This list of interesting garden-themed books has been compiled by Botanica’s Founder, Judy Vanrenen, from her list of favourite books. We hope you enjoy the selection – some of which are fictional and others non-fiction, but the list is quite diverse. Most of these books can be found in your local library or bookshop.

Martha Washington — An American Life by Patricia Brady, published by Penguin

This book gives us an intimate insight into life during America’s early history, in the time of George Washington’s presidency. His loving wife supported him through all his trials and tribulations, as he worked tirelessly during the Revolutionary War and while helping to create the country’s Constitution. The author weaves a wonderful story in this biography of the first lady, covering her childhood, two marriages, motherhood, devotion to her husband during long separations, and as the president’s lifelong confidante. Copies of this book are usually on sale at Mt. Vernon, outside Washington, where Martha and George Washington lived and created their wonderful garden. Botanica visits here on our US tours and cruises (recommended reading for US tours and cruises).

Society’s Queen — The Life of Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry by Anne de Courcy, published by Phoenix

An amazing insight into a woman who married one of the most eligible bachelors of the day, the eldest son of the sixth Marquess of Londonderry. Edith was instrumental in the campaign for women’s suffrage and also created the renowned gardens at Mount Stewart in Northern Ireland. She is probably best known for her role as ‘society’s queen’. She was a pre-eminent hostess, famous for her annual eve of Parliament receptions for over a thousand rich and famous people of London society. She influenced politicians, prime ministers and royalty. This book is usually available in the bookshop at Mount Stewart Garden which Botanica visits on our British Isles Cruise (recommended reading for the British Isles Cruise).

A Countrywoman’s Notes by Rosemary Verey, published by Frances Lincoln Limited

A delightful journal, beautifully written by this acclaimed author and gardener, which was first published in 1989. In twelve chapters, Rosemary Verey captures the successive months of plant and wildlife behaviour in her Cotswold garden at Barnsley House in the UK and the country hedgerows surrounding it. Botanica visits her garden at Barnsley House on our Cotswolds Garden Tour (recommended reading for Cotswold’s Garden Tour).

Cloudehill – A Year in the Garden by Jeremy Francis, published by Images Publishing Cloudehill

Included on many of Botanica’s Melbourne tours, Francis’ account of his ownership of Cloudehill provides extraordinary details of the more technical aspects of the iconic garden, including plantings, structural design, experiments and failures, and the triumphs and disappointments associated with gardening. Formulated on the Arts and Crafts English-garden style, this amazing garden development story provides fascinating reading from a private garden owner’s perspective. Jeremy Francis even shares his journey in the choice of location for this garden creation and why he eventually settled on the cool climate of the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria.

Portrait of a Marriage by Nigel Nicolson, published by Orion Books

Vita Sackville-West, novelist, poet, and biographer, is best known as the friend of Virginia Woolf, who transformed her into an androgynous time-traveller in Orlando. The story of Sackville-West’s marriage to Harold Nicolson is one of intrigue and bewilderment. In Portrait of a Marriage, their son Nigel combines his mother’s memoir with his own explanations and what he learned from their many letters. Even during her various love affairs with women, Vita maintained a loving marriage with Harold. Portrait of a Marriage presents an often misunderstood, but always fascinating, couple. Vita and Harold were the creators of Sissinghurst Garden, which is visited by Botanica on many of our English Garden Tours.

Heirloom Vegetables by Simon Rickard

Simon is a Botanical Guide on many of our tours and cruises. In this lively, passionate and, at times, political introduction to the world of heirloom vegetables, gardener Simon Rickard describes the history of many of his favourite varieties, encourages you to get growing yourself, and explains why he believes edible gardening is so important to our future and the future of the planet.

Ninfa by Charles Quest-Ritson, published by Frances Lincoln Limited

Ninfa is included on Botanica’s French & Italian Garden Tours. The history of Ninfa stretches back to Roman times. During the Middle Ages, this town was squabbled over, sacked, beset by malaria, and eventually abandoned to the elements. A forgotten section of the estate of the aristocratic Caetani family, it was left to slumber until the 20th century, when descendants transformed it into the stunning place it is today. Based on Charles Quest-Ritson’s 20-year study of Ninfa, this book showcases the garden’s unique appeal in images of plants winding over ruined towers and walls, roses scrambling for footholds in crumbling archways, and the frescoed church wall still standing, proudly exposed to the weather. In compelling text and lush images, the author devotes chapters to its history, discovery, and rediscovery, the glittering personalities associated with it, the garden today, and more. Charles believes this to be the ‘most romantic garden in Europe.’

My Garden World by Monty Don, published by Two Roads

Monty Don has been a lecturer on Botanica’s tours and cruises in Europe. My Garden World is a celebration of every living creature. The last couple of years gave us the enforced opportunity to learn more about the fascinating natural world around us. Whether you live in the countryside or the town, Monty's observations and insights are relevant to each and every one of us. My Garden World is Monty Don's personal journey through the natural year, month by month, season by season, observed from the immediate world around him.

The Multifarious Mr Banks by Toby Musgrave, published by Yale University Press

A garden historian, Dr Toby Musgrave is also one of our Botanical Guides. Here, he writes the fascinating life of Sir Joseph Banks, restoring him to his proper place in history as a leading scientific figure of the English Enlightenment. As the official botanist on James Cook's first circumnavigation, the longest-serving president of the Royal Society, advisor to King George III, the "father of Australia," and the man who established Kew as the world's leading botanical garden, Sir Joseph Banks was integral to the English Enlightenment. Yet he has not received the recognition that his multifarious achievements deserve. In this engaging account, Toby Musgrave reveals the true extent of Banks’s contributions to science and to Britain.

Seeds of Future, A Gardening Dynasty by Sue Shepherd, published by Bloomsbury

For over a century, and across five generations, the Veitch family pioneered the introduction of hundreds of new plants into gardens, conservatories and houses and were among the foremost European cultivators and hybridisers of their day. The story begins in 1768 when a Scotsman called John Veitch arrived in England to find his fortune, starting out as a gardener for the aristocracy. Realising that horticultural mania had begun to spread throughout the social classes, John’s son, James, opened a nursery in Exeter and began to send some of the first commercial plant collectors into the Americas, Australia, India, Japan, China and the South Seas. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Veitch’s had become key figures within the gardening establishment, involved with the Royal Horticultural Society from its beginnings and the great Chelsea Flower Show. Combining an historian’s eye for detail with a flair for storytelling, Shephard charts the fortunes of one family and, through them, tells the fascinating story of the modern English garden.

Sissinghurst by Adam Nicolson, published by Harper Collins

Sissinghurst is included on Botanica’s Chelsea and Hampton Court Flower Show Tours. A fascinating account from award-winning author Adam Nicolson, on the history of Nicolson’s own national treasure, his family home: Sissinghurst. Sissinghurst is world famous as a place of calm and beauty, a garden slipped into the ruins of a rose-pink Elizabethan palace. But is it entirely what its creators intended? Has its success over the last thirty years come at a price?

Tales of the Rose Tree by Jane Brown, published by Harper Perennial

A wild and wonderful exploration of the history of the rhododendron, a plant coveted, traded and stolen for thousands of years.

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

Seasoned garden writer Michael Pollan explores the histories of apples, tulips and potatoes, showing in the process how humanity and plants intersect and affect each other.

Georgiana Molloy – The Mind that Shines by Bernice Barry, published by Picador

This biography of one of Australia’s first female botanical collectors gives an insight into the early life of pioneering women in the south-west of Western Australia in the early 19th century. Georgiana’s passion for flowers, plants and collecting rare Indigenous species which she catalogued to send back to Kew Gardens, enthrals anyone interested in the early discovery of Australian flora.

The Flower Hunters by Mary & John Gribbin, published by Oxford University Press

The flower hunters were intrepid explorers – remarkable, eccentric men and women who scoured the world in search of extraordinary plants from the middle of the 17th century to the end of the 19th century. They helped establish the new science of botany. For these adventurers, the search for new, undiscovered plant specimens was something worth risking – and often losing – their lives for. From the Douglas-fir and the monkey puzzle tree, to exotic orchids and azaleas, many of the plants that are now so familiar to us were found in distant regions of the globe, often in wild and unexplored country, in impenetrable jungle, and in the face of hunger, disease, and hostile locals. It was specimens like these, smuggled home by the flower hunters, that helped build the great botanical collections, and lay the foundations for the revolution in our understanding of the natural world that was to follow. Here, the adventures of eleven such explorers are brought to life, describing not only their extraordinary daring and dedication, but also the lasting impact of their discoveries both on science, and on the landscapes and gardens that we see today.

The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean, published by Vintage

A modern classic of personal journalism, The Orchid Thief is Susan Orlean’s wickedly funny, elegant, and captivating tale of an amazing obsession. From Florida’s swamps to its courtrooms, the New Yorker writer follows one deeply eccentric and oddly attractive man’s possibly criminal pursuit of an endangered flower. Determined to clone the rare ghost orchid, Polyrrhiza lindenii, John Laroche leads Orlean on an unforgettable tour of America’s strange flower-selling subculture, along with the Seminole Indians who help him and the forces of justice who fight him. In the end, Orlean, and the reader, will have more respect for underdog determination and a powerful new definition of passion.

The Rose Grower by Michelle de Kretser, published by Random House Australia

In a corner of south-western France, a young rose grower nurtures a private passion to breed an exotic new flower. But the year is 1789, and the world is about to change. The Rose Grower throws a subtle, slanting light on the underside of history, as a young woman and her family are caught up in the bloodthirsty years of the French Revolution. Her private passion is to create a repeat-flowering crimson rose, the first of its kind in Europe. But, as public events in Paris are duplicated in Gascony, her world turns upside down. An American balloonist falls out of the sky and into her life; while Joseph, a young working-class doctor, is also drawn into her orbit, and finds himself fatally torn between reason and desire, revolutionary zeal and unrequited love.

The Tulip by Anna Pavord, published by Bloomsbury Publishing

Greed, desire, anguish, and devotion have all played their part in the development of the tulip, from a wild flower of the Asian steppes to the worldwide phenomenon it is today. No other flower has ever carried so much cultural baggage. It charts political upheavals, illuminates social behaviour, mirrors economic booms and busts, and plots the ebb and flow of religious persecution. Sumptuously illustrated from a wide range of sources, this beautifully produced and irresistible volume has become a unique source book, a universal gift book, and a joy to all who possess it. Recommended reading for Tulip Time Cruises.

Gardens in Art by Getty Publications

This book explores the importance of art in gardens in the western world and how the component of art is linked to various garden styles. It traces the history of gardens through artworks and the role of the garden as a background to paintings throughout time. It also addresses symbolism in the garden as expressed through artworks.

In My Garden, the Garden Diaries of Great Dixter by Christopher Lloyd

Botanica visits Great Dixter on some of our English garden tours. These diaries are taken from Christopher Lloyd’s weekly column in Country Life magazine and include a collection of anecdotes, advice and his ruminations covering each month of the year at his garden Great Dixter in East Sussex. His knowledge is vast, his ideas provocative and he has a sparkling wit as he entertains and educates at the same time. This book captures the essence of one of the most revered and influential gardeners of the 20th century.

Cruden Farm by Michael Morrison & Lisa Clausen, published by Lantern Books

Passionate gardener Michael Morrison shares his daily diaries, created over decades as the gardener at Cruden Farm, the home of the late Dame Elizabeth Murdoch, in this delightful book. He explores the different seasons of the garden and his daily walks with Dame Elizabeth who he refers to as ‘the Boss’. Their love of plants, their environs and characteristics created a strong friendship over the years and this book is now a historical record of the garden at Cruden Farm.

Sophie’s Patch by Sophie Thomson, published by Harper Collins

ABC Television Gardening Presenter Sophie Thomson shares the transformation of a once-bleak paddock with poor soil into a lush and sustainable garden. Her love of compost and respect for how this transforms your soil has allowed her to create a garden which has become a haven, now beneficial for insects and bees. It is here she has raised a family and taught them the joy of growing and eating your own produce. Sophie shares her tips for design principles and plant selection, plus her favourite plants.

Ayrlies by Beverley McConnell, published by Ayrlies Gardens & Wetlands Trust

A delightful book by New Zealand home gardener Bev McConnell, this traces the journey of establishing her world-renowned Ayrlies garden from a bare paddock to a ‘Garden of Significance’. She shares her vision, challenges and joys of this wonderful garden creation, enjoyed by so many like-minded gardeners today.

The Lost Gardens of Heligan by Tim Smit, published by Orion

This is an incredible, romantic, true-life adventure driven by an obsession to uncover the secrets that lay at the heart of one of the most mysterious estates in Europe. It tells the story of the Tremayne family, who had 22 gardeners who fell on the fields of Flanders. This resulted in its walled gardens and pleasure grounds slowly falling into disrepair and being covered by mountains of brambles, ivy and rampant laurel. Seventy years later, Tim Smit and John Nelson hacked their way through this green shroud that covered the garden at Heligan. Today, this is a wonderful garden to be enjoyed by all. Botanica visits here on our Cornwall tours.