Recommended Garden Books

Plant Propagation

These are books I like for plant propagation tips and tutorials:

1. AHS Plant Propagation | American Horticultural Association
2. Plant Propagator’s Bible | Miranda Smith
3. Grow Your Own Garden | Carol Klein

Bird-Friendly Gardening: Guidance and Projects for Supporting Birds in Your Landscape

by Jen McGuinness

Bird-Friendly Gardening is the definitive guide to planting a wildlife-welcoming home landscape filled with a diversity of native plants that feed, shelter, and support birds.

Phenology (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)

by Theresa M. Crimmins

On the timing of seasonal activity in plants and animals, the impact of climate change, and what each of us, as everyday phenologists, can do to help.

Container Gardening Complete

by Jessica Walliser

This has everything you want to know about growing plants in containers: flowers, herbs, veggies, and more.

It’s packed with useful information, creative container projects, and lots of beautiful photos.

Raised Bed Revolution

by Tara Nolan

The ultimate resource for building and growing in raised garden beds.

Gardening Your Front Yard
Projects and Ideas for Big and Small Spaces

by Tara Nolan 

Gardening Your Front Yard is an active, inspiring resource that shows you how to treat your front yard like a backyard without sacrificing beauty, from choosing the right plants to building front patios and walkways.

The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener

by Niki Jabbour

Niki lives in Nova Scotia, Canada and grows vegetables year-round.

Find out how to plant, what to use to keep your crops protected, and how to keep harvesting veggies even in a cold climate all year long.

See More
How to Grow Vegetables Outdoors in Winter (in Canada!)

A Woman’s Garden
Grow Beautiful Plants and Make Useful Things

by Tanya Anderson

Inspiring ways to use the power of plants for home and health—with helpful growing advice and step-by-step instructions for creating over 35 inspiring projects, edibles, and art from your garden.

Also see

• Meet Tanya of Lovely Greens (Isle of Man UK Gardener)

• Make a Fossil Imprint Stepping Stone

Gardening on a Shoestring
100 Fun Upcycled Garden Projects

by Alex Mitchell

Growing a pretty garden doesn’t have to cost a pretty penny–learn how to create a low-cost garden using a little elbow grease, a lot of creativity, and this book.

Seasonal Plant Dyes
Creating year round colour from plants, beautiful textile projects

by Alicia Hall

This beautifully illustrated book takes you on a botanical journey through the year, showing you how to create colorful and environmentally friendly plant dyes. You’ll learn sustainable methods of growing and harvesting plants; the tools and techniques required to extract dye; which fabrics and yarns to choose; and the simple method of using soy milk as a fixative, to ensure rich and long-lasting colors.

Life with Flowers: Inspiration and Lessons from the Garden

by Frances Palmer

 “Become a part of artist and master gardener Frances Palmer’s world as she shares everything she knows about growing and arranging flowers in this gorgeous book—”Flower lovers, prepare for peak inspiration” (Amy Merrick, author of On Flowers).

Audubon Birdhouse Book, Revised and Updated
Building, Placing, and Maintaining Great Homes for Great Birds

by Margaret A. Barker, Elissa Ruth Wolfson, National Audubon Society

The Audubon Birdhouse Book is the most authoritative book available for creating safe, sturdy, and easy-to-build homes for many of North America’s favorite birds. This updated second edition includes important new and timely topics including impacts of climate change on birds, nestbox monitoring for community science, native plants, and how birders can help birds.

Easy Birdhouses & Feeders, Simple Projects to Attract & Retain the Birds You Want 

by Michael Berger

Includes plans for building 16 different nesting boxes, 10 bird feeders, and some birdbaths as well. Included is information on the needs of various bird species, which materials to use, where to locate the birdhouse, and what to expect when your birds are expecting.

The book includes birdhouse plans for the following birds:  America Robin, Mourning Dove, House Wren, Black-Capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, Easter Bluebird, Flycatcher, Norther Flicker, Woodpecker, Wood Duck, American Kestrel, Barred Owl, Screech Owl, and Barn Owl.

This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader

by Joan Dye Gussow

Joan Dye Gussow is an extraordinarily ordinary woman. She lives in a home not unlike the average home in a neighborhood that is, more or less, typically suburban. What sets her apart from the rest of us is that she thinks more deeply–and in more eloquent detail–about food. In sharing her ponderings, she sets a delightful example for those of us who seek the healthiest, most pleasurable lifestyle within an environment determined to propel us in the opposite direction. Joan is a suburbanite with a green thumb, with a feisty, defiant spirit and a relentlessly positive outlook.

Growing, Older: A Chronicle of Death, Life, and Vegetables

by Joan Dye Gussow

Gussow’s memoir Growing, Older begins when she loses her husband of 40 years to cancer and, two weeks later, finds herself skipping down the street-much to her alarm. Why wasn’t she grieving in all the normal ways? With humor and wit, she explains how she stopped worrying about why she was smiling and went on worrying, instead, and as she always has, about the possibility that the world around her was headed off a cliff. But hers is not a tale, or message, of gloom. Rather it is an affirmation of a life’s work-and work in general.