Here are 100 books that How Plants Work fans have personally recommended if you like
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Hiking in the flower-covered hillsides of Central California as a nature-loving kid, I couldn’t help but wonder about my companions. One of my first purchases (with babysitting money!) was a wildflower guide. I’ve moved around the country many times and every time I’ve had to start over, make new plant acquaintances and discoveries—always an orienting process. Of course, I’ve also studied plants formally, in college and in my career, and (honestly, best of all) via mentors and independent study. All this has shown me that flowers are more than just beautiful! They’re amazingly diverse, and full of fascinating behaviors and quirks. In fact, they are essential parts of the complex habitats we share.
This book is a revelation! The author (1907-1977) was a scientist (a naturalist, anthropologist, and paleontologist), and, boy, could he write. The title refers to the arc of time on this planet. There are chapters that describe and ponder fossils, evolution, so-called missing links, “the great deeps,” and so forth in the most captivating, poetic language. But the chapter to read is “How Flowers Changed the World.” I consider it the most important and insightful essay ever written on the dramatic arrival of angiosperms (flowering plants)—because he takes into account all context, and because he marvels. As we should.
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
Hiking in the flower-covered hillsides of Central California as a nature-loving kid, I couldn’t help but wonder about my companions. One of my first purchases (with babysitting money!) was a wildflower guide. I’ve moved around the country many times and every time I’ve had to start over, make new plant acquaintances and discoveries—always an orienting process. Of course, I’ve also studied plants formally, in college and in my career, and (honestly, best of all) via mentors and independent study. All this has shown me that flowers are more than just beautiful! They’re amazingly diverse, and full of fascinating behaviors and quirks. In fact, they are essential parts of the complex habitats we share.
Once upon a time, “plant explorers,” intrepid botanists (mainly from the UK) fanned out over the lesser-known world looking for interesting plants to bring into wider appreciation and cultivation. Frank Kingdon Ward (1885-1958) is best known for introducing the breathtakingly beautiful Tibetan blue poppy. There’s an internet meme featuring his grizzled face with the caption “Make sure you want it enough,” a clear reference to what he went through to bring his prizes back. (Imagine: you spot the fabulous blue poppy in some remote place, but, you have to find a way to return in a few months to get seeds.) This book, edited by Thomas Christopher and with a preface by Jamaica Kincaid (both super-credentialed horticulturists and authors), features highly readable, awe-inspiring selections from the great man’s journals.
During the first years of the twentieth century, the British plant collector and explorer Frank Kingdon Ward went on twenty-four impossibly daring expeditions throughout Tibet, China, and Southeast Asia, in search of rare and elusive species of plants. He was responsible for the discovery of numerous varieties previously unknown in Europe and America, including the legendary Tibetan blue poppy, and the introduction of their seeds into the world’s gardens. Kingdon Ward’s accounts capture all the romance of his wildly adventurous expeditions, whether he was swinging across a bottomless gorge on a cable of twisted bamboo…
Hiking in the flower-covered hillsides of Central California as a nature-loving kid, I couldn’t help but wonder about my companions. One of my first purchases (with babysitting money!) was a wildflower guide. I’ve moved around the country many times and every time I’ve had to start over, make new plant acquaintances and discoveries—always an orienting process. Of course, I’ve also studied plants formally, in college and in my career, and (honestly, best of all) via mentors and independent study. All this has shown me that flowers are more than just beautiful! They’re amazingly diverse, and full of fascinating behaviors and quirks. In fact, they are essential parts of the complex habitats we share.
This author’s thesis sounds radical, but it shouldn’t be. She argues persuasively for us to leave bugs in our yards and gardens be, or even to encourage them. Why? Because for every pest, there is a natural enemy. Tolerate a couple of tomato hornworms and they’ll become beautiful sphinx moths, zipping around your flowerbeds, pollinating “more than 200 plants in less than 7 minutes!” Leave nibbling aphids in your garden, and hungry ladybugs will show up and dispatch them. Stop damaging the food web by using pesticides and herbicides/weedkillers. Learn how closely plants and animals are related; indeed, they co-evolved. Such an interesting and important book!
An engaging, illustrated introduction to the beneficial insects, birds, and other animals that help a garden thrive. The birds, mammals, reptiles, and insects that inhabit our yards and gardens are overwhelmingly on our side - they are not our enemies, but instead our allies. They pollinate our flowers and vegetable crops, and they keep pests in check. In Garden Allies, Frederique Lavoipierre shares fascinating portraits of these creatures, describing their life cycles and showing how they keep the garden's ecology in balance. Also included is helpful information on how to nurture and welcome these valuable creatures into your garden. With…
When Annie Thornton, midwife and apprentice witch, falls through time to a 15th-century Yorkshire village with her telepathic cat, Rosamund, she befriends Will and Jack, two soldiers returning from the French Wars. Mistress Meg, Annie’s ancestral aunt living in the 15th century, is…
Hiking in the flower-covered hillsides of Central California as a nature-loving kid, I couldn’t help but wonder about my companions. One of my first purchases (with babysitting money!) was a wildflower guide. I’ve moved around the country many times and every time I’ve had to start over, make new plant acquaintances and discoveries—always an orienting process. Of course, I’ve also studied plants formally, in college and in my career, and (honestly, best of all) via mentors and independent study. All this has shown me that flowers are more than just beautiful! They’re amazingly diverse, and full of fascinating behaviors and quirks. In fact, they are essential parts of the complex habitats we share.
I get emotional every time I consult this book, which in my heart is a classic, never equaled in the world of flower guides before or since its publication back in 1985. Short chapters profile dozens of familiar meadow, forest, and roadside plants, from beloved wildflowers to those we consider weeds. In a confiding, chatty tone, we are introduced to each plant’s history and folklore, uses, habitat, and wild and garden relatives. Then, best of all, with “what you can observe,” the authors take a deeper dive. I learned how daisy-family flowers prevent inbreeding, how milkweed blooms kidnap their pollinators, and how emerging skunk cabbage plants generate enough heat to melt snow in their vicinity.
I have spent 25 years working at the New York Botanical Garden! My life’s pursuit of the green has been my greatest achievement. I'm a self-made terrarium designer. I developed my style and skills at NYBG and knew that I had to share this with the world. My books have sold over 14,000 copies worldwide. This is amazing to me and has taught me that my though-ness and step-by-step lessons were worth every word! Horticulture is a subject that comes naturally to me. I happily know the names of dozens and dozens of trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, tropical, desert, you name plants from all over the world and I’m learning new ones every season.
Marc is brilliant! His extensive knowledge of all things orchids and tropical plants is unending. He has dedicated his career to the horticultural expertise of Orchids.
His professional career and rise to curator of Glasshouses and Orchids at New York Botanical Garden is legendary.
In this book, he shares all care tips, creative projects, and visuals of beauty.
He has these gorgeous terrarium projects that I just had to try to copy.
Orchids have always inspired passion. Their exotic flowers and vibrant colours draw people in, but their reputation as fussy and difficult to grow keep many houseplant fans from adding them to their home decor. But orchids can be easy to grow and Marc Hachadourian, the curator of the orchid collection at the New York Botanical Garden, details exactly how in his new book. Orchid Modern includes basic information on potting, watering, and care. Hachadourian profiles the top 100 plant picks, focusing on varieties that are readily available and easy to grow. Step-by-step projects, including a jewel orchid terrarium, an orchid…
I’m a writer, artist, and historian, and I’ve spent much of my career trying to blow up the powerful American definition of environment as a non-human world “out there”, and to ask how it’s allowed environmentalists, Exxon, and the EPA alike to refuse to take responsibility for how we inhabit environments. Along the way, I’ve written Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America and "Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in LA"; co-founded the LA Urban Rangers public art collective; and co-created the “Our Malibu Beaches” phone app. I currently live in St. Louis, where I’m a Research Fellow at the Sam Fox School at Washington University-St. Louis.
A self-critical and often hysterically funny account of what happens when you plant a garden to be “one with nature” and nature has other ideas. Still my favorite Pollan book (his first!), which is saying a lot. Favorite bit: his journey from “living in harmony” with a resident groundhog to an albeit ill-considered act of firebombing.
Chasing Light is a lyrical meditation on grief, memory, and the fragile beauty of everyday life. At its core, it is a story of resilience, forgiveness, and the transformational power of human connection. It sheds light on the overlooked realities of homelessness and addiction, while emphasizing the importance of compassion…
Following a herbal and homeopathic pathway for 20 years has taken me on many insightful and inspiring tangents. One of those being the passion to commune with nature spirits and learn directly from herbs. This practice has led me on many a fine adventure (one of which Wild Flower Walker contains) and continues to be a rich source of teachings and growth. I have been teaching these practices for the last 11 years and offer courses in Shamanic Herbalism; Herbal Alchemy; & Plant Spirit Communication. These books have been treasures and catalysts for me and I hope they will open your heart further to the rich world of nature spirits.
Any reading on nature spirits has to include a book or two from the Findhorn community or Dorothy Maclean - one of its founders and plant spirit communicator. I recommend this one as it contains not only insights from many plant devas and landscape devas, but a broad overview of the formation of the Findhorn Community itself - which occurred in direct communication and cocreation with the plant devas themselves. A fascinating and eye-opening read.
My interest in healing and nature stems from a very particular source—my own search for answers in the wake of my wife’s premature death in 2007. I’d read somewhere that loss often either engulfs someone or propels them forward, and I didn’t want to end up in the former category, particularly as I had a young daughter to look after. So this list represents an urgent personal quest that started years ago and still continues to this day. The books have been a touchstone, a vital support, and a revelation—pieces in the jigsaw of a recovery still incomplete. I hope they help others as they’ve helped me.
A slightly more left-field choice in some ways since this book, as the title suggests, is a history, rather than a memoir, but it gave me such an uplifting sense of the permanence and longevity of nature, that I felt I had to include it.
It reinforced the sense that the natural world has existed way before we have and will go on long after we’ve disappeared. Just reading about the passion, dedication, and enthusiasm of gardeners down the ages too, provided an instant tonic.
If, like me, you’re a history buff, it’s also full of fascinating insights on how natural spaces down the centuries have acted as the social, romantic, and economic bedrocks of communities; how they’ve supported, reinvigorated, and given sustenance to so many different people over time.
Comforting, entertaining, and informative all at once.
Did the Romans have rakes? Did the monks get muddy? Did the potato seem really, really weird when it arrived on our shores?
This lively 'potted' history of gardening in Britain takes us on a garden tour from the thorn hedges around prehistoric settlements to the rage for decking and ornamental grasses today. It tracks down the ordinary folk who worked the earth - the apprentice boys and weeding women, the florists and nursery gardeners - as well as aristocrats and grand designers and famous plant-hunters. Coloured by Jenny Uglow's own love for plants, and brought to life in the…
My husband sums up my biography as “I am, therefore I dig.” I live, garden, read and write in Chatham, New Jersey, and have had a long, open love affair with the gardening style “across the pond.” At the New York Botanical Garden I teach English garden history, and I’m a regular contributor to the British gardening journal, Hortus. In my writing, I follow the relationship between the pen and the trowel, that is authors and their gardens. I’ve written books about children’s authors Beatrix Potter and Frances Hodgson Burnett, and, as you might imagine, the research trips to the UK were a special bonus.
If you love flowers and love to garden, do not miss this book by British poet James Fenton. Grab your seed catalogs and make a list of the hundred flowers you would grow, then compare your choices to James Fenton’s. I found it the perfect book to read during those gray days of winter, his bright prose radiating like an injection of sunshine. Fenton romps through the world of flower color: the orange of nasturtiums and Mexican sunflower, the lemon yellow evening primroses, and California bluebells “the colour of blue poster paint.” He captures his century of blooms with a poet’s pen. I didn’t want it to end.
"An engaging mix of the serious and the playful, and Fenton writes with a lightness of touch perfectly suited to the subject." --Alexander Urquhart, The Times Literary Supplement
Forget structure. Forget trees, shrubs, and perennials. As James Fenton writes, "This is not a book about huge projects. It is about thinking your way toward the essential flower garden, by the most traditional of routes: planting some seeds and seeing how they grow."
In this light hearted, instructive, original "game of lists," Fenton selects one hundred plants he would choose to grow from seed. Flowers for color, size, and exotic interest;…
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
I’m 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.) I’ve already seen honeybees and hummingbirds. It’s not much, but it’s something I can do.
This extraordinary book (bilingual in English and Spanish, with excerpts in the Mayan language K’iche’) tells the true story of Don Margarito Esteban Álvarez Velázquez, a Maya farmer who planted trees instead of clearing land for corn and beans.
His vision and foresight came partly from his relationship with the village holy man, who taught him reverence for nature and ways to use native plants for food and medicine.
In creating and defending his forests, Don Margarito was ahead of his time in preventing erosion and preserving the soil for generations to come, even as his village was ravaged by government forces in the long-lasting genocide of indigenous peoples during the second half of the twentieth century. (This part of the story is treated very briefly and sensitively for younger readers.)
Allison Havens’s bright collage illustrations incorporate drawings made by children from the present-day Central Guatemalan village where Don Margarito…
Margarito’s Forest is a story of Maya culture and wisdom passed from one generation to the next. This beautifully illustrated bilingual book in English and Spanish, with excerpts in K’iche’, is based on María Guadalupe’s memories of her father, Don Margarito Esteban Álvarez Velázquez. As the devastating effects of climate change become clear, Don Margarito’s life and the ways of the Maya offer timely wisdom for a planet in peril.
