Resources
Recommended Reading—Our Favorite Books
Over the years we have read many great books. We'd love to tell you a little bit about some of our favorites. These are the books that we refer to when we have questions or are just looking for some fresh ideas. Hopefully these books will help you as much as they have helped us.
As we grow, we'll publish new reviews on the home page, so you can see what we've been reading and whether it's helped us. To support the site, we'll add convenient links to Amazon so you can buy the books yourself.
General Gardening
- Complete Guide to Texas Gardening by Neil Sperry—If you live in the Southwest and especially Texas, this book is the indisputable leader among gardening books. Because we have lived in Texas and the Desert Southwest we know exactly how challenging it can be trying to keep your garden alive, let alone healthy and productive. This book will help you spend more time on your knees gathering flowers and produce than praying for mere survival.
- Sunset Western Garden Book—For most areas west the Rockies, Sunset has produced a number of helpful books. This is the granddaddy of them all. They republish every few years. Get the newest and keep your old ones or be on the lookout for older ones. Sunset revises information to reflect trends and often edits useful, but less fashionable varieties out of the book. That means that if you buy a home with a bunch of older, perfectly wonderful plants, you might not necessarily find the species or variety in the newer book.
Permaculture
- Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway—
- The Ann Lovejoy Handbook of Northwest Gardening: Natural-Sustainable-Organic by Ann Lovejoy—
- Rodale's All-New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening: The Indispensable Resource for Every Gardener—
Urban Homesteading
- Storey's Basic Country Skills: A Practical Guide to Self-Reliance by John Storey, Martha Storey—
© GardenArts 2008