January is Garden-Book-Time-of-Year
the most patient of teachers
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.
~Charles W. Eliot
I know that physical books are going the way of the Dodo...but there is nothing more luxurious than sitting with a good garden book and a cup of tea on a cold January morning.
Dreams of flowers, herb gardens, vegetable varieties, garden gates and more weave their way through our thoughts and light up those parts of the brain that have gone dormant. 'Plant Dreaming Deep', indeed! (a nod to a great book by May Sarton)
There are so many great garden books out there on so many aspects of horticulture, garden design, ecology, memoirs, etc. that I cannot possibly list them. It is an obsession: garden book collecting. It seems that you just need that one more book...I have boxes of garden books. And I cannot part with them, no matter how hard I try.
I am surprised that garden books are not at the top of every publishers' list - but it seems that we are a small niche. How can that be? Gardening is still the most popular leisure time activity in the US - year after year. And we buy books!
Of course, garden books can take over your living space - as you can see below. Book shelves groan beneath the weight of 'Grow the Best Tomatoes' and 'The Outdoor Living Room'. But which ones to cull? I can never decide. I am always going to read that one next...and then another...
Why do garden books have such a hold on us? Because they hold the promise of a better, greener, more fruitful tomorrow. You know, the idea is always sweeter than the reality...as the great philosopher, Pooh, says,
“Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.”
That delicious moment is similar to what a opening up a garden book is like....
So just keep stacking them up. And enjoy their colorful covers - if nothing else. They represent the lush promise of a garden and this, as we all know, warms the soul on a chill winter's day.
this is for all the librarians out there:
I feel so much less guilty about my huge trove of garden books. I love them and cannot part with them. And I do revisit them regularly unlike other books on the shelves. Also it warms my heart to know that gardening is the number one hobby in the US. That surprises me. But gives me hope!
Fun column and would love to know some of your favorites. Mine include Sylvia Crowe’s Garden Design for history and fundamental design; Scott Tilden’s The Glory of Gardens for exposure to both Western and Eastern garden writing over the past 2,000 years; The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape Garden 1620-1820, edited by John Dixon Hunt and Peter Willis; Beverley Nichols’ Down The Garden Path for sheer entertainment; The Gardens of Russell Page for refined high style, even though he admitted in The Education of a Gardener, I believe, that it was probably unsustainably expensive; and The Good Garden: The Landscape Garden Architecture of Edmund Hollander Design for wonderful pictures of the fine things that can happen when people with money also have taste. Best wishes for the new year.