Someday My Garden Will Be Featured in Books Like These

As I worked in my garden today, and reflected on the ratio of dirt and weeds to actual plants there, I started dreaming again of the garden I always envision. I think of these days as practice, and hope that someday I'll be the sort of gardener who is blessed to make real and take care of the garden in my head. In the meantime, I love to get inspiration from others to add to my someday garden. And here are a few of my favorite places to get that inspiration!


You Grow Girl is the first gardening book by garden blogger Gayla Trail, and I LOVE it. Her ideas work in urban as well as backyard gardens, it's easy to understand and fun to flip through. Whenever I'm feeling like the laziest gardener ever, this book kicks me right back into gear with simple and do-able ideas.

Front Yard Gardens by Liz Primeau is the garden book that when I picked it up I said "YES, this is exactly what I want!" I will confess right now that I'm not a fan of big lawns. On a ball field, yes. In my garden, no. They're high maintenance and I don't love the way they look. I've heard the argument that it's somewhere for the kids to play, and then I've watched my own kids run around the periphery of our backyard where they can climb trees and hide behind bushes and find shady cozy spots to read. That's what I want all over my yard - garden everywhere!


Any book on companion planting is cool with me, this is just the one I happen to own. As someone who believes wholeheartedly in working with nature rather than fighting against it, I love the idea that certain plants when grown together will help each other out; fighting each others battles against pests and diseases.


It is a dream of mine to have our backyard certified as wildlife habitat by the National Wildlife Federation. Did you know you could do that? It's so cool. I love seeing birds in our trees and butterflies and hummingbirds flitting about and the hum of bees in the vegetable garden. This is a great book on how to use your landscape and your plantings to attract these helpful critters to your garden, thus making it even more beautiful.

And this, my friends, is the vegetable gardener's bible if you live in the Maritime Northwest. It pretty much tells you what you should be doing in your garden from month-to-month, including how to amend your soil and use compost, what sorts of seeds to plant and when (and which to start indoors and which to sow outdoors).

What inspires you when you're planning the garden of your dreams?
What are your favorite garden books?