Great! Just placed holds on these books in my local library. Thanks a bunch - look forward to enjoying them!
~Natalie

I read that Henry Mitchell book a number of years ago and remember it was just great. I think I'll pull it back off my shelf for a re-read. Thanks for mentioning it.

I love In Search of Lost Roses by Thomas Christofer. It is an old favorite, read many times and getting fairly tattered. Another one that I quite enjoyed but don't remember the author is People With Dirty Hands. There are a lot of good books out there about gardeners, not gardens per se. Sometimes in the public library you have to kind of hunt around for them, they aren't always in areas that you would expect them to be categorized.

I found that book a couple of years ago when I was trying to figure out how to use an old garage on our property. It is by Debra Prinzing, and it is a very thought-provoking book. If you are lucky, you might find it in your local library. I ended up buying a copy so I could devour it to my heart's content.

What great ideas you find in this book. Some are tiny, and others are larger but all are works of art in one way or another. Just be open to new ideas, and you will be inspired.

I definitely love Mitchell's books and they are wonderful. I have read and re-read many times. My standard for gardening books is that they should simply be excellent books that happen to be about plants/gardening, vs. being just the best in that group.

I did not see that thread but in addition to Mitchell I very strongly recommend anything by Eck and Winterrowd (or either of the individually). Our Life in Gardens is amazing but so is the rest, including A Year At North Hill and Living Seasonally.

Also good though more practical are books by Ken Druse such as Making More Plants and Planthropology.

Good garden books are kind of like gardens, it is the happy accidents that bring the most joy. I forgot to mention the "Mrs. Greenthumbs" books by Cassandra Dantz. She wrote two of them-Mrs. Greenthumbs Ploughs Ahead and I can't remember the other title off hand (though both are well loved copies back in my bookshelves in MN). Her books are so incredibly laugh out loud funny, so wry and so naughty that the reader doesn't realise how much they are learning until they are finished. I have lent my copies out over and over again to encourage/teach fairly new gardeners. Ms. Dantz actually died not to long after her second book was pubished. I think she could have become one of the greats of the genre.

A book I love and I return to is OUT IN THE GARDEN by Dean Riddle. It is the story of this very funny, very inventive gardener and the garden he started when he bought a small house in the Catskills. It is interwoven with the story of his life, growing up in the south, going to England to study, his relationships, and the horrible impact of AIDS on his generation. I discovered petunia intergrafolia from him, and when I see them reseeding and wandering thier way through my beds, I think of him and always anticipate a new book -- which hasn't come to pass yet. I too love the Mrs. Greenthumb books. I am eagerly awaiting Margaret Roach's book AND I SHALL HAVE SOME PEACE THERE, coming out very soon. I love her blog.
lucia

Thought of another one...Gardening Letters To My Daughter by Anne Scott-James. Lovely book, I think I will order it for my daughter that has come back to gardening as a young adult again.

If you haven't guessed already, my book addiction is almost as bad as my gardening addiction, combined trouble brewing with the budget.