Five great books for woodland gardeners

These books will help you plan your garden vision

It’s almost time to curl up with a good gardening book and plan your vision for next season.

To help you focus that vision, here are five outstanding garden books every woodland gardener will cherish this winter when snow blankets the earth.

1) The American Woodland Garden: Capturing the Spirit of the Deciduous Forest.

It’s another excellent book by Rick Darke and published by Timber Press, which specializes in outstanding books for garden enthusiasts.

The publisher’s book excerpt calls the book “a clarion call to a new awareness of our relationship to the natural world.” And adds that it “will take its rightful place among the classic works that have influenced our concept of the American landscape.”

Be sure to check out the outstanding selection of books (used and new) at alibris Books. (see ad below)

For more suggestions and some of my favourite garden-related books and items, be sure to check out my Favourite Things post.

The book is pretty much sold out but available on Amazon’s used market. It scores an impressive rating. If you are lucky, you may also be available to find one at your local bookstore.

Used copies of this hard-to-find book are available through Alibris out of California. Check out the link here for The American Woodland.

The book publisher notes: “In his unique, and often thought-provoking new book, award-winning author Darke promotes and stunningly illustrates a garden aesthetic based on the strengths and opportunities of the woodland, including play of light, sound, and scent; seasonal drama; and the architectural interest of woody plants.

While written from a compelling and fresh perspective, The American Woodland Garden never strays from the realistic concerns of the everyday gardener. Information on planting, soils, and maintenance provides a firm foundation for horticultural accomplishment. An alphabetical list of woodland plants offers useful advice for every garden, emphasizing native trees, shrubs, vines, ferns, grasses, sedges, and flowering perennials that fit the forest aesthetic. More than 700 of the author's stunning photographs show both the natural palette of plants in the wild and the effects that can be achieved with them in garden settings.”

2) The Living Landscape: Designing for Beauty and Biodiversity in the Home Garden.

Rick Darke teams up with Douglas Tallamy in this thoughtful and extremely intelligent book. Again, it scores an impressive on-line rating and is available in both Kindle and hardcover both as new and used.

The book is aimed at showing today’s families how to create a backyard garden that manages to pull in everything from entertaining areas to zones for wildlife and incorporating them with a child-friendly area for the kids or grandchildren.

The book is available at Alibris: Books, Movies and Music based out of California. Check out the link for the Living Landscape.

The publisher’s note: “Many gardeners today want a home landscape that nourishes and fosters wildlife, but they also want beauty, a space for the kids to play, privacy, and maybe even a vegetable patch. Sure, it’s a tall order, but The Living Landscape shows you how to do it. You’ll learn the strategies for making and maintaining a diverse, layered landscape—one that offers beauty on many levels, provides outdoor rooms and turf areas for children and pets, incorporates fragrance and edible plants, and provides cover, shelter, and sustenance for wildlife.”

3) Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants, Updated and Expanded.

Douglas Tallamy’s bible for saving the environment one garden at a time through the reintroduction of native plants, is a must read for every gardener and non-gardener.

Priced very reasonably and available both in Kindle and paperback form, this would make a perfect gift new gardeners and those with a green thumb looking to redesign their garden to encourage more wildlife, from insects to warblers. The book is available used for under $10. I can guarantee that it will become a priceless addition to most gardener’s bookshelves.

Go here to read my complete review of this book which is described by the New York Times as a “ fascinating study of the trees, shrubs, and vines that feed the insects, birds, and other animals in the suburban garden.”

To purchase the book from Alibris Books check out the link for Bringing Nature Home.

4) The Garden Awakening: Designs to Nurture Our Land and Ourselves.

I can’t recommend this book by Chelsea gold-medal-winning garden designer Mary Reynolds enough. It’s more than a book about gardens, it’s a book about nurturing our gardens and, in so doing, discovering the important role nature plays in our own lives.

Take a moment to read my earlier review of this outstanding book here.

The beautifully illustrated book is available both in Kindle form and hardcover (new and used.) It too, will become a treasured book that gardener’s can return to time and time again.

The book, and a made-for-TV movie about creating the garden design that ended up winning the prestigious Gold Medal at the Chelsea Flower Show, has evolved into an on-line movement that continues to change how people around the world view their gardens.

The publisher note’s that The Garden Awakening is a step-by-step manual to creating a garden in harmony with the life force in the earth, addressing not only what the people in charge of the land want but also asking what the land wants to become. Mary Reynolds demonstrates how to create a groundbreaking garden that is not simply a solitary space but an expanding, living, interconnected ecosystem. Drawing on old Irish ways and methods of working with the land, this beautiful book is both art and inspiration for any garden lover seeking to create a positive, natural space.

Alibris Books, Movies and Music link to The Garden Awakening.

5) Designing and Planting a Woodland Garden: Plants and Combinations that Thrive in the Shade.

This is an older book published in December of 2014 but it is still available as a hardcover both new and used.

The author’s other books, include On The Wild Side, Experiments in new Naturalism (hardcover), and Shade: Planting Solutions for Shady Gardens (paperback).

The book is perfect for gardeners looking to create a woodland feel even a small garden.

Alibris Books link to Designing and Planting a Woodland Garden: Plants and Combinations that Thrive in the Shade.

As the publisher notes: “Woodlands are magical places and even small gardens can capture the atmosphere with carefully chosen trees and shade-loving plants. Selecting the right plant for the right place is essential and in Designing and Planting a Woodland Garden, expert plantsman Keith Wiley explains how to combine plants that will thrive together. In this evocative account, he mingles beguiling, less well-known plants with familiar, time-tested ones to create beautiful, four-season gardens.”

The above is just a sampling of the gardening books available for woodland gardeners to either give as a gift to friends or keep for themselves. It’s a long winter ahead for gardeners and we all know how gardening books can inspire and educate us so that we are ready to implement our visions at the first signs of spring.