This beautiful, evocative book tells the story of a National Trust garden in Shropshire using the structure of a medieval book of hours.
Garden story books full#
This book is full of practical insights and wisdom on all aspects of gardening, peppered with anecdotes and wry asides. His glorious garden at Great Dixter in East Sussex is beloved by gardeners around the world, and throughout his life he was generous with advice and hospitality. Photograph: Alex Ramsay/Alamyĥ The Well-Tempered Garden by Christopher Lloydįorthright, funny and hugely knowledgable, Lloyd’s writing on gardens always lifts my spirits. Glorious … Christopher Lloyd’s garden at Great Dixter, East Sussex.
It’s a life-affirming read that helps explain why a few minutes with your hands in the soil makes you feel so much better. Using a bewitching blend of stories and science, this book shows just how powerfully we are affected by our surroundings, and the potential for healing we find in the natural world. Psychotherapist and psychiatrist Stuart-Smith investigates the ways gardens improve our state of mind and wellbeing. Although it is not specifically about gardens, Kimmerer’s knowledge and perspective will change the way you see and connect to your garden.Ĥ The Well-Gardened Mind by Sue Stuart-Smith This book helps us to better understand our reciprocal relationship with the world, encouraging compassion and wonder as ways to repair the damage we’ve done to the planet. Kimmerer is a renowned botanist, professor in environmental biology and member of the Potawatomi Nation. As he becomes ill with Aids we see the garden replenish him and provide a stake in the future, as well as sending him back to the gardens of his childhood.ģ Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer Creating beauty in the shadow of a nuclear power station on a shingle desert, Modern Nature shows Jarman’s deep love and knowledge of plants, his huge creative force and his belief in gardening as a radical act. This is a utopian vision of feminine retreat, experimentation, freedom and creativity in a society where there were few places of self-determination for women.Ī poetic, powerful and wide-ranging account of Jarman’s garden at Prospect Cottage, Dungeness on the Kent coast. Originally published anonymously to avoid her husband feeling he was being publicly ridiculed, Arnim reveals the garden as a refuge from stifling domesticity and the demands of others. Wittily drawn and with feminist overtones unusual for its time (it was published in 1898), the book shows how the garden provides Elizabeth a place of escape from her husband (known as “the Man of Wrath”) and her children. This semi-autobiographical novel is an account of the protagonist Elizabeth’s efforts to create a garden from wilderness at her country estate. I hope you find similar solace in some of these books.ġ Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Ar nim Gardening and writing have been the mainstays of my life over a period of great uncertainty. In my book I explore the connections between artists and writers and their gardens, and some of the books I’ve chosen here also reflect this interest in creativity and the human impulse to cultivate beauty.
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