Welcome to the April edition of the Garden Bloggers’ Book Club Newsletter!
April-May Selection
We are reading a book every two months through the spring and summer because it is so busy in the garden. The April-May selection is Passalong Plants by Steve Bender and Felder Rushing. I’ve had this book for many years, but am enjoying re-reading it. It is also one of those books you can skip around in, perfect for when it is busy in the garden.
And if you just simply can’t find the time to read the book this spring, you can post about your favorite passalong plant, either one you regularly give to others, or one you received from someone else. I think every gardener ends up with a passalong plant somewhere along the way, so this is a book club virtual meeting that everyone can participate in.
And it’s easy to participate. Post about the book or a topic related to the book. Leave me a comment or email to let me know you’ve posted so I can find you. Then I’ll put together a “virtual meeting” post on May 31st with links to all the posts I know about.
June-July Selection
Anyone have ideas on what to read in June and July? I’ve got a few books I’m considering, but none of them stand out. That could be because my mind and energy are in the garden right now, or it could just be because I haven’t found the perfect book for summer. We need a book that you can read while lounging in a hammock in the garden, relaxing after the flurry of spring planting. And it should, of course, relate to gardening, gardens, gardeners or plants.
If you have suggestions for the June-July selection, please leave them in a comment or send me an email. I am planning to announce the selection in a few weeks.
Thank you!
Thank you again to all who have participated in the past. This online book club is really open to everyone, so I hope some of you who have not participated in the past will join us in May.
Happy Gardening and Reading!
(Can you guess what’s blooming in my garden, pictured above? It’s Viburnum lantana ‘Mohican’. Just as every gardener needs some good books on gardening, every garden needs at least one Viburnum!)
I thought I’d suggest one I already own called Deep In The Green by Anne Raver. This is a book of essays. It would be easy and pleasant during the wonderful months of June and July to pick up the book and read an essay or two. It is 280 pages long.
I recently reread Midge Ellis Keeble’s “Tottering in My Garden: A Gardener’s Memoir”. I’d forgotten how much she influenced my early gardening years. She gardened in Canada which would provide a different flavor from this month’s southern boys.
The book tells the narrative of her gardening life through six gardens until she and her husband build a house in the country. The story alternates with short “how to” sections. I followed her advice for starting seeds and transplanting this winter and had the best luck ever.
Hi Carol,
I am re-reading Passalong Plants, and I’m so glad I decided to! I was excited last night because I got to read the section on larkspur, Mexican petunia, cosmos, and zinnias. Those are some of my favorites. This book was a great choice for April/May.
Both of the suggestions above for June/July sound great.
Lisa
Hi Carol,
I think A Garden of One’s Own by gifted landscape architect and writer Elizabeth Lawrence would be delightful reading. Several of her books are on the Top 100 books on Gardening.
I’m a new arrival to the garden blogger’s book club so perhaps this one has already been discussed–My Garden (Book) by Jamaica Kincaid. At 229 pages it’s another “slender volume” just right for reading after darkness puts an end to the gardening day.
Excerpt from a review at Salon.com: “The ‘lady writer’ who emerges from these pages makes me think of a female E.B. White. Reading her, I feel as though I am lying in a hammock on a balmy summer day, surrounded by a garden of lovely colors and intoxicating fragrances. My favorites pieces are the ones in which Kincaid unleashes the closeted poet within: “Spring,” an enraptured psalm to the month of May; the humorous and sensual “The Season Past”; and the marvelous “The Garden in Winter,” a fable about racism that is also an elegiac and tender mood piece illuminated by the author’s intelligence.
All… thanks for the great suggestions. Choosing the June-July book is going to be harder than I thought!
I am enjoying Passalong Plants. It’s so much fun to read about so many of the plants I have in my garden. I plan on passing along this book to my Passalong friends!
A couple other titles I have on the shelf, which I haven’t read yet, are The 3000 Mile Garden by Leslie Land and Roger Phillips and Garden Open Today by Beverley Nichols. The ones others have mentioned sound very good, too. I’m really going to try to be a part of this one!
My review of Passalong Plants is up. I really enjoyed rereading it. It had a huge impact on me as a beginning gardener and now I’m ready to try a lot more plants they suggested.
MSS @ Zanthan Gardens