Here are 100 books that Cultivating Delight fans have personally recommended if you like
Cultivating Delight.
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Iām not an expert gardener, but Iāve been gardening for half my life. Each spring I canāt wait to start all over again. I love deciding what vegetables to plant in our community garden and tucking flowers into the flower boxes. The perfect Saturday? Lingering at my local gardening center and perusing the seedlings at the farmerās marketāthe possibilities are endless! As temperatures warm, I begin daily tours of my garden, looking for signs of life, pulling weeds, and tidying up. I marvel as the tulips bloom, scatter zinnia seeds, plant dahlia tubers, water, and wait. Gardening is perfectly predictable, yet Iām captivated by it every year.
I have a small, mostly shady city yard, but I still havenāt given up hope of growing food outside my back door.
Thatās where Emily Tepeās book The Edible Landscapecomes in. With lovely photographs of real gardens and step-by-step instruction, Tepe walks me through how to successfully grow fruits, vegetables, and flowers side-by-side to create a garden that is both beautiful and productive.
The best part of the book is Emilyās 10 favorite lists, featuring plants she loves and recommends.
As the fresh food revolution sweeps the nation, more and more people are seeking out delicious offerings from local growers. We have had our fill of tasteless, woody tomatoes from the far reaches of the globe and have begun tasting againāthanks to farmersā markets and co-opsāthe real flavors we remember from childhood.Ā Inspired by these events, people have started growing food in the most unlikely places, including rooftops, abandoned parking lots, and tiny balconies and backyards on average city streets. Individuals and families are taking up the trowel and discovering that gardening can be fun, fulfilling, and, ultimately, delicious. Farā¦
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last CastleĀ and The Girls of Atomic CityĀ comes a new way to look at American history: through the lens of giving thanks.
Author Denise Kiernan tells the fascinating story of Sarah Josepha Hale, a widowed mother of five who campaignedā¦
Iām not an expert gardener, but Iāve been gardening for half my life. Each spring I canāt wait to start all over again. I love deciding what vegetables to plant in our community garden and tucking flowers into the flower boxes. The perfect Saturday? Lingering at my local gardening center and perusing the seedlings at the farmerās marketāthe possibilities are endless! As temperatures warm, I begin daily tours of my garden, looking for signs of life, pulling weeds, and tidying up. I marvel as the tulips bloom, scatter zinnia seeds, plant dahlia tubers, water, and wait. Gardening is perfectly predictable, yet Iām captivated by it every year.
Every spring, I pull this book from my shelf before heading over to the garden center or farmerās market to pick out plantings for my window boxes.
I use the ideas in this book as a launch pad.
Sometimes I try to replicate exactly what appears in a window box design that catches my eye, but more often I just crib off a color scheme or copy the rhythm of showy flowered varieties paired with pretty leafy trailers.
I especially love that this book provides ideas for all seasons.Ā
When design magazines want new and fresh ideas, they turn to James Cramer and Dean Johnson. In Window Boxes, Indoors & Out these two gardeners, designers, artists, and stylists bring a wealth of talent and the freshest eye to the close-up pleasures of window boxes. The book spans a year of invention and innovation at Seven Gates Farm, the authors' nineteenth-century homestead and studio. The results are inspired ideas, hard-working advice, and more than 150 dazzling photographs of these delightful still lifes.
Given four seasons in which to flourish, this once spring/summer-only pleasure goes well beyond traditional garden planters andā¦
My love and passion for embracing a cozy and romantic view of life is so strong that I built my entire business around it! I am a recipe developer, cookbook author, and content creator. My unique take on cooking and baking is by adding touches of fantasy, cottagecore, and history into my recipes and other creative work. This has led me to write all about living a more cozy lifestyle for the last 10 years! Romanticizing my life with the cottagecore aesthetic is how I find joy and comfort in a chaotic world, and I hope that can inspire others to embrace living their own magical lives!
Tasha Tudor, the original cottagecore icon, is the one of the first people I was inspired by to change my outlook on life and be brave enough to include elements of a historically inspired style into my life. I absolutely love this book for its romantic imagery and magical ideas for building a fairytale garden and home.
This book has inspired me again and again, especially to learn to embrace my own personal style and that itās okay to be a bit odd. This book not only has beautiful photos, but it also shares practical tips and ideas for growing your own cozy cottage garden.
With each page, you enter Tashaās nineteenth-century-inspired world that she built and feel the confidence to build your own version of a romantic cottage life.
Tasha Tudor's poignant art has fascinated adults and children for decades. Her nineteenth-century New England lifestyle is legendary. Gardeners are especially intrigued by the profusion of antique flowers -- spectacular poppies, six-foot foxgloves, and intoxicating peonies -- in the cottage gardens surrounding her hand-hewn house. Until now we've only caught glimpses of Tasha Tudor's landscape. In this gorgeous book, two of her friends, the garden writer Tovah Martin and the photographer Richard Brown, take us into the magical garden and then behind the scenes. As we revel in the bedlam of Johnny-jump-ups and cinnamon pinks, the intricacy of the formalā¦
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last CastleĀ and The Girls of Atomic CityĀ comes a new way to look at American history: through the lens of giving thanks.
Author Denise Kiernan tells the fascinating story of Sarah Josepha Hale, a widowed mother of five who campaignedā¦
I am an optimist. I jump out of bed in the morning ready to read and write. With my dog and cat by my side and a cup of coffee in hand, I lose myself in whatever I am working on. I am deeply curious about a gamut of subjects and constantly challenge myself to learn more. I am persistent and not afraid of hard work. Nature and animals are my bottomless well of inspiration and joy. I very much believe life is a journey and I try to enjoy each step.
It is a memoir where Barbara Kingsolver writes humorously about a year of living off the land. She is not a vegetarian but must raise, kill, and butcher animals if she wants to eat meat. The result is, every time she eats meat, she weighs the emotional cost.
This reckoning has been my bible. I ask myself, would I be willing to kill the chick I raised to eat? Inevitably, the answer is āno.āĀ
The book is not a treaty encouraging people to live off the land, itās the opposite. It makes you appreciate every bit of food you put in your mouth and the fact you did not have to grow, harvest, clean and cook it.Ā
"We wanted to live in a place that could feed us: where rain falls, crops grow, and drinking water bubbles up right out of the ground."
Barbara Kingsolver opens her home to us, as she and her family attempt a year of eating only local food, much of it from their own garden. Inspired by the flavours and culinary arts of a local food culture, they explore many a farmers market and diversified organic farms at home and across the country. With characteristic warmth, Kingsolver shows us how to put food back at the centre of the political and familyā¦
Iām not an expert in gardening, forestry, or herbal medicine. But like everyone else, I have a growing awareness that our planet Earth is entirely dependent on thriving forests and insects and even weeds. We owe it to our children and future generations to learn about and protect our precious resources. Although I live in the big city of Chicago and have a tiny backyard, last year I turned my little grass lawn into prairie! I have creeping charlie, dandelions, creeping phlox, sedge grass, wild violets, white clover, and who knows what else. (Luckily, my neighbors are on board.) Iāve already seen honeybees and hummingbirds. Itās not much, but itās something I can do.
Many of us tend to view gardens only from the surface up.
This book dives underground to show how many living things in the dirt are working hard to help us garden. Worms and insects that we might find āgrossā are actually essential for airing the soil and warding off invaders.
Plenty of things grow just fine without human help because they have all the helpers they need under the earth. This book shows how nature goes about its business, plants and insects and animals all working together to green the earth.
Bonus: Nealās illustrations are anatomical wonders, showing worms and bugs with legs and feelers in a friendly light. Squeamish children (and their parents) might make a few buggy friends as they read.
A companion to the new Over and Under the Pond and Over and Under the Snow, this sweet book explores the hidden world and many lives of a garden through the course of a year.
Up in the garden, the world is full of green-leaves and sprouts, growing vegetables, ripening fruit. But down in the dirt there is a busy world of earthworms digging, snakes hunting, skunks burrowing and all the other animals that make a garden their home. In this exuberant and lyrical book, discover the wonders that lie hidden between stalks, under the shade of leaves... and downā¦
As an expert in grass ecology and champion of sustainable design, John Greenlee has created meadows not only in the United States, but throughout the world for over 30 years. Some of his most notable gardens include the Getty Museum, the Norton Simon Museum in Los Angeles, and the savannas at Walt Disneyās Animal Kingdom in Florida. In addition to his consulting and design work for commercial and residential clients, John Greenlee enjoys sharing his knowledge by giving several presentations and lectures throughout the year on the use of natural lawns, native grasses, and meadow restoration.
I think this book is one of the best organized and easily digestible garden books out there.
Whether you are a seasoned professional garden designer or just a beginner, this book is essential for helping understand how to put plants together in the garden. Royās simple and effective methodology can benefit any gardener's attempts to design successful perennial borders without a lot of jargon or pretension.
Royās book is both inspiring and informative. Royās influence is felt through some of the Midwestās finest gardens and his maintenance knowledge can benefit any perennial garden, anywhere.
āA veritable goldmine for gardeners.āĀ āPlant Talk
Weāve all seen gorgeous perennial gardens packed with color, texture, and multi-season interest. Designed by a professional and maintained by a crew, they are aspirational bits of beauty too difficult to attempt at home. Or are they?
The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden makes a design-magazine-worthy garden achievable at home. The new, simplified approach is made up of hardy, beautiful plants grown on a 10x14 foot grid. Each of the 62 garden plans combines complementary plants that thrive together and grow as a community. They are designed to make maintenance a snap.Ā The gardenā¦
I write childrenās books, both fiction and non-fiction, including One Duck Stuck, Big Momma Makes the World, Rattletrap Car, Plant a Pocket of Prairie, and, in collaboration with Jacqueline Briggs Martin and Liza Ketchum, Begin With A Bee, a picture book about the federally endangered rusty-patched bumblebee. Recently I have been putting my garden to bed for the winter, pulling tomato vines, harvesting beans that have dried on the vine, cutting herbs, and planting cloves of garlic to grow into heads in next yearās garden. In a couple of months snow will bury the garden beds, and the only gardens will be in the pages of books. Here are five of the childrenās books that I love about growing things.
Told in one long sentence, this is the story of a child and their dog who plant seeds after winter and wait and wait and wait for the brown ground toāfinallyābecome green.Ā The ongoing sentence resonates with waiting for hopeful signs that spring is on the way.Ā
Following a snow-filled winter, a young boy and his dog decide that they've had enough of all that brown and resolve to plant a garden. They dig, they plant, they play, they wait . . . and wait . . . until at last, the brown becomes a more hopeful shade of brown, a sign that spring may finally be on its way.
Julie Fogliano's tender story of anticipation is brought to life by the distinctive illustrations Erin E. Stead, recipient of the 2011 Caldecott Medal.
By Isa Hendry Eaton and Jennifer Blaise KramerAuthor
Why are we passionate about this?
We are garden designer Isa Hendry Eaton and lifestyle writer Jennifer Blaise Kramer, co-authors of Small Garden Style. We love getting and sharing inspiration on good garden design to pull our lives more outdoors. In our book, we show you how to use good design to create a joyful, elegant, and exciting yet compact outdoor living space for entertaining or relaxing. Our stylishly photographed guide is a fun way to create lush, layered, dramatic little gardens no matter the size of your available space, be it an urban patio, a tiny backyard, or even just a pot by your door.
We love a garden book that works hard as a guide, and this book does just that!
Itās a handbook that feels like a trusted magazine with real-life garden tours and lifestyle tips such as āSteal This Lookā (our fave!) for everything from stone and ironwork to plants and water features. We couldnāt appreciate more the way an author can break down a gardenās style and feel and help us replicate that look we love at home.
Gardenista is a go-to when we want a design refresh!
Our homes' outdoor spaces can and should be as welcoming and carefully considered as our living rooms; when treated as extensions of our homes, these spaces enrich our lives immeasurably. That was the guiding principle when, under the direction of editor in chief Michelle Slatalla (whose New York Times style columns were weekly must-reads for a decade), the team behind Remodelista.com launched sister site Gardenista.com. Like Remodelista, Gardenista caters to an older, more established audience (75 percent of readers are over the age of 35) and is known for its sophisticated, well-edited aesthetic. The book contains lushly photographed tours ofā¦
I find these books most compelling because over the years I have become increasingly motivated to study and share the value of appreciating mankindās responsibility to nature as Godās gift to us! And in doing so, have embraced our obligation as stewards to ensure future generations a āfuture Earthā cleaner than we found it. The current trend is faulty to the utmost degree, but can be reversed with intelligent design and appropriate education beginning in grade school. This should be everyoneās objective!
I loved this book as essential to all gardeners who would appreciate their "Zone-1"Ā area closest to their home and kitchen to be as beautiful and productive as possible!
This book is the best that I have found for designing kitchen gardens, herb spirals, keyhole gardens, and general outdoor living areas. I also found it compelling that while symmetry and visual harmony were addressed liberally, the functionality of practical symbiosis for chosen fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers was not lost.
Discover how to partner ornamental plants with edible ones for a garden that offers both storybook appeal and a plethora of culinary delights.
*Winner of the GardenComm 2023 Laurel Media Awards Silver Award in the Book Publisher/Producer General Readership Category*
Stylish and celebratory, The Elegant and Edible Garden takes food growing to a higher plane. Host of The Potager Blog (@potagerblog), author and garden stylist Linda Vater, shares her vision for creating a garden space where food and flowers grow side by side. Known as a potager, these gardens are formal in their framework yet flexible and personal in theirā¦
Weāre Chantal Gordon and Ryan Benoit ā the cofounders of gardening/design/DIY blog The Horticult. Our site shows you how to create handsome yet effective habitats for your plants. That includes a collection of mounted staghorn ferns under our citrus trees, a vertical garden for your herbs, and a sleek bog for carnivorous pitcher plants. One of our most popular DIYs is how to build an outdoor theater behind your rosemary hedge. We show people how to create outdoor spaces they can deeply enjoy ā whether itās a patio, balcony, or yard. A key to welcoming someone is good design. The more you like hanging out outside, the better care youāll take of your plants.
As primarily ornamental gardeners, weāve fallen back on the old excuse about tomato plants being ugly as the reason why we donāt do edible gardening. Itās a lazy excuse! The Beautiful Edible Gardenshows that its titular premise is so not an oxymoron. And it hits the two things we look for most in a garden design book, which are: (1) hyperspecific plant recommendations and (2) solid design principles we can learn from and put into action. Through lucid, inviting instructions and scrumptious photos, The Beautiful Edible Gardenoffers gold like how to select āanchor plantsā to establish structure in a landscape, blueberries and culinary sweet bay being top picks. And the transformational effect of planting a āfocal pointā plant ā which has us hankering to bring in a persimmon tree.Ā
Learn how to artfully incorporate organic vegetables, fruits, and herbs into an attractive garden design with this stylish, beautifully photographed guide.
Weāve all seen the vegetable garden overflowing with corn, tomatoes, and zucchini that looks good for a short time, but then quickly turns straggly and unattractive (usually right before friends show up for a backyard barbecue). If you want to grow food but you donāt want your yard to look like a farm, what can you do? The Beautiful Edible Garden shares how to not only grow organic fruits and vegetables, but also make your garden a place ofā¦
