Gardener's Gift List
Recommendations for Christmas 2024
“The winter months are made for that rare combination of reflection, inspiration gathering, and vision casting that will prove so instructive and fruitful in the months to come.”
Andrew Timothy O’Brien, To Stand and Stare
Garden books & tools for Christmas
At this time of year I always receive messages from gardening friends (or their relations) asking about book suggestions for Christmas. Because I have been interested in a wide range of gardening techniques, and particularly in British gardening, reading has always been a window into another garden world for me. Whether you are just starting out in gardening or ready to lean into some more unusual plants, this stack would be a great place to find your next read—or a link to send to an adoring family member.
Featured in 2024
"Almost all that is required of us gardeners is that we pay attention."
Andrew Timothy O’Brien, To Stand and Stare
The following four books I featured earlier this year, either by interviewing the author or by sharing my own experience. If you have not read them already, these are very worth your time and money! They will broaden your assumptions about plants and gardens. They will make you laugh and encourage you in the journey. Here are four books worth a second look this year:
To Stand and Stare is just the book to cozy up with in December and January, when the world is cold but you long to think a bit more about your garden. More than that—it will make you reconsider your relationship to your plants.
In January, I asked Andrew: How did you come to this perspective (of being friends with plants)?
Andrew: I think it came about in two stages. Firstly, a growing realisation that I felt comfortable – refreshed, even – in the company of plants, just as should be the case with good friends. That the more time I spend in conversation with them (yes, really; not necessarily verbal, but that, too!), the more we seemed to form an understanding. All of this just seemed to make sense. And then, when it came to developing my coaching practice, it was clear to me that so many people have an immense feeling of stress and overwhelm about their gardens, almost as if they find themselves at enmity with the plants, and that I could do something to help them overcome these anxieties by brokering, not just a friendly truce, but a real sense of companionship.
I listened again to the beautiful chapters of Kimmerer’s book as I worked on the Fruit Tunnel this July. Then I wrote in August about how her book made me think about my relationship with these trees over the past decade. Bending, pruning, tying in branches and adding more bamboo canes for structure all happened to the pears. And yet as I listened through Braiding Sweetgrass again I realized that I have grown maybe more than they. It was a special realization for me, and I guarantee that there is something very special in this book for you as well.
(Also, go for the audiobook so that you can hear her pronounce the Potawatomi.)
“…While they were working on the land, the land was working on them.”
🌿 From Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Ben Dark is one of my all-time favorite garden writers, and he is in good form for The Grove, a book of 20 essays on plants, gardens, and everything in between. It was a real treat to interview Ben in May, and hear about his trip to Japan. His ability to remember what life was like B.P. (before plants) and his interest in history make the ingredients of a good garden read.
The Grove was named the “best gardening book of 2022” by The Telegraph, and “A book to make even a quick trip to the corner shop endlessly fascinating,” by The Evening Standard. But I think that garden writer and TV presenter, Advolly Richmond, summed it up best: “I adore Ben Dark's humour and humility in equal measure.”
"I awoke to plants with a convert's zeal... I could speak a new language... It was as if I had unquestioningly inhabited a city where people had no face, just a smooth balloon of flesh; and then one day I'd changed my spectacles and seen smiles everywhere…”
Ben Dark, The Grove: A Nature Odyssey in 19 1/2 Front Gardens
The View from Federal Twist by James Golden is a wonderfully photographed garden biography of a private garden in New Jersey. Federal Twist is now internationally known as Monty Don visited Federal Twist in 2019 for the BBC series American Gardens.
"I was quite taken with that rather magical idea of this house set amid a garden, and I decided to accept it all— the good with the bad. It led me to create a garden totally different than anything I'd imagined."
James Golden, The View from Federal Twist
When I interviewed James in March I was able to ask him more about how he has learned to follow his land to the right sort of garden:
James: I suppose I’ll always have some regret that my heavy, wet clay soil prevents my growing many plants I’d like to see in the garden. I’ve always wished to have an area with many small-flowered dahlias growing amid grasses, but that will never be. Dahlias would never survive my conditions… Instead, I discovered the pleasures of an immersive garden with plants so tall visitors often get lost as they walk along the many curving, wandering paths…The intent is to slightly disrupt your normal connection with the everyday world, to break a circling thought, to interrupt a worry, to give you the opportunity to hear a bee buzzing in a flower. To pull your attention into the present…
New Favorite
One more book for this part of the list: Sustainable Garden: Projects, insights and advice for the eco-conscious gardener by Marian Boswall.
Marian’s book, Sustainable Garden, is a wonderful combination of big-picture vision and hands-in-dirt practical. As a designer, Marian is able to both see how the life of the garden affects us holistically and how the particular choices we make each day, like choosing pots or compost, can be made more sustainable. There are many hands-on projects in this volume, as well as instructions for gardening basics like no-dig and taking cuttings.
Marian Boswall is a leading landscape architect and horticulturalist, was a lecturer in Historic Garden Conservation at Greenwich University for several years and is a co-founder of the Sustainable Landscape Foundation… Marian works with the way the land can heal and connect us on all levels; in early 2020 she gave a TedX talk on how our gardens can care for us and the earth.
“One of the most valuable resources for a gardener is time. Prompts and advice are useful but gardening consciously is about spending time observing. and thinking about what is going on, rather than completing to-do lists and achieving goals. Looking at your garden every day over time is the best way of seeing what is happening and beginning to understand why.”
Marian Boswall, Sustainable Garden
Old Favorites
These two books will especially be interesting to plant lovers…
The Plant Lover's Guide to Primulas by Jodie Mitchell & Lynne Lawson is a comprehensive look at the Primrose genus, Primula. Jodie & Lynne are the current holders of the world-famous Barnhaven strains that were begun in the US by Florence Bellis, were sent to the UK, and now grow in the Barnhaven Primroses’ nursery in France.
I love primula, and am in the process of collecting these damp-ground lovers. This books is a great guide. It has some beautiful photography as well, and might have a photo or two that you recognize: the photo of Chanticleer’s Asian garden below is on page 29 of The Plant Lover's Guide to Primulas.
(See if you can find two more of my photos between its covers.)
Last but the greatest of all: Beth Chatto's Woodland Garden: Shade-Loving Plants for Year-Round Interest. This has been one of my favorite gardening books for 20 years, and is the reason why I am so smitten with shade-loving plants. The shade is a wonderful opportunity to grow many different varieties of plants, most that far out-compete the sun-lovers in elegance and refinement. Beth gives a narrative of the beginning of her own shade garden, and then launches into 200 pages of beautiful woodland plant combinations, telling you where and how. It needs to be adapted from the UK climate of course, but since her garden is in East Anglia it gets much less rain than the typical UK garden, making it easier to adapt for the south especially.
“My principles of gardening are to provide plants with the kind of conditions for which Nature has fitted them, to arrange them in planned groups, covering the ground with foliage for as long as possible and providing interest with bold plants.”
Beth Chatto, Woodland Garden
Essential Tools
I thought this year I would also include a couple of essential garden tools for your wishlist. If you do not have these yet, then may I suggest either making them top of your list, or using your Christmas money for these useful beauties?
Firstly, a soil knife. Where gardeners used to reach for a trowel, now many the world over reach for a Hori hori, or Soil Knife. Mine came right out of the garden shed, stood still for this one photo, and then went back out with me to plant the last two dozen plants I had sitting around. It also helped me get over a thousand bulbs in the ground in a few hours time. It is the best of friends to have around and you can find my favorite AM Leonard with the notch for cutting larger stems here.
Second tool: an Emma Bridgewater mug of your choice. I have four right now after getting one for Christmas, one for a birthday, etc, and they make me smile each time I drink from them. I love their simple form, but it is the organic-inspired art by Matthew Rice that makes them so companionable in the garden. Also, I just love how this company helped to save the ceramics industry in Stoke-on-Trent after Wedgewood pottery left.
“In winter, my mind and eye are engaged in observing the endless permutations of three living forms: the oak, the holly and the ivy.”
Beth Chatto, Woodland Garden
Which gardening books would you recommend for this year? Love to hear!
Related posts:
*Amazon Affiliate links are included in this newsletter. I make a few cents per recommendation, each of which I hope will be helpful to you!
Such lovely books Julie. Have you heard the episode of @alicevincent's Why Women Grow podcast with RWK? It's wonderful.