I really like Sydney Eddison and have all her books. Her husband died recently and she is scaling back her gardeniing a lot. Anne Raver used to write for the NY Times and her columns always made me laugh or sit up and take notice. Her Deep In The Green is very enjoyable. I collect gardening books and am hard pressed to pick a favorite. Have you read Celia Thaxter's An Island Garden? It's pure pleasure.

I enjoy gardening books, and have two favorite authors, both circa 1920 - 1940: Beverley Nichols (English, still in print) and Richardson Wright (American, all but one book OOP). Nichols wrote extensively about his gardens in various places in England, the best IMO being his Merry Hall trilogy. He also doted on his cats, so these are great books for cat-loving gardeners.

Wright penned a number of "bed books" with gardening entries meant to be read daily. His Gardener's Bed Book is still in print, and his advice is still sound (though some of plants he recommends and the toxic stuff he used for weed and bug control is dated).

I was also delighted by Laura Simon's Dear Mr. Jefferson: Letters from a Nantucket Gardener which is written as present-day letters to the long-dead President,discussing her garden.

Great thread! I'll be making a list for further reading.

Here is a link that might be useful: Beverley Nichols

I second Nichols-not only for the garden and cat and refurbishing-the-house journaling, but the personalities of his neighbors and visitors as well. Some of them are laugh-out-loud.

I don't know if this one counts, as she catalogued mainly wild flora and fauna, but I adore Edith Holden's "Diary of an Edwardian Lady." Her commentary and illustrations are first rate and bear the test of time.

Another vote for Nichols' books -- simply wonderful reading!

"The Secret Garden" is a classic -- of course!

"Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden" -- by Emily Whaley in conversation with William Baldwin.

"Sweet Days and Roses" -- An Anthology of Garden Writing -- edited by Leslie Geddes-Brown

"Brother Cedfael's Herb Garden" Rob Talbot & Robin Whiteman

"Crabtee & Evelyn Fragrant Herbal" -- Lesley Bremness

How could I have forgotten Mrs. Whaley? That book is laugh-out-loud funny, in addition to all the captivating stories. There is a similar book with her Charleston recipes too--lots and lots of cholesterol but wonderful.

I will also add Elisabeth Sheldon and her books about her valiant struggles with her upstate NY garden, full of charm and intelligence and wit.

there was one made up of letters to and from a New England (I think) gardener and an English gardener-can't think of title or authors, but maybe someone else will have a memory jog?

I think that one was "The 3000 mile garden" or something like that and I agree it was delightful. He was bringing a London "square" garden back to life and she was fighting the earth in maybe Maine. I also loved "Upward and Onward in the Garden" by Katherine White, of that New Yorker crowd, and "The Writer in the Garden"--excerpts from dozens of writings from Thoreau to Jekyll to modern.

My favorite of Nichols is the Allways series--three books about a garden in a little village. Interestingly, Timber Press is featuring his stuff in the current catalogue. I have found all mine at second shops, but I am so tempted...

Thanks for all the great suggestions. I do much better reading than getting out and pulling my own weeds.

Henry Mitchell is a dandy as well.

"A weed is just a misplaced flower..."

And Allen Lacy, as well as Elizabeth Lawrence, a Southern garden writer whose correspondence with Katherine White has been published.

Books as well as gardens have certainly inspired my development as a gardener over the years. Many gardening books have brought me pleasure and imparted information, but a few have called forth epiphanies. The lightbulb went off, and I suddenly understood something important I never knew before. I'll list them chronologically.

The first was a novel, something I have mentioned on this forum before. It was Elizabeth Goudge's English Civil War novel The White Witch. It could almost be read as a love letter to the garden, and it introduced to me for the first time the concept that the gardener's palette of plants has evolved over time. Many plants we have now we did not always have. Conversely, there are plants people used to grow that have slipped away from our notice. This ignited the spark of my interest in heirloom plants, from roses to tomatoes to apples.

The next one I encountered was The Fragrant Year: Scented Plants for Your Garden and Your Home by Helen van Pelt Wilson and Leonie Bell. These two garden writers infected me with their love of scented plants. I don't have as good a nose as they do, but fragrance became an important selection point for me ever since.

Not long after that I read Thalassas Cruso's story of the revival of the neglected garden she acquired when she bought a house. The book was called Making Things Grow Outdoors. It was the first time I thought of the evolution of a garden over time. I was particularly taken with her discovery of the previous gardener's garden library, notes in the margins of the books.

My favorite inspiration in the food production side of gardening is The Self-Sufficient Gardener by John Seymour. I'm sure I'll never be self-sufficient, but it is a seductive fantasy.

I actually considered going back to school for a career change after reading Nan Fairbrother's The Nature of Landscape Design: As an Art Form, a Craft, and a Social Necessity. In the end I decided not to abandon one perfectly enjoyable, not-very-profitable career for another, but I had fun for several years thinking about it.

The garden book that made me laugh out loud over and over again came next. It was the late Cassandra Danz's Mrs. Greenthumbs: How I Turned a Boring Yard into a Glorius Garden and How You Can Too.

My final two books are on roses, Hmm, no surprises here. The most accesible book exploring old roses has to be In Search of Lost Roses by Thomas Christopher. It makes you want to be buried in an old-fashioned cemetery with permanent plantings so that your descendants can collect 'lost' roses from your gravesite! At least it did this for me. (This event is not to happen for another fifty years or so, of course.) And finally my favorite Climbing Roses by Stephen Scanniello and Tanya Bayard. Reading this book makes you yearn to go out and plant walls of roses! Try it -- you'll see.

Rosefolly