Passalong Plants - by Steve Bender
This is one of the first gardening books I read when first getting into gardening a few years ago. It is hilarious! I have since reread it countless times and bought it just as many due to friends borrowing it and never giving it back. I have to admit I have since developed a wee crush on Mr. Bender.

This is a great question! Why isn't there more action on this thread? I'm always looking for gardening books and would really like to see what others have to say.

Gardening for Dummies. Covers everything, very straightforward advise, fantastic tips--and written by a long list of ridiculously qualified gardening professionals. Everybody can learn something from that level of expert.

My other gardening favorites are all specific to my state and region, for tips on what does well here and how to do do things in our weather.

Any book by Ken Druse---the photography is gorgeous. I especially love his book "Making More Plants," which is not only beautiful but chockful of great info.

The new edition of the Southern Living Garden Book is great, too, for those of us who live in the region it covers.

Another favorite that I've now read through three or four times is "Earth on Her Hands: The American Woman in Her Garden" by Starr Ockenga. A beautiful, inspiring book, highlighting the gardens and gardening lives of 18 American women whose passion for the soil is bone-deep. Several of the women are now in their 70s and 80s and have been gardening for decades. Many created their extensive gardens with their own hands---building walls rock by rock, nurturing tree seedlings into giants, absorbing wisdom along the way. Wonderful book to curl up with on a winter's night when you're looking for inspiration for next year's garden. I picked up a copy at a book outlet, read it that evening, went back the next day and nabbed three more copies to give as gifts to gardening friends.

Hi, "Landscaping with Nature" by Jeff Cox is my favorite. Also I've enjoyed "Tasha Tudor,s garden" too.
Have a good holiday.

I love the Tasha Tudor book as well. The year it came out I got two copies for my birthday!

One of my favorites is Gardening in the Lower Midwest: A Practical Guide to the New Zones 5 and 6
by Diane Heilenman. Sound information in an easy, conversational stuff -- she helps sort the big stuff from the little, and she doesn't worry much about the little.

She says our unpredictable weather here makes the area-- the Zombie Zones of gardening!

I'm in perfect agreement with KathiCville - my favorite garden writer (and photographer) is most definitely Ken Druse! His books are neither dumbed down nor preciously pretentious - just great conduits of knowledge, experience and inspiration from a really gifted gardener and writer. The books are somehow infinitely rereadable, too. And his photgraphs are the very best I've seen in garden books. Ken Druse is my garden writer hero!

cranebill

My favorite is the Sunset Western Gardening book. It has all the answers, and great pictures too. (I live in California.) I'm looking forward to checking out your favorite books! Happy holidays, Amy

For those of us in CA, the Sunset Western Garden book is the "Bible."

"How Groundhog's Garden Grew" is a darling picture book for children interested in vegetable gardening.

I've loved Adrian Bloom's books because his conifers and planting choices are so colorful and beautiful. But I really get the bulk of my information on every aspect of gardening from research on the web. The information available from universities and growers and the ability to 'google' something specific just can't be beat!

victory garden--a good how to. green prints--a quaterly periodical with entertaing stories. birds and blooms--a magazine(no ads!) by rieman publications.

Santa brought me Ken Druse's "The Passion for Gardening." I've only flipped through it, but like what I see so far. Also got Starr Ockenga's "Earth on Her Hands - The American Woman in Her Garden." This is a great book! I have been curled up in my favorite chair by the fire reading it into the wee hours. It is about the gardening experiences and contributions of 18 American women gardeners, all ordinary women making contributions to the gardening world with little, if any, recognition other than locally. The photographs are breathtaking and the personal accounts will warm you to your soul.

Being a So.Cal. native, I also recommend the Sunset Western Garden Book to all western gardeners. And as a cottage gardener, I like Sunset's "Cottage Gardens."

Diana

My favorite gardening book is the "Undaunted Garden "by Lauren Springer. It has beautiful photography, great information and all kinds of list of plants along with a helpful section in back about starting seeds. I also love the books by Mrs. Greenthumbs (Cassandra Danz) She had such a good sense of humor and a zest for living. It was a sad day for me when I read that she had died of cancer.

I've always liked "The 3000 mile Garden" it's garden correspondance between 2 gardeners. Sort of a "64 charing cross rd" for the plant people.
Also anything by Jamacia Kinkaid (sp)

My most favorite is Adrian Bloom's 'Year-Round Garden'

Others are:

Jeff Cox' 'Perennials All Star'
Colston Burrell's 'Perennial Combinations'
Christopher Lloyd's 'Color for Adventurous Gardener'
Rodale's 'Great Garden Shortcuts'
Rob Proctor's 'Naturalizing Bulbs'
All of Allen Lacy's books.
'The 3000 mile Garden' & 'Undaunted Garden' already mentioned above.

I had Mel Bartholomew's 'Squarefoot Garden', but for the life of me cannot find it.

Can't stand 'Tasha Tudor's Garden' -------too contrived for my taste... nauseatingly coy...

My favorite is From Seed to Bloom by Eileen Powell. I only covers herbs, annuals & perennials, but it has helped me a lot in starting seeds since I've only begun to "branch out" past zinnias & other common stuff. Most of the packets tell you to "cover with XXX amt of soil". This one gives good instructions on which ones need surface sewing, darkness, etc.

my other fav is Perennials for Every Purpose by Larry Hodgson. easy to read, sidebars with info on light, soil & water preferences & bloom time, etc. also gives the bad side regarding aggressiveness, etc.

Well, I like the books that tell a story rather than outline all the duties I've neglected this season. So: Henry Mitchell, Katherine Lawrence, Jamaica Kincaid, and all those wonderful old books Michael Pollan is bringing back into print, and Michael Pollan himself.

I am so amazed that someone from Tennessee has a Larry Hodgson book. I have two of his and they're my Bibles for finding plants. I don't know if they're in English - The lazy gardener series, shrubs (Les arbustes) and perenniels (Les Vivaces). I mostly have Canadian books. I love Marjory Harris (The Canadian Gardener)and Robert Osbourne (Hardy Roses and Hardy Trees and Shrubs), and Frontyard gardens by Liz Primeau.

I just got the well tended perennial garden by Traci Sabato -Aust. The book is one of the very best how-to's out there, I know has published others that are highly regarded too.
Mary Toomey's illustrated encyklopedia och clematis is my ultimate clem book. LOVE it.
Bevereley Nichols wrote some beautiful books about restoration of a old mansion and it's garden, In georgia if I am not mistaken, He also wrote several books relating to the garden, "garden opens tomorrow" "garden open today"
He also wrote some very sweet books about his cats, and the garden.. I think their names were a,b,c.
His books has been out of print for a long time but now is resurfacing.
I think Timberpress has them.
klk

Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza and Weedless Gardening by Lee Reich, PhD. These two books totally changed my outlook on gardening and made me realize that it's not as hard as we try to make it sometimes.

I'm in total agreement with KathiCville and cranebill. My favorite book so far is "Making More Plants" by Ken Druse.

I'm heading to the library tonight to try and pickup Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza. I've heard great things about this book. It's gonna be a wet weekend here in the Northeast!

Anything in the Phillips and Rix series (published by Random House, I think). You have to learn to think in Celsius temps for the hardiness ranges as I recall, but it's worth it for the information on place of origin and the photos of plants in their native habitat. I've learned as much about proper growing conditions from looking at those photos and their captions, as from several dozen books purporting to tell me just how to grow X (fill in your own 'difficult' plant). ('Course it helps that I'm also a bit of a geography enthusiast. . .)
For plants in their garden setting, Pamela Harper's "Color Echoes". The pictures are gorgeous, and she has a fantastic eye for complements and contrasts. She's also close enough to local that most of her combinations work here!
For general gardening, "The Why and How of Home Horticulture". It's not a graduate-level text, but gives a really good start on linking the how-to with the science and history behind gardening.

Oh dear! I am feeling that urge to check out a Lot of these books. A bad feeling for a book-a-holic like myself! Usually means a shopping spree.
One book I love is "Shovel It! Natures' Health Plan" by Eva Shaw. I also like Henry Mitchell's books. There are just too many to name.
Thank all of you for the suggestions. Now if there were just 48 hours in a day! 24 for gardening and 24 for reading about gardening! LOL
Lynn

"Carrots Love Tomatoes," very easy, comprehensible reading for the veggie gardener.

I like "Weeds of the West", published by the University of Wyoming. Contributers were specialists from Texas, Colorado, California, Washington, Arizona, Oregon, Utah, Montana, Minnesota, Hawai and Idaho. It's an outstanding book with excellent photographs. I use it for identifying weeds, some of which I eat, but also I like revisiting plants I've seen while travelling.

wow, i'm awfully late to this thread, but i just wanted to mention a tiny little book of fiction called "Seedfolk" by Paul Fleischman. it's barely 70 pages long, and it is classified as a 'young adult' title, but it is the most touching book about gardening that i have ever read.

it follows the progress of an empty lot as it is transformed into a community garden in a tough, ethnically diverse urban area. it gives a really lovely view of the transformative aspects of gardening.

next time you stop by your library check it out!

since i'm older-and she was too, mine would have to be gardening without work, and no work garden, both by ruth stout.and, gardening without a aching back. she's always been my mentor--till i read too much about her.her style of gardening i admire, and copy, have for 30 years.

I like Cassandra Diaz's "Mrs. Greenthumbs" books. Funny, and written for the novice gardener.

The Garden Primer by Barbara Damrosch is my favorite and most useful. I always check there first if I have any questions and usually find what I am looking for.

Hi all -
I'm new to gardenweb & just found this forum - it's going to take me weeks to read through all the great forums on here. Just when I think I found them all, I see another that looks interesting. Anyway, I like many of the books that have been mentioned here, and truthfully I don't think I could really say which is my very favorite - there are so many good ones! But I do love "Tulips" by Brent & Becky Heath...but of course that's because I'm a tulip fanatic!

I have to echo one of pitimpinai's choices above - Perennial Combinations by Colston Burrell. I picked it up at Amazon for less than $20 and I've been carrying it around for a month. I just love it. A friend of mine came over and I actually HID it behind the couch seat until she left. I was terrified that she'd see it and ask me if she could borrow it. Yes, I'm selfish about my books :) because I want them right there whenever I might need them, and "need" is not too strong a word!