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Winter Survival Kit: Great Gardening Books to See You Through

© Carol Wallace

The seed and plant catalogs are beginning to trickle in. We gardeners, who tend to have addictive personalities, spend time now flipping through them and making endless lists of those plants we think we can't live without — until we come back to reality and look at the finite space of our garden. But the urge to plan is planted with those catalogs — the urge, no matter how tired we may be after our fall cleanup, to play with our gardens once again. And we can! We can play all winter with paper gardens. Gardens we plan on handy scraps of paper, or that we thoroughly organize with charts and graphs. Gardens that are inspired by those catalogs, and by the information we glean about the plants featured therein. Gardens that are inspired by other gardeners. Gardens inspired by great books.

Winter is a wonderful time to curl up with a good book. And there are some excellent books out there that are strictly for curling up with — although in the reading you may find inspiration. They are written by gardeners who have a profound appreciation not just for the science of planting, but also for the creativity, the sense of place that gardening creates. These are not how-to books, but they inspire all the more because of it.

The two winter-inspiration books that top my lists are oldies but goodies that I reread every year. Many of the columns of the late and well beloved Washington Post columnist Henry Mitchell have been collected into two unforgettable books: The Essential Earthman and One Man's Garden. Mitchell writes like a benevolent curmudgeon; some of his pronouncements were enough to make me stand up and cheer. Some have me laughing out loud every time I read them. For sheer enjoyment, these books are a must; but the knowledge and inspiration they provide are what make them truly priceless.

Patricia Thorpe's Growing Pains: Time and Change in the Garden is another must for any of us whose ambitions exceed the time and space we have. If your garden is getting overgrown, or you feel the need to revamp, this is a book I heartily recommend. You'll find great advice here, but it's also an entertaining read.

Another must-read for the gardener who finds that the ground keeps getting lower each year is Eric Grissel's A Journal in Thyme. Beautifully written, this book reassures us that we are not alone in realizing that despite snow and rains and advancing age, we need our gardens — and our gardens need us.

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