Seeking recommendations for books about plants and gardening

March 12, 2013 9:35 AM

This past week I was at a job interview and was asked what my favorite book on gardening was and I had trouble answering. I eventually said Dirr, but felt that my answer was kind of boring; this led to the realization that I should probably do some reading. Please help me find some good books about plants.

I work in the field of ornamental horticulture, so I would prefer books that are not so much about the joys of veggies. I live in NYC so if the book you suggest only has plants that work in CA or WA or the UK (a quick trip to my local library found a lot of these) I'm happy to hear about them, but would like to know about their geographical focus before I try to hunt down copies.

I'm interested in: practical/reference books, garden memoirs, garden history, and gorgeous photography coffee table style books (as long as those photos have some captions).

That said, if the book doesn't fit my criteria and is really, really excellent, go ahead and let me know about it.

I've looked at this question from last year and it is targeted to the beginning gardener.

Hope all you northern hemisphere gardeners are enjoying the beginnings of the season.

posted by sciencegeek to home & garden (13 answers total)

You can never go wrong (IMO) with The New Victory Garden set. There's a "3-books-in-one" compendium that covers the ornamental and landscaping bits (which I skip, since I prefer the growing vegetable bits).
posted by k5.user at 9:47 AM on March 12

Ooooo garden memoirs! I have so many. Henry Mitchell is my favorite, with One Man's Garden his first. In fact, I'm rereading it now.

Green Thoughts by Eleanor Perenyi

Second Nature by Michael Pollan Also by Pollan, The Gardener's Bed-Book

Gardening For Love by Elizabeth Lawrence

We Made a Garden by Margery Fish

The Chronicles of Allways Series by Beverley Nichols

anything by Allen Lacy

Odd Lots by Thomas C. Cooper
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 10:07 AM on March 12

Henry Mitchell was a columnist for the Washington Post. His gardening essays have gotten me through several winters.
posted by headnsouth at 10:09 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]

IANAG, so take this for what it is. Kind of a left field suggestion, more poetry than reference, is Stanley Kunitz's The Wild Braid.
posted by .kobayashi. at 10:09 AM on March 12

May Sarton wrote some lovely, deeply introspective memoirs that are at least in part about gardening. If you've never read her, Plant Dreaming Deep is the place to start. (As .kobayashi. said, more poetry than reference.)
posted by thetortoise at 10:12 AM on March 12

An oldie but a goodie by Katherine White.
posted by JanetLand at 10:37 AM on March 12

You might enjoy the Piet Oudolf monograph, Landscapes in Landscapes. I did!
posted by HandfulOfDust at 10:54 AM on March 12

I really enjoyed Four Season Harvest (about growing vegetables all year round in the Northeast) and Gaia's Garden (about home-scale permaculture principles).
posted by permiechickie at 11:17 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]

Cass Turnbull's Guide to Pruning is a great reference/educational book. I think there's a slight focus on plants in the PNW, but there's a lot of good, general explanations and tips in it.
posted by Gorgik at 12:37 PM on March 12

Great suggestions. In fact I've already read some of them! (Henry Mitchell's One Man's Garden and Landscapes in Landscapes by Oudolf (I worked in one of the gardens in that book)

I'll add in a few I've liked or others outside of metafilter have suggested.

Two Gardeners by Katherine White

I recently happened upon Beth Chatto's Drought Resistant Planting and thought it seemed nice. Has anyone read other Chatto and has a favorite or two?

And I can't decide if John McPhee's book Oranges counts as a plant book.

One of my former coworkers suggested Bernd Heinrich's Year in the Maine Woods or maybe it was Trees in my Forest by the same guy?

Another former coworker mentioned Mea Allan's book on the Fabricants, The Tradescants: Their Plants, Gardens and Museum 1570-1662 which isn't easily available except used from the UK via Abe Books.

Weeds of the Northeast is a great reference, although not exhaustive.

And Native Plants of the Northeast is pretty darn good too.
posted by sciencegeek at 2:35 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

Your suggestions are all very good, and you should keep them in mind for your future employment
posted by goo at 6:14 PM on March 12

Four Hedges: A Gardener's Chronicle by Clare Leighton (who was an engraver, so you also get beautiful woodcuts).
posted by inire at 5:15 AM on March 13

Thanks to all. I've put most of these on my 'want to read' list on Goodreads and am about to log into NYPL to see how many of them I can put on hold (answer to that question: 3, sigh).
posted by sciencegeek at 3:29 PM on March 13