The perfect book provides a vantage point on its subject that can forever change one’s perspective. For gardeners taking a vacation from working the soil during the doldrums of summer, I recommend any of the following books that have helped me grow my gardening knowledge over the years.
Bringing Nature Home, by Douglas Tallamy
In my experience, this is the most widely read book among native gardeners. Tallamy, an entomology professor at the University of Delaware, tells of the damage done by habitat loss, how this has broken almost all food webs in North America and how residential landscapes can do more to restore the damage than previously thought. While the book includes few detailed instructions about gardening, it provides gardeners with the means to assess whether the plants in their garden are sustaining the natural web of wildlife around them.
The book is widely available as a paperback and the audiobook is perfect for a vacation car ride. Tallamy has also written a number of sequels and recently published How Can I Help? Saving Nature with your Yard, a question and answer book that makes a great coffee table reference.
Our Native Bees, by Paige Embry
Almost every child has drawn a bee in school, learned about queens in their hives and been told to stay far away, lest they be stung. However, these lessons all center around Eurasian honeybees. If you’re going to grow native plants, your garden will attract a host of native bees that defy almost all of these childhood stories. Embry’s book offers a primer on bees that starts with common bee myths, digs into the history and use of honeybees in America and then describes the unique qualities of our native bees. She takes particular care to describe their domestic lives and the surprising quirks of each species.
The book is available in hardcover, and the audiobook is excellent.
A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There, by Aldo Leopold
This book tugs at my heartstrings each time I read it. Leopold chronicled the goings-on of nature from his rural Wisconsin shack in the 1930s and ‘40s. He took note of the most subtle, common and often sublime sights and sounds of the landscape. My favorite chapter describes Leopold’s hunting with his dog before the county clerk has started work for the day, when correspondingly there are no human boundary lines on the land yet. Instead, the birds carve up the land, staking claims with their calls but holding off on any confrontation until a more reasonable hour.
A Sand County Almanac is considered one of the two most influential conservation books of the 20th century, alongside Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. While the book takes a humble and often homespun tone, Leopold was trained in one of the country’s first forestry schools and later worked as a professor of wildlife management at the University of Wisconsin. He argued that like our ethical responsibilities to each other or the government, we have a relationship to the land, which he called the “land ethic.”
The book is frequently assigned in college courses and therefore easily available as a used paperback, and I recommend the audiobook narrated by Cassandra Campbell, too.
Essential Native Trees and Shrubs for the Eastern United States, by Tony Dove and Ginger Woolridge
These days, I often use online lists of native plants, but when it comes to selecting native trees, one needs a comprehensive resource. Dove and Woolridge, both Marylanders, have assembled an excellent guide to trees that are not only native east of the Appalachian mountains, but specifically those that they would recommend for residential or municipal plantings. The book includes photos and detailed descriptions of overall shape, growth habit, seasonal interest and maintenance considerations for each recommended species. For trees that they do not recommend, they explain why. I found it very useful when assembling a recommended tree list for the Laurel Tree Board.
Growing an Edible Landscape: How to Transform Your Outdoor Space Into a Food Garden, by Chiara D’Amore and Gary Pilarchik
The most recent publication on the list, this book is a Swiss Army Knife for garden planning. While their book is not specifically about native plants, D’Amore and Pilarchik, also Marylanders, lean into one of my favorite gardening themes: productivity. The book gives gardeners lots of ideas for how to lay out their gardens for maximum productivity, be it growing veggies and herbs, or growing the plants that sustain wildlife. Plus, this is the book that inspired me to create an herb spiral this spring, a three-dimensional earthen structure that makes it easy to grow lots of herbs that are even easier to harvest.
Whatever you read or listen to this summer, I hope it grows your knowledge, expands your vision and inspires you to create new green spaces in your life.