Books like Margarito's Forest — picked by fans

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 “gross” 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: Neal’s 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.

This joyful book about the life cycle of a dandelion will have you on the edge of your seat!

I’m not kidding – suspense and humor pervade the tale, which takes our dandelion from an unlikely sprouting in a city sidewalk to adventures and tragedy in the countryside (being trampled by a moose!), to the ecstasy and triumph of a final scattering of its millions of little seeds.

What child hasn’t blown on the fluffy ball of dandelion seeds? Understanding where the seeds come from and where they’re going is a life lesson worth learning about this special indigenous plant too often dismissed as a “weed.”

Barbara Chotiner’s chaotic and evocative illustrations will bear up under many repeated readings.

When I take the time to really look at a rock and contemplate the journey that brought it to me, I am humbled. I’m reminded that I’m a small part of something bigger, an experience shared by the characters in this gorgeous picture book about rocks, intergenerational relationships, and Indigenous knowledge.

In Where Wonder Grows, Grandma leads her granddaughters to a special garden, and together they explore a collection of rocks. Grandma encourages the girls to look closely at each rock and to think about how it formed and all it has been through. She helps the girls see that rocks are “alive with wisdom” and that nature is full of wonder. 

Everyone feels lost like Jayden at one time or another: His family has moved from the excitement and color of New York City to the vast, empty desert of New Mexico, where at first all Jayden sees and hears are shadows and silence. How can this ever be home?

But very quickly the desert reveals its glorious sounds and colors. Nikki Grimes’s spare, quiet text does a beautiful job of reminding us that nature is everywhere if we only take the time to look, and that finding comfort and joy in the beauty around us can help make any place a home.

Garden history is largely written about the gardens of the rich and famous, kings, queens, and aristocrats, But most of the population, in many countries, have small gardens, balconies, and window-boxes and tend them as lovingly as do the paid gardeners of the rich. Margaret Willes uncovers their history in Britain over five centuries; it is a difficult task because most working-class gardeners left few or no documentary records, but she succeeds triumphantly. Gardening societies, at which they showed off their prize fruit and vegetables, allotments, the garden cities of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, all have their place, together with the archetypal cottage garden with roses around the door.  

This is the third book about Lola, who loves to read. When her mother reads her a book of gardening poems, Lola decides to plant a garden. Note that Lola is quite young, and this book is for 2- to 5-year-olds. Lola begins her project by getting books at the library and deciding which flowers to plant. Then her mother helps her buy seeds and plant them. Lola makes a flower book while she’s waiting for the seeds to grow. When they do, she has a party to share her sunflowers and a story with friends. A sweet book that celebrates both reading and gardening. 

The lift-the-flap format is often aimed at the board book crowd, but not in this beautiful book. Information under its flaps acts more like visual sidebars, uncovering secrets such as what’s inside a garden shed or what the inside of an onion looks like. The book shows us the passage of seasons and the activities of a gardening sister and her little brother at different times of the year, such as planting, composting, and raking. Children and adults will both like this one.

The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden is about the magic of standing up for something you believe in, and discovering unexpected supporters.

With echoes of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. In the Vanderbeeker family, everyone might have different goals, talents, opinions, and personalities, but they all stick together when it counts. (Similar to Elizabeth Enright’s The Saturdays, Noel Streatfield’s Ballet Shoes, and Jeanne Birdsall’s The Penderwicks).

These series are perfect to read alone or as a family read-aloud, because everyone will find a character to relate to.

I believe everyone should read at least one book by Penelope Lively, and this one is my favorite.

I love this book because I can enjoy it over and over. I can pick it up and read a chapter at random and find something engaging, surprising, even magical.

The author loves reading, writing, and gardening. So do I. When I read a chapter of Lively’s book it immediately draws me in, away from any troubles or challenges I may have been struggling with, and transports me to another place, for example to the prairies of Willa Cather and Laura Ingalls Wilder in the chapter on Time, Order and the Garden, or to a Somerset garden in the UK, overrun with rabbits and foxes and cats, in the chapter she calls Town and Country.

The Garden in Every Sense and Season isn’t strictly speaking about food gardening, but Tovah Martin loves homegrown fruits and vegetables as much as I do, and that comes shining through on the pages of this book. She “lives on lettuce,” describes herself as “brassica-centric” (picture broccoli and cauliflower as the main event at lunch), is passionate about Jade bush beans and will have no other, and lusts for Chester Thornless blackberries. You get the idea?

What appeals to me most about Martin’s book, apart from her astute observations and deep knowledge about all kinds of plants – edible as well as ornamental; cultivated as well as wild – is her exuberance. About the rhythms of nature, the growth cycle, and the sensual pleasures to be had, every day in every season. I find her voice simply infectious. Reading this book is sure to make you smile, and perhaps help… show more.