I own rather too many gardening books.
In excess of 800 to be precise. Most are books about plants and practical gardening, although I have a healthy number of books about garden design too. And of course those dreamy books you can get lost in on a wet day, flicking pages and enjoying serene scenes of gardens near and far. As collecting interests go this is very enjoyable and surprisingly cheap; the fun is popping in to second-hand book shops to see what’s there. I seldom spend all that much unless I’m looking for very specific titles, at which point I reach out to my ‘book guy’…
I’m moving away from collecting books on the how of gardening and am increasingly looking for inspiration about why we garden. I’m drawn to books written about the experiences of gardeners, famous and obscure.
Human Touch
Gardens are nothing without people.
The plants will grow and flower, and a natural chaos will inevitably occur as they push each other around. Weaker plants will lose to stronger plants, unless they can exploit a niche that allows them to continue unscathed.
This garden needs to be seen
But a garden is more than a place for plants, it is a place for people. It’s taken me a long time to understand this; I’ve spent a lot of my life so far obsessing about plants and have only recently come to understand that a garden exists to nourish and delight.
Whether you’re eating your peas straight from their pods or taking in the perfume of a flower, gardens are things that feed your body and soul.
What Makes A Great Gardener?
I’ve come to know quite a few gardeners over the years, both home gardeners and professionals.
Many are perfectly good. They can mow lawns and weed beds with the utmost competence, and some can name every plant in the garden like a teacher naming pupils in a school classroom.
Some gardeners are truly great. They might not be as technical as others and they might not know their plants intimately, but they garden with such incredible spirit that the gardens they nurture stir the soul.
A Japanese maple in a garden
The trap is that many gardeners think the whole business is about doing things. It’s not; sometimes taking the conscious decision not to act is incredibly powerful. It has to be a conscious decision though, born of wisdom rather than laziness.
Stepping back from a garden purely because you no longer feel inclined to act is not the same. It creates a garden that becomes untidy and unkempt. It’s fashionable to blur the lines between the garden and the wild by allowing native and non-native plants to mingle together. I’m actually a big fan of this for several reasons, the most important being that a good plant is a good plant wherever it’s from, but urge caution; embracing the wild is not an opportunity to avoid having to do any work.
Intelligence
There are different types of intelligence.
Most people seem to focus solely on academic intelligence, the idea that you go to an education institution and learn things to get a piece of paper that tells other people how clever you are.
Then there’s practical intelligence, the people who have a superhuman ability to make and fix things. I know a mechanic who can tell by the sounds cars make what’s wrong before they’re plugged into the diagnostic machine; that’s a type of intelligence that not everyone has.
Technical ability will always be important in gardening
Lastly there’s emotional intelligence. This is a harder one to define but it’s the one great gardeners have. It’s the ability to make almost instinctive judgements in the garden that create a greater harmony. This is where the really amazing expert pruners belong; they have an understanding of a plant that goes far beyond simple technical skill. Likewise those who can place plants in such a way that they look like they’ve always been there.
The Gardener
Gardening is about so much more than just making things look pretty.
A garden is a living community of plants, always changing. The best gardeners allow themselves to become immersed in the garden; they observe and understand.
Gardeners must know when to nurture and when to be firm. There are always plants that behave more aggressively while others seem to perpetually struggle, and the art of gardening is knowing when to intercede and when to step back. Some gardeners try to be gentle all the time, letting plants do what they want. I get the sentiment but maintain that the gardener must keep at least a degree of order lest some plants dominate at the expense of others. Nature is cruel and doesn’t care, but the garden should be a place of gentle peace. By contrast trying to control everything is a recipe for stress and pits the gardener against the garden, a battle the gardener will ultimately lose.
Stunning as it is, this sort of gardening requires discipline
The gardener must be at peace with the garden. The more you push a garden the more it will push back, and try as you may you cannot hope to control everything.
This above all is the mark of a great gardener, knowing what to worry about and what to resign to fate. It’s a talent that cannot be taught, but must instead be nurtured and developed.
Thank you for a lovely essay with your insights into my frequent struggles with my garden.
Thank you very much for reading.
Interestingly reflects some of my recent thinking. I think the process and interaction depends a great deal on the maturity of the garden.
Goes away to think some more…..
Yes, the gardener influences the garden but in turn the garden influences the gardener.
Completely agree Anne. I even think this is where often you and I end up “disagreeing” in matters. It’s more about where we are in the process with a particular garden. – MW
I enjoyed reading this very much, Ben. Thank you. Food for thought. I always look forward to your posts. I am reminded of the quotation, “Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are” – Alfred Austin. Every garden is a reflection of the relationship between its gardener(s) and nature. The human hand reaching in – giving and taking in the hopes of creating something it finds beautiful. It’s a worthwhile goal.
I have a book recommendation for you – The Writer’s Garden by Jackie Bennett. It’s admittedly a bit of a coffee table book, but I so enjoyed reading about the various authors it featured and learning about what their gardens meant to them. It’s a really nice read with a cup of tea. Perhaps your gardening book number 801 🙂
Thank you for this book recommendation. I just looked it up, and saw that it’s in the library and put it on hold.
Thank you for the recommendation.
Scottish gardening expert Ken Cox has the expression that the best gardens are created by benign dictatorship. This struck me as an odd expression until I came to realise how soulless gardens created by committee can be…
I wish you’d stick your neck out about what you consider to be some great gardens in this context Ben!
The problem, or difficulty, with that is seeing more places to get a feel for what’s out there. I know I have my favourites, but the best I could do is say what I think takes a garden to the next level.
I would be interested to know what some of the non how-to books are that you and others would recommend. Here in the north, reading about gardening is how we get through February!
It’s nice to curl up on a chair as the rain lashes against the window and lose yourself in a good book.
Ben, you packed a lot into this. Thanks very much. You might enjoy Walter Benjamin’s essay called—”Unpacking My Library.” It’s a good read and should be available online. I’ve pared down my library in recent years, and let go of a lot of clutter and memories. I can’t be without the hundred or fewer garden books I have left that are stacked and scattered all over the place.
I need to pare my library down too, but of course I want the books to go to good homes…!
Personal garden “libraries” seem to be an unintended consequence of loving the craft, Ben. Mine is at 637 and counting, and I’m partial to garden essays rather than “how-to’s”; authors such as Michael Pollan, Sara Stein, Lauren Springer-Ogden, Allen Lacy, Mirabel Osler, Sydney Eddison, Thomas Christopher, Page Dickey, Beverley Nichols, and, of course, the inimitable Henry Mitchell. In fact, my own blog contains an occasional book review all tagged under the category “Garden Writing”.
Yes to all of those, and Eleanor Perenyi’s “Green Thoughts” and Ursula Buchan’s “Back to the Garden” and Susan Hill/Rory Stuart’s fabulous “Reflections from a Garden” (the “Grumbling Appendix” alone is worth the book).
Thank you for these recommendations. I have and very much enjoy ‘Reflections From A Garden’ but am not familiar with the other two; time to make space for a couple more books!
A second endorsement of Green Thoughts and Reflections!
Thank you for these recommendations; some familiar, others not. I feel the post lady may be bringing me more books very soon!
Ha! Let me be more specific with recommendations then:
Michael Pollan: “Second Nature”
Sara Stein: “Noah’s Garden”
Lauren Springer-Ogden: “The Undaunted Garden” (published under Lauren Springer)
Allen Lacy: really, any, but start with “In a Green Shade” or “Homeground”
Mirabel Osler: “A Gentle Plea for Chaos”
Sydney Eddison: again, any, but , “Gardening for a Lifetime” is my favorite.
Thomas Christopher: “In Search of Old Roses”
Page Dickey: “Gardens in the Spirit of Place”
Beverley Nichols: a less-current Old-World author and an acquired taste but any of his.
Henry Mitchell: any, but start with “One Man’s Garden, or “The Essential Earthman”
This list leaves out so many that I’m nearly ashamed to prune. One has to start somewhere, but I don’t want to cast any doubts on my admiration for Rosemary Verey, Margaret Roach, Anna Pavord, Ann Lovejoy, Des Kennedy, or, of course, GardenRant’s own Anne Wareham (“Outwitting Squirrels”)
Not to mention Anne Wareham’s “The Bad-Tempered Gardener”, which, when I found it on the shelf in a used bookstore, I thought, “Oh, yes — that’s worth picking up!”
I have some of these but not others; thanks for the list!
BEN,
Have enjoyed your thoughts and scripting for a long time.
Now where do you store 800 _+ books? My collection may number 200 garden books, with Design Books competing with Single Plant species. as in Timber’s Rhododendron , or geranium species, or Identify Mosses.
You could make readers happy by recommending two or five book titles regularly with a brief sentence about content.
J, Austris Kruza, Franklin, eastern Massachusetts Zone 5/6
One of the bedrooms is a library!
I used to have just plant books and they’re brilliant, but I realised that I needed to know what people were doing with these plants so started finding books about gardens, design and people too.
Might well do a thing of must-have reads.
Highjacking comments for a quick aside J.A. — we find that our book reviews are rarely as popular as other posts. We write them anyway, as we feel called to highlight great books that would aid other gardeners. It’s good to hear that you value them. – MW
Ah… a book-lined study, a picture window looking out into the garden… I always appreciate your essays, Ben.
I write from an upstairs room, looking down on the garden and out onto the countryside beyond…
Would love to read more of your ideas about great gardens and great gardeners. I’m on the 10th year in my own garden, and the last few years feeling comfortable explaining to others that I am “a gardener” with my deeper understanding now of just how intertwined a gardener is with a garden. I’ve been on both spectrums from orderly and neat to chaotic and wild and happily now somewhere in between (I think). But my garden still feels so new and immature. I have a long way to go before I can call myself a gardener of a mature garden, but hopefully one day it’ll be a mature great garden.
It’s something I forgot to add and definitely should have; I’ve never met a great gardener who calls themselves a great gardener. It’s a title that reflects humility, and the more seasons you navigate the more humble you become. We do what we do out of love for the garden, and as we shape it we find that it shapes us back.
Great read, Ben..love your reflection. Some gardeners know the what, wise of you to notice moving from how to why. I hope your library brings you joy, just as the garden..
Thank you very much.
Terrific post Ben. A lot here. Prompted me to count up my gardening books for the first time. You beat me at 722. But can you beat 325 cookbooks? :0
That was obviously not the point of the post, but I find over and over that so many of my gardener friends have extensive gardening libraries. Not sure why that is. Reading, like gardening is a contemplative activity, perhaps?
I, like you, enjoy the essays the most. Not all – but so many. It’s a fine line between the “look at me I’m wonderful shooby dooby wah” brigade (a little Bonzo Dog Band for you there), and those with the ability to send you dashing out to your own garden the moment the chapter is finished, fingers itching. I just finished one by a big name (who will remain unnamed) that was highly reviewed and I’ve been meaning to read for six years. I paid full price at my local bookshop, and it did not deliver.
I’m looking for honesty without cloying sentiment, a wry sense of humor, and good information delivered effortlessly. That’s why I enjoy Anne Wareham’s writing so much.
Come to think of it, it’s the same characteristics that make up a good gardener in my mind. –MW
Books are great. We have books to tell us how to do things, even though we probably all grumble and moan that something isn’t right, and books that tell us what to grow are great too. The why of gardening is a remarkably untapped niche.
Ben, you are speaking to my condition with this essay. The relationship we have with our gardens is just as important as any other characteristics combining to make a great gardener. I especially liked your comment about real gardeners having humility. I, too, have many gardening books, but not as many as you, and agree with Marianne that both reading and gardening are contemplative. Most gardeners are always seeking to learn more, so reading would be a natural extension of gardening. I second another commenter’s recommendation of Alan Lacy – I can picture myself in the places about which he writes. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and thereby stimulating all of us to think.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read my words.
And I most definitely agree that reading and gardening are complimentary occupations.
It occurs to me: do you have any duplicates? Do you *know* if you have any duplicates…?
Wondering if I’m the only one who has put their library in alphabetical order by author, so they can be found later! And yes, it does take up a whole bedroom. Erm, study.
So the bedroom is now a book-lined study. Nice.
I can’t answer for Ben, but I put all of mine into an Excel spreadsheet when I found I was purchasing duplicates occasionally. Now, when at Half-Price Books or some other enabler, I check the list before purchase….also to see if what I already have is a softback, which I’ll replace with a hardback sometimes.
I tried some iPhone apps as Library databases (eg. Home Library) but they weren’t supported regularly and I finally gave up on them…
Thanks so much for writing this! The article is clear, thoughtful, and really helpful. I learned something new today.