There are so many great gardening books out there. Whether you are new to gardening, a master gardener looking for fresh inspiration, or a homesteader wanting to level up their gardening plan, there’s a gardening book out there for you.
(And if you’re not much of a reader, don’t worry, I have a recommendation for you, too!)
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Winter is the best season for catching up on reading and getting excited for the possibilities of spring.
I love having a stack of gardening books waiting by a cozy chair so I can read up on one of my favorite hobbies any time I can.
I put together this list of over 10 books on vegetable and flower gardening. These are books that I actually own or have borrowed to read from Amazon Prime, Kindle Unlimited, or from my local library.
The library is a great resource for gardening books. It may even have seeds in the spring as well, where you can both donate and take seeds to plant in your own garden.
So wherever you like to get books, I hope these 10 gardening books inspire and motivate you to make this next (or current) season your best gardening season yet!
10+ Inspiring and Informative Gardening Books for Gardeners
Best for Beginner Gardeners in Cold Climates
The Year-Round Gardener by Niki Jabbour is the first gardening book I’ve ever read and owned. The photo on the cover of Niki’s book inspired me to begin gardening and her book really does walk you through how to garden all year round. She goes through the process of growing and harvesting individual types of vegetables and herbs and introduces you to interesting varieties that you would never find in the grocery store.
It’s a good, digestible introduction to gardening from spring through winter. I think her growing and harvesting guide at the end of the book may be the most valuable part for new gardeners.
For Homesteaders and Veggie Gardeners Wanting to Hone Their Craft
The Vegetable Grower’s Handbook: Unearth Your Garden’s Full Potential by Huw Richards is a great book for homesteaders and gardeners who want to level up their gardening skills and become more efficient and confident in the garden. I’ve read it twice already and plan on reading my favorite sections again this winter.
Huw’s book is packed full of strategies and skills to save us time and money so we can enjoy our gardens to the fullest. I loved the sections on composting, small-space mindset, and recipes for natural feeds and fertilizers.
If you like to approach gardening more methodically, are interested in no-dig gardening and permaculture, or want to know more about how to get the most production out of your vegetable garden, this is the right book for you.
For Vegetable Gardeners Who Want to Grow Cut-Flowers
Vegetables Love Flowers: Companion Planting for Beauty and Bounty by Lisa Mason Ziegler gives a great argument for growing flowers with your vegetables. I used to plant flowers as an afterthought and dismissed flowers as “useless.” Just a pretty plant for decorative purposes.
But Lisa convinced me that flowers are essential to vegetable gardening because they draw in pollinators (thus increasing your harvest) and beneficial insects (thus decreasing your pest pressure).
If you want to grow both cut flowers and vegetables, pick up this book and get your garden started ASAP.
One of my favorite parts of this book is that Lisa breaks down the differences between warm-season tender annuals and cool-season hardy annuals.
When I first read this book, I hadn’t really understood how to grow cool-season hardy annuals or recognized their value for filling in the gap between the seasons, so this information was mind-blowing to me.
Most of this book is geared toward cut-flowers rather than vegetables, so use this book as a companion to a vegetable growing book.
For Rule-Breakers Who Want to Mix Edible Plants and Ornamentals
Edible Landscaping: Now You Can Have Your Gorgeous Garden and Eat It Too by Rosalind Creasy is full of inspirational ideas for landscaping with edible plants, herbs, fruit, and vegetables. If you are interested in garden design, potager gardening or enjoy the cottage garden style, this is a book to devour.
Rosalind Creasy has so much wisdom and expertise to offer on this subject, and there are tons of full-color photos to draw inspiration from. I have spent hours staring at the photos and imagining what the ideas would look like implemented in my own garden.
I can’t tell you enough how much I enjoyed this book. I’m sure you’ll draw lots of inspiration from it, too.
For Brand-New Gardeners Who Find Vegetable Gardening Intimidating
I highly recommend The First-Time Gardener: Growing Vegetables by Jessica Sowards for new gardeners who have tried to garden before and failed.
She will walk you through each step and give you encouragement to keep growing when you feel like quitting. Jessica has plenty of great strategies and information about growing from seed, planting a new garden, and harvesting.
Growing as organically as possible is important to me and Jess gives plenty of good tips for that in her book.
I found the author on her YouTube channel, Roots and Refuge Farm, when I first started gardening and she has been such an inspiration to me. This book would also make a great gift for beginner gardeners!
For Gardeners who Love Growing Flowers More Than Food
Floret Farm’s Cut-Flower Garden by Erin Benzakein is a must-read if you love flowers. Erin has a passion for growing flowers that is difficult not to catch if you consume any of her content! The photos in Erin’s books are just beautiful and inspiring as well as informative.
She touches on growing and harvesting cut-flowers, but the real takeaways for me were in her instructions on flower arranging. I find it so helpful to have step-by-step photos of building a floral arrangement from empty vase to finished product and Erin explains her method so clearly.
I also thoroughly enjoyed her other book A Year in Flowers which goes into more depth on flower arranging.
I was able to borrow both of these books for free on Amazon Prime, so if you don’t currently have a subscription and want it, consider subscribing through my link.
Another good gardening book all about flowers is The Cut Flower Handbook by Lisa Mason Ziegler. I mentioned one of her other books at the beginning of this post, and I can’t not include this one as well!
Much like Floret Farm’s Cut Flower Garden, Lisa’s book includes plant profiles going in depth on growing and harvesting specific cut flower plants.
What sets her book apart from Erin’s is her sample cut-flower garden layout which shows you two years of plants growing and being rotated in two garden beds. I found this really valuable as I only have room for a small cut-flower garden like the one in the book and have wondered how to work in cool season fall plantings with warm season summer growing.
For Cottage-Style Gardeners Who Just Want to Look at the Pictures
If you love cottage gardens, this book will make your heart so happy. The Cottage Garden by Claus Dalby is full of pictures. Chock-full of pictures. The description of the book says there are “over 700 exquisite photographs” so it is perfect for a gardener who just wants to look at pictures!
You will see gorgeous cottage gardens in spring, early summer, and late summer (some of the same gardens, too) and be so inspired.
And really, you don’t have to be a gardener to enjoy this book.
I found the little blurbs about the different gardens and their caretakers so interesting, and hidden in the captions are practical tips for growing a cottage garden of your own. I also liked that this book included “real” gardens. Gardens made by average people alongside gardens made by professionals.
It’s fun to see all the iterations of the cottage garden style played out in different countries and from the perspective of many gardeners. Claus Dalby obviously put a lot of thought and time into collecting the photographs and stories found in this book and created a work that is moving and beautiful.
I hope you’ll take a look at it and be inspired to grow beautiful gardens too.
For Gardeners Wanting to Create a Story Around Their Gardens
I caught my husband flipping through Garden Wonderland by Leslie Bennett and Julie Chai so I think it’s safe to also recommend this book for gardeners who mostly want to look at inspirational photos!
I however, did read this gardening book, and I love the premise of it: creating and designing a meaningful outdoor space that helps you connect to yourself, your people, and the natural world around you. Definitely something I want for my own garden!
The gardens featured in this book are all located in California (I’m pretty sure), but don’t let that deter you. There are great design elements to steal and advice to implement from this book. The authors showcase many different gardens and include a “takeaway” at the end that can apply to gardeners all over the world.
For Raised Bed Gardeners Who Want Good Looking Gardens
Kitchen Garden Revival by Nicole Burke is the best gardening book on having a beautiful kitchen garden using raised beds. A kitchen garden is primarily a garden for eating fresh, not as much for preservation and storage.
There are plenty of photos to inspire you and design and seasonal planting advice to help beginners find success. I really appreciated her soil recipes and practical advice on designing and installing a garden that is harmonious with the structure of your home.
This is great if you’re planning on setting up your first garden but don’t know where to put it or what you want it to look like.
Nicole has a distinct garden design style that I love and plenty of gardening knowledge to share. I think if you want to have a beautiful vegetable garden and plan on growing primarily in raised beds, then you’ll want to read a copy of this book.
This book is also free to borrow on Kindle Unlimited.
For Serious Gardeners Who Want to Grow All Winter Long
Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long by Eliot Coleman is a gardening book packed full of information and gardening expertise with few color photos. However what you will learn inside if you are serious about growing food through the long, cold winter is invaluable.
Eliot Coleman’s book is part instruction manual, part history book, and part memoir all wrapped in one. There are so many good insights and takeaways about winter gardening from this book.
This book makes me excited to try growing and eating sweet, frost-kissed carrots and crisp salad greens grown in the dead of winter. Who knew that winter gardening could be so productive and delicious?
Definitely a must-read if you grow in a cold climate like Eliot Coleman does in Maine and are determined to grow the best winter vegetables ever.
For “Work Smarter Not Harder” Gardeners
The Autopilot Garden: MIGardener’s Guide to Hands-Off Gardening by Luke Marion is a great book for those of us who consider ourselves “lazy gardeners.” The biggest takeaways for me from Luke’s book was using high intensity planting strategies and using the core gardening system trench to reduce watering needs.
This book is a great gardening guide for beginners, is easy to understand, and has given me plenty of inspiration and ideas for my own garden.
It’s currently free to borrow on Kindle Unlimited.
Have Any Book Recommendations for Me?
Thanks for reading this post. If you made it to the end, you must truly love reading!
Do you have any ideas for what should I read next? Leave your gardening book recommendations for me in the comments below.