5 favorite new garden books

With the addition of my new potager garden that I designed and installed in January, I have a lovely variety of garden books to share with you. 

These are brand-new books that have proved to be great sources of information and inspiration for me in my own garden.

 

There are six new raised beds surrounded by gravel and filled with edible delights! I did reserve one of those beds for cut flowers, some of which, like Calendula and Pansies, are also perfect for decorating a salad with their pretty blooms.

 

Check out my video of the potager garden from last month:

And this NEW VIDEO.

Now here are the books that helped me in a big way while planning and planting my new veg garden…

 

1. The First-Time Gardener: Raised Bed Gardening

Raised bed gardening has never been more popular, but it can also be intimidating, especially for beginner gardeners. 

The First-Time Gardener: Raised Bed Gardening by CaliKim is the perfect guide for newbie growers, offering advice on everything from selecting the best raised bed for the available space and filling it with healthy soil, to planting plans and plant-care tips.

Why is raised bed gardening booming in popularity? 

The benefits are numerous. No matter your yard size, raised beds are the perfect fit. They allow for a controlled growing environment, filled with fertile soil. 

Raised beds help gardeners with less-than-ideal soils, there’s little to no weeding involved, they’re accessible, and they can be as large or as petite as you’d like. 

This book helps with learning how to select the best raised bed for your space, what to fill it with, and tips for staking and trellising plants to save space and improve yields. 

Also included are  DIY plans for building quick and simple beds, info on soil, mulch, watering and fertilizing, tips to maximize production, and much more.

 

 

2. The First-Time Gardener: Container Food Gardening

Container gardens can take up as much or as little room as you’d like. They’re portable, so you can locate them wherever conditions are optimal for plant growth.

 

And you can grow just about any veggie in pots, as long as you have the right container, the right soil blend, and the right care tips.

 

In this book, author Pam Farley of BrownThumbMama.com lines the path to container food gardening success in clear, simple steps.

 

Find a dozen fully illustrated planting plans for themed container food gardens, including a Smoothie Greens Garden, a Spring Stir-Fry Garden, a Spaghetti Sauce Garden, a Salad Greens Garden, and many others in this fun book.

No room? No problem. Lousy soil? Nothing to worry about. Not enough time? Think again. Growing food in containers is fun, easy, and perfect for beginners.

 

3. Sustainable Homestead

If you’re like most homesteaders, the dream is to make the most of your land by working with it, not against it. 

From capturing water and building strong soil to helping your animals live their best lives, The Sustainable Homestead is about making your homestead stronger by achieving synergy between what can seem like different parts.

In this book, new and veteran homesteaders alike can find detailed information to use this year, this month, even this week! 

Angela has spent more than a decade building and strengthening her small acreage homestead and shares the lessons through chapters covering site selection, soil, growing, animals, the role of the homesteader, and much more.

 

4. The Elegant and Edible Garden

Stylish and celebratory, The Elegant and Edible Garden takes food growing to a higher plane, presenting a vision for creating a garden space where food and flowers grow side by side. 

You’ll flatten the learning curve for designing a beautiful, edible garden by sharing common-sense tips and inspiration and ideas from Linda’s own personal experience of starting a garden from scratch, while still allowing your style and personality to shine. 

“This is a book about capturing the romance, the artistry, and the experiential nature of a garden and garden living." 

 

5. Tiny +Wild

Meadows don’t have to be big to make a difference and the perks of creating one, even on a small scale, are many. Tiny but mighty meadows help mitigate climate change, foster biodiversity, sequester carbon, and calm the senses. 

With as little as a few square feet of space, you can create a beautiful, naturalistic planting that supports a diversity of plants, pollinators, and a plethora of other living things, not to mention its visual appeal to human eyes. 

Author and landscape designer Graham Laird Gardner helps you find inspiration in natural spaces so you can successfully site, design, plant, and care for your own small-scale meadow.

Whether you live in the city or in suburbia, perfect places for mini-meadows are everywhere: a small corner of the yard, flanking the front walk, around your mailbox, that little area between the house and driveway, tucked next to the front stoop, in the center of your vegetable garden and so many other places.

The plant lists and charts in Tiny + Wild share the best plants to include in your micro prairie, and Graham offers plenty of practical advice on planting your meadow from seed, transplants, or mature plants, depending on your budget, the site, and your timeline. 

Plus, learn how to care for your wildflower planting, including tips for watering, plant care, and weed management. Discover how small spaces can make a big difference in Tiny & Wild.

 

"The Elegant and Edible Garden" is a vision of the very best things a garden can offer: food, beauty, connection, and a place to breathe.

 

It's a book about designing a garden that is distinctly yours, using edibles as ornamentals, with lots of pictures for inspiration and emulation. If I did it, so can you.

 

Shopping Links:

 

1. The First-Time Gardener: Raised Bed Gardening

2. The First-Time Gardener: Container Food Gardening

3. Sustainable Homestead

4. The Elegant and Edible Garden

5. Tiny +Wild

ciao! fabiana

 

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book review: favorite gardening books

Summer is often the time when your garden looks its best. If you’re like me, gardening tips and advice is always welcomed, and gardening books often provide just the right dose of inspiration. This season, I discovered five gardening books that I absolutely love!

Growing Heirloom Flowers provides plenty of ideas on how to grow those pretty old-fashioned varieties that are so charming out in the garden.

Among my favorite flowers mentioned in this book are peonies, lilac, pansies and roses. They’re all quite easy to grow, and this book provides lots of helpful growing tips, flower arranging ideas and recipes. 

Look at these darling ice cubes!

Growing Heirloom Flowers is currently on sale 

on Amazon at a new super low price!

The Wellness Garden, Success with Succulents and Vegetables Love Flowers are three more of my faves. These three books encompass some of the most important things I value about gardening.

The Wellness Garden is all about surrounding yourself with plants and nature that have healing properties. Herbs for example are quite easy to grow and have many beneficial uses. 

Rosemary

I especially love the chapter on Therapeutic Gardening and growing a Healing Garden. In my garden I grow rosemary, thyme, sage and bay year round and often include these daily in my cooking. 

Not only that, but just the fragrance of these plants is beneficial even while they’re just growing in your garden. “For example, you surround a park bench with rosemary, the scent appears to a positive energy reaction.”    

Succulents are one of my most favorite things to have in the garden, and they look so great with herbs and fruit trees. And best of all, they’re pretty easy to grow. Success with Succulents offers great advice on growing these gems both outdoors and in. The book also covers the top 100 Choices in Cacti and Succulents.  

Succulents can be a little pricey and I love how this book shows you step-by–step how to root and propagate your own little menagerie of plants! 

Here’s an example of the descriptive and 

informative pages in this book.

Vegetables Love Flowers shows us how lovely companion gardening can be. And no, it doesn’t mean having a friend with you out in the yard which works beautifully, it means growing plants near each other that compliment on another.

For example, it’s a great idea to plant snapdragon next to your tomatoes to attract more pollinators like bumblebees to your tomato blossoms. More tomato blossoms mean more tomatoes!

Companion gardening is a great idea if you think about it! I love so many of the tips in this bookps which help plants grow healthier, and in turn reduces any need for pesticides, which I totally ban from my garden!

I especially think A Big Garden is a sweet book to share and read with a child. It's written and illustrated from a totally fanciful perspective. Overall, it's a very artsy book that any gardener would love.

“Landscaper Gilles Clément joins forces with illustrator Vincent Gravé to create a monthly journal for gardeners everywhere. The lush and colorful drawings contain thousands of tiny details, while poetic texts provide information on a wide range of subjects, including insects, winter, vegetable gardens and fruit." 

"The tiny figure of the gardener guides readers through this spectacular large-format book, with which these talented artists show their love for nature.”  So sweet and gorgeously illustrated!!

I hope reading about this grouping of books has inspired you in your garden, and that you’ll add one or two to your libary! 

ciao! fabiana

Here are some quick links for you...

  

Disclaimer:  I received these books as a gift and am reviewing them for free and must disclose that fact. All opinions are truly my own.

a sunday spent in the garden

Sunday’s the perfect day to take a little hunk of time and reserve it to spend in the garden. Whether it’s 20 minutes or all day, time spent outdoors enjoying a garden is beneficial to the mind and body.

Earlier this year, I discovered two Netflix shows that kind of changed my life. The first one is English gardening master "Monty Don’s Big Dreams, Small Spaces".

Believe it or not, watching folks in London or in smaller British towns transform their small gardens into fantastic spaces got me soooo motivated to dig and totally enhance my own backyard.

Now that summer’s here, I can actually go out to the garden and gather hydrangeas, old-fashioned roses, lavender, herbs and even some vegetables from my garden.

Just like everyone on Monty’s show, I had a “Big Dream” of what I wanted my garden to look like, and it’s literally come to fruition! My vision was to have a relaxed English cottage garden or French potager that incorporates pretty flowers intermixed with vegetables.

Now I’ve got my tomatoes and flowering sage growing under my apricot tree. I’ve got beautiful eggplant growing amongst the roses and hollyhock. My garden has truly been transformed and it’s so rewarding!  

So, in honor of “time spent in the garden”, I’ve gathered a few pretty garden snapshots from pinterest and combined them with some of my favorite inspirational garden quotes.  

“A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.” –Gertrude Jekyll

“There is no real need for decorations when throwing a barbecue party - let the summer garden, in all its vibrant and luscious splendour, speak for itself.” –Pippa Middleton

“I have an organic garden and love being able to say, 'I'm going to see what I can pick to throw in my salad.'” –Christie Brinkley

“It gives you a good feeling. Each year, you rediscover in a garden the magic of life. A flower arrives, and it is a miracle. The leaves fall in the autumn, and it looks fantastic. There is a tenderness about a garden, and you can't help but be sensitive to that.” –Hubert de Givenchy

“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”― Audrey Hepburn

“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”  ― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“Gardening adds years to your life and life to your years.” – Unknown

“If you have a garden in your library, everything will be complete.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Life begins the day you start a garden.” – Chinese proverb

I have yet to photograph the favorite parts of my garden but I’d love to share them with you soon. You may have caught a little glimpse of it during my magazine photo shoot with Cottages and Bungalows. Check it out here.

And if you’re wondering what the second Netflix show that changed my life is, it’s “The Paleo Way” with Australian Pete Evans. The amazing recipes are what got me hooked, and yes, I’ve been eating Paleo since February 1. More on that later!

ciao! fabiana

photos:  pinterest

Here are some of my favorite new garden books...