Some Good Christmas Break Gardening Reads
An Idiosyncratic List
It’s Christmas. And even if your work rhythm doesn’t actually change when school gets out, this tends to be a season when all of us try to be more intentional about renewal, relaxation, and generally getting the heck out of normalcy. And though it isn’t exactly peak growing season here in New England, there’s still plenty to see that’s of interest to gardeners: the ruffling browns of grasses, sculptural frost on thistle heads, and the sky refracting off of frozen water.
If you’re reading this newsletter, you’re either into education or gardening. If the former is what got you here, I’m hoping all these photos of vegetables and flowers have felt like a silent but insistent invitation to try your hand at growing something. But if it’s gardening that draws you, you’re probably the kind of person who likes gardening books. Yet good options can be surprisingly hard to come by. The internet is flooded with advice (mea culpa), the bookstore shelves are replete with options, and it’s hard to know which of all the thousands of guides and memoirs and coffee-table tomes are worth your time.
Let me take the risk of adding to the noise by offering a short, idiosyncratic list of books that follow under the general heading of “gardening” which I’ve loved over the years. I think the guiding principle when you’re selecting a Christmas break read is that it should feel a little indulgent but also leave you chewing on something valuable. All of the books on this list tick those boxes for me. I bet they will for you, too.
1/ The Complete Gardener, by Monty Don
It seems appropriate to begin this list with the ultimate gardening guide from the ultimate gardener: Britain’s famous horticulturalist Monty Don. The Complete Gardener manages to be both practical and beautiful, both comprehensive and approachable, both deep and accessible. Filled with rich images, good prose, and simple advice, this is the book to start with if you want to start gardening well. Best of all, it hints at the generosity of the hobby, which always threatens to become a way of life. Don has always thought of himself as a writer first and a gardener second, a set of priorities that partly explains the palpable eloquence of his gardens at Longmeadow. None of us will ever be able to match his prowess, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the fine excesses of it.
2/ Nature’s Best Hope, by Douglas Tallamy
Tallamy’s book is now standard reading for everyone who knows about climate change and mass extinction and wants to take positive action at the ground level. Yet Nature’s Best Hope is far more than an instruction manual: it’s an ode to America’s greatest naturalists, a poetic reflection on the sometimes tenuous but always vital connection between man and nature, and—most improbably of all—a deeply hopeful piece of writing. Perhaps Tallamy’s best insight is that the way forward, for humans and for nature, will be a path of fulfillment rather than restraint. If that sounds intriguing to you, pick it up and read more.
3/ Country, by Jasper Conran
The anglophile coffee table book par excellence, Jasper Conran’s Country is full of sumptuous photography that captures a quickly vanishing rural Britain. Lots of books like this get published every year but, even though the essays that accompany the photos sometimes feel a little on the nose, these images are much more than an exercise in over-exposed nostalgia. Conran’s work is about atmospheres, about the details on the edges that hint at human stories. Our copy of the book is now taped together in several places and practically falling out of its binding, but it somehow looks better for it. This is a book that stimulates the mind instead of dulling it, that sparks conversations instead of ending them.
4/ The Illustrated Practical Guide to Wildlife Gardening, by Christine and Michael Lavelle
It is a rare gardener these days who wants an antiseptic garden, empty of animals. More and more of us are planting to draw nature in and keep it safe, as opposed to dominating the world with sprays, walls, and aggressive weeding. For those of us who want to keep nature in without sacrificing an aesthetic sensibility, Christine and Michael Lavelle’s Wildlife Gardening is a great choice. Full of sensible practical knowledge and rich illustrations, the book has good ideas for the life-loving gardener worthing on any scale, from a few pots on the porch to a full acre.
5/ The Gardener’s Bed-Book, by Richardson Wright
Richardson Wright’s keen, generous book reads like a series of conversations with an intelligent and good-humored friend. The conceit of The Gardener’s Bed-Book is as a sort of intellectual nightcap: a sheaf of short essays to be read before sleep. In such a very short format, he manages to pack a tremendous lot in, from excellent planting advice to pontifications about antiques, travel, and design, all patinaed by his imitable sense of humor. If it’s true what they say, that our subconscious dwells by night on the last things we thought of at the end of the day, then we’d probably all be healthier if we kept a dogeared copy of this book on our side tables.
6/ The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame
Grahame’s immortal children’s book is, of course, about a budding friendship between the Mole and the Water Rat, about reclaiming Toad’s house, and about getting caught in the Wild Wood in a blizzard. But it’s also about a very specific sensibility and way of life; about what it means to be a “creature of the field and hedgerow” who derives pleasure from the bounded world of green and growing things, from the endless pageantry of the cycling seasons, and from the pleasures of boating or a bracing winter walk. If you’ve never read it or if it’s been a few years, this is the perfect time to dust off your copy and read “Dolce Domum,” one of the best Christmas narratives in any novel.
7/ Garden Design Master Class, edited by Carl Dellatore
My wife gifted me this ponderous, glossy collection of photos and essays on landscape design for Christmas last year and it’s been sitting open on my desk ever since, constantly consulted and enjoyed. Each of the little essays within is short enough to read in five minutes but rich enough to keep you thinking for hours. As separate entities, these pieces are immensely helpful from the perspective of a designer. Taken together, they capture the multifaceted, branched, and expansive nature of the field, which is like painting in the medium of living things. You’ll never absorb all of the wisdom in this book, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying.
8/ Nature Stories, by Jules Renard
I’ve written before about the benefits, or rather the necessity, of observation for the gardener, and Jules Renard’s Nature Stories demonstrates how closely this skill is related to the literary impulse. No detail, no snail, no terra cotta pot is too small for Renard’s eye, which shaves off the extraneous like a lathe and turns out tale after enchanting tale of a life lived in communion with nature. Douglas Parmée’s translation keeps something of Renard’s delicate and exacting touch, and Pierre Bonnard’s brushed ink illustrations alone are worth the price of admission.
9/ Field Work, by Seamus Heaney
The poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney is perhaps best known as the chronicler of Irish angst during the politically and socially tense years of The Troubles. But he was also the supreme poet of the ditchback and the hedge school, those little, practical, and natural places of rural Ireland that formed his childhood landscape, and became his place of writing. Field Work is probably my favorite collection of his, written just after he and his family moved to the cottage of Glanmore, away from the semi-urban life he’d cultivated as a younger man, to make a go of it as a full-time writer. The poems explore the evanescence of the rural dream, the limits of art, and the trials of a young family with profound and earthy eloquence. Many of them beg to be memorized, and all of them sharpen our awareness of the natural world.
