Some Gardeners Exchange members started a book club. The club operates somewhat independently with its own email list and meeting schedule. If you’re interested in learning more about the club, contact Perry.
If you’re curious about the books they’ve read, here is a list of some past selections:
Tulipomania by Mike Dash
MRS GREENTHUMB How I turned a Boring Yard into a Glorious Garden and How You Can Too (1993) by Cassandra Danz
A Brooklyn born comedian and amateur gardener passes on her experiences turning her yard into a garden. One review describes the book as “a force for democracy in at the snooty New York horticultural world”.
A GENTLE PLEA FOR CHAOS (1989) by Mirabel Osler
A garden designer whose book, based on her experiences in her garden in Shropshire, sent a blast of fresh air through the English gardening world.
AN EDEN OF SORTS (2013) by John Hanson Mitchell
Mitchell first worked in the field of environmental education and was fascinated by the interrelationship between human culture and nature. He founded and edited the Mass Audubon Society’s award winning journal “Sanctuary”. This book follows over decades the plants and animals that lived on a 1 1/2 acre tract of land that he converted from pine woods into a garden in Littleton, Massachusetts.
GARDENING WITHOUT WORK: For the Aging, the Busy, and the Indolent (1963) by Ruth Stout! After 15 years of plowing and fertilizing her garden, Stout just planted seeds and covered them. She developed the Stout system of gardening using a thick mulch of at leaf 8 inches. In a new garden in poor soil, she recommended starting by plowing in manure the first year and then proceeding with the mulch. The “compost pile” is maintained in place in the seed beds and garden paths. Mulching material is a combination of what ever one finds at hand similar to the materials one would find in a compost heap.
THE GREEN GARDEN: A New England Guide to Planning, Planting and Maintaining the Eco- Friendly Habitat Garden (2011) by Ellen Sousa
A guidebook for low cost, earth friendly natural habitat landscaping that supports declining species. including birds, native pollinators, honey bees, amphibians, and turtles. .Ellen is a garden coach and designer who runs a small native-plant nursery at Turkey Hill Brook Farm in Spencer, Massachusetts.
SECOND NATURE: A Gardener’s Education (1991) by Michael Pollan
After purchasing an old Connecticut Dairy Farm this Harper’s Magazine Editor began to think about the troubled
borders between nature and contemporary life—including thoughts on the American lawn and seed catalogues. It is
described as a modern Walden blending meditation, autobiography and social history.
A YEAR IN PROVENCE (1989) by Peter Mayle
The author and his wife and two large dogs moved to a 200 year old stone farm house in rural southern France. The book chronicles the first year of his life as an expatriate in a new environment.
BROTHER GARDENERS: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession (2008) by Andrea Wulf
The story of six men who made Britain the center of the botanical and horticultural world In 1733 a colonial farmer, Jon Bartram shipped American plants and seeds to Peter Collinson in London. The nucleus of a botany movement formed around them including Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, Philip Miller, bestselling author of The Gardeners Dictionary, and Joseph Banks and David Solander, two botanist explorers who scoured the world aboard Captain Cook’s “Endeavor”.
THE ORCHID THIIEF: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession (1998) by Susan Orlean! Recounts the experiences of John Laroche, a renegade plant dealer whole stole rare orchids from a wild swamp in South Florida sparking a controversial environmental battle.