Category: Books & Things

The Art of Gardening: Design Inspiration and Innovative Planting Techniques from Chanticleer,  R William Thomas, Timber Press, 2015

In the nearly 100 gardens I visited in 2015, Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, PA was by far the most inspiring. I came home and implemented design ideas from a Northeast garden into my Southwest landscape.   Bill Thomas is the executive director and head gardener of Chanticleer and in the introduction he says the “book aims to be a conversation between our staff and you. . . Our garden exists to inspire and is filled with ideas to try at home.”  ...   Continue Reading

Retired Botany Professor Lawrence Kingston  is called in to examine the authenticity of a sapphire blue rose growing in Alex & Kate’s English garden.  Then a mystery begins without the blood & gore of so many mystery tales but with intrigue surrounding the ins and out of the rose industry, including gardening practices, vividly rainy days, strong tea and beautiful gardens.  Antony Elgin is a gardener, award winning rosarian and producer of  a series of best selling garden videos. Originally from England he lives in California where his  “pint-sized garden was awarded Garden Design magazine’s Golden Trowel Award.”  His English Garden Mystery series with Dr. Lawrence Kingston sleuthing his way through the plants and plotting includes six titles, the latest, The Alcatraz Rose includes action in San Francisco.  These books are highly entertaining for a gardener as the horticulture insights are delivered along with a good story. Other titles in the series I’m eager to try include, The Water Lily Cross, Gardens of Secrets Past, The Lost Gardens, The Trail of the Wild Rose. If you are a fan of PBS’s Rosemary & Thyme mystery series you will enjoy these books. ...   Continue Reading

Andrea Wulf is the award-winning and New York Times Bestselling author of three garden history books, including “The Brother Gardeners, Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession” (2009)...   Continue Reading

Fran Sorin’s 10th Anniversary edition of Digging Deep,

Unearthing your creative Roots Through Gardening 

Author Fran Sorin offers such a clear song of hope in an era of ernest gardening.  This book offers garden guidance, motivation and inspiration to reframe your definition of gardening. So many gardeners are digging in their plants with a fear of doom and food appocolypse in their hearts.  If a gardener isn’t connected to the beauty and randomness of nature in gardening many will give up when the birds devour the first crop.   In these pages find you find a way to weave the everyday joy a garden offers as the essential work is done. You will know flowers are essential to feed the soul. This book will coach beginning gardeners, encourage the discouraged and inspire the devoted. If you are lucky enough to have a small patch of earth to tend, this book will speak to your heart and help you see you are indeed lucky enough....   Continue Reading

“The Artist’s Garden American Impressionism and the Garden Movement”  edited by Anna O. Marley

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia C 2014...   Continue Reading

  “Seeds” by  Richard Horan 2011   “One Man’s Serendipitous Journey to Find the Trees That Inspired American Writers from Faulkner to Kerouac, Welty to Wharton,”...   Continue Reading

I’ve always loved pretty glass bottles, all the different shapes, colors, and how the light reflects through them.  Where is a more perfectly arranged, beautifully lit array of bottles than behind the bar at a great resort.  “This is horticulture!  In all these bottles!  How can anyone with even a passing interest in botany not be fascinated by this stuff?”   This is where Amy Stewart hooked me into reading her latest book. She begins with the letter A for agave and moves through plants all the way to wheat describing their use in making the booze of the world....   Continue Reading