Publishing £12.99) A must-have for rose lovers, Tony Hall’s British rose shortlists 78 distinct species and shares expert tips on how to use them to achieve the best effect in a variety of settings and growing conditions.
in her book Peony (White Hopton Publications, £25), British gardener and nursery nurse Claire Austin (daughter of the late, great pink David Austin) shares her lifelong knowledge of this famous genus with her expert profiles of more than 350 different peonies. From advice on matters like propagation, planting and planting to choosing the best scented, cutting, container planting and use with other plants, this is the definitive study of the flower that has captivated generations of gardeners.
jungle garden, by Philip Oostenbrink (Filbert Press £25), highlights the exotic beauty of hardy tropical foliage plants and the ways they can be used to create a garden that is rich in atmosphere and interest year-round. Known for his creative and innovative approach to food cultivation, chef and gardener, and author of Mark Diacono’s latest book, Herb: Chef’s Companion (Quadrille, £26), is an elegantly written, beautifully illustrated and inspiring guide to growing and cooking with herbs.
appetite reading, Something in the Basket: Vegetable Recipes from Lavistown Garden Created by Kilkenny gardener and chef Olivia Godwilli, inspired by seasonal produce from her organically managed kitchen garden (gardenfable.com, €19.99 including p&p).
in a head gardeners, Revised and Expanded Edition (Pimpernel Press £20), Ambra Edwards shines a bright light on the profession’s often underrated and misunderstood challenges.
The art, craft and science of gardening is also highlighted by the writings of a handful of great garden designers such as the late John Brooks, who wrote his revolutionary book on the subject, How to design a garden, republished this year in an expanded and updated form edited by Gwendolyn van Paasschen (Pimpernel Press).
The View from Federal Twist: A new way to think about parks, nature, and ourselves (Filbert Press, £40) is the work of another great gardener, American garden designer James Golden, whose country garden in New Jersey has been hailed by many as one of the best in the world. A lyrical, thoughtful meditation on the challenges of creating a garden in harmony with the natural world and the lessons it taught us, Golden’s love for the land and the joy he brings out of its pages.