"Most literary-type garden books are too saccharine for my taste. I don't enjoy long passages without pictures about delicate columbines dancing along the dew-dotted fields or chapters about working off some author's bitter divorce in the potato patch...

[by contrast] ". . . [Beverly] Nichols' books are funny. . .
If you prefer to be entertained while learning how to furtively fill your purse or pockets with other people's plants, include some of his volumes in your book collection. . .

. . . The late dog-loving Henry Mitchell is another favorite garden writer. . . in Mitchell's books you'll find paragraphs about moths mating on his clematis. . . but also even more insightful words about how little it takes to make a gardener happy."

The books by these authors that she recommends are:

Nichols: Down the Garden Path (1932)
Sunlight on the Lawn (1952)
Garden Open Today (1963)
Garden Open Tomorrow (1968)

Available through www.Timberpress.com

Books by Mitchell: The Essential Earthman
One Man's Garden
Henry Mitchell on Gardening

Available from Houghton-Mifflin.

A Thatched Roof (1933)
A Village In a Valley (1934)
Green Grows the City (1939)
Merry Hall (1951)
Laughter on the Stairs (1953)

The years in parens are the years of the first editions. In the case of 'Merry Hall', 1951 was the first British edition and 1953 the first USA edition. 'Sunlight On The Lawn' was written between 'Merry Hall' and 'Laughter'.

Mr Nichols also wrote a large and excellent book on the influence of art on flower arranging (The Art of Flower Arrangement, 1967).

Check out AbeBooks for various editions of Nichols' all now-out-of-print books (although I think some have been reprinted in recent years, not all have.)