The Cottage Gardener
Helping home gardeners and market growers grow beautiful and productive gardens since 1996. Our customers tell us they love our seeds because of their high germination rates, generous quantities and fair prices! And when you plant Cottage Gardener seeds, you are helping to preserve genetic bio-diversity and save old, tried-and-true varieties from being lost forever.
Recommended Reading
I’ve listed here only those books that I have read and would recommend.
I’ll be adding books to the list regularly. Check back often.
A Modern Herbal
This wonderful herbal was originally published in 1931, and is a very detailed source of information about almost any herb you can imagine. Mrs. Grieve (as she is listed on the cover) has written an exhaustive work that lists for each entry a description of the plant, its history, related varieties, medicinal action and uses, cultivation and propogation. This is the book, for example, in which I found a recipe for making blue dye from the Woad plant! I find it not only very informative but also extremely entertaining reading. As with many old plant books, it contains very few pictures, and relies instead on a richness of word to bring the plants into your mind's eye.
A Woman's Hardy Garden
First published in 1903, this book by American Ely promoted the establishment of informal flower borders, rather than the rigid symmetrical Victorian plantings that had been popular. Not a large book (only 140 pages), it is filled with gardening wisdom of the day, although I sometimes find it difficult to relate to Ely's approach to gardening - she came from an upper-class family, and comments like, "We keep about 60 vases (of flowers) full in the house from late May until October, and never allow more than two colours in the same room.", leave me wondering who was doing all the cutting of those flowers. Still, it's a nostalgic read, and full of Helena's personality.
An Island Garden
Published in 1894, this is the only gardening book written by Celia Thaxter, who considered herself primarily a poet. In this book she wrote about her experiences gardening on an island off the coast of New Hampshire. I devoured it in one sitting - it is delightfully written and you feel you know Thaxter quite well by the time you have finished it. The illustrations by Childe Hassam are quite beautiful, and Thaxter's comments on the flowers she grew give some insight into popular plants of the time.
Cottage Garden Annuals
Trends in gardening, as in everything else, tend to swing from one extreme to the other. In my parents' time, annuals were the rage and everyone bought flats of marigolds, coleus and impatiens each spring to fill their gardens with summer-long colour. With the recent upsurge of interest in perennials, many gardeners now turn their noses up at annuals as not being garden-worthy. What a pity, as there are many beautiful annual flowers that can complement and fill-in your perennial beds. Cottage gardens, in particular, have always consisted of a variety of perennials, annuals, herbs and even vegetables in happy co-existence. Clive Lane, a founding member of the Cottage Garden Society of England, has produced a wonderful book that will be invaluable to those who want to add cottage garden-type annuals to their beds. Beautiful pictures accompany a description of each species, sometimes with its history, and Lane recommends some "typical" cottage garden cultivars and varieties of each plant portrayed. One caution: he doesn't stick to only heirlooms, and there are many modern cultivars recommended in the book - so following his recommendations will give you a cottage-garden "look", but it won't necessarily be historically accurate.
Culpeper's Color Herbal
Nicholas Culpeper published his The Complete Herbal in 1649, and it has been a popular herbal ever since, with at least 41 subsequent editions of his work. What appeal to me particularly about this one are the lovely coloured drawings of each plant that aid in identification, and the sections on modern uses for each herb that have been added by the editor (along with many dire warnings that people should consult their doctors and not use this book to treat any disorders). Culpeper's writing is entertaining and an invaluable resource for those interested in the history of plants and their uses. Consider, for example, his directions for using Rosemary - "A decoction of Rosemary in wine helps cold diseases of the head and brain such as giddiness and swimmings, drowsiness or dullness, the dumb palsy, loss of speech, lethargy and falling-sickness." Who can resist?
English Cottage Gardening for American Gardeners
This is definitely a coffee-table book, filled with sumptuous colour photographs of various elements of English cottage gardens. Hensel focuses on small, informal cottage gardens and travelled throughout Britain for years taking the pictures for the book and talking to the owners of the gardens. The pictures and text give numerous design ideas for those wishing to establish cottage gardens. In describing plants for the garden, she tends toward modern cultivars that will give a "cottage look" rather than trying for historical accuracy.
The Complete Book of Flower Fairies
Having been born in England, I have fond memories of Cicely M. Barker's Flower Fairy books-but it is not only for nostalgia that I recommend this one. Barker was born in 1895, and had a rather accomplished and successful career as an artist. She began painting her flower fairies in the 1920's - paintings of exquisite detail, botanically accurate and wonderfully winsome. Each plate features a fairy related to a specific plant-such as "The Foxglove Fairy" or the "Greater Knapweed Fairy", along with an accompanying poem written by Barker. I love the beauty of this book, and often take it out just to gaze at a few pictures.
The Cottage Garden
Christopher Lloyd is well-known as a garden writer, and this book is a wonderful resource for those wishing to start a cottage garden. With pictures beautiful enough to make a great coffee table book, the book includes lists of typical cottage garden plants. What makes this book a little different from others on cottage gardens is that it focuses on "true" cottage gardens- which included vegetables, herbs, livestock, shrubs, etc. Lloyd and Bird dedicate chapters to each of these, as well as garden layouts and sections on The Working Cottage Garden, including the traditional tools used, seasonal garden tasks, and even a chapter devoted to using the produce from your garden. It's these latter sections that endear the book to me. A word of caution: Lloyd gardens in England, and several of the plants he recommends cannot be grown in Canada. Still, it is a delightful read and well worth a place in your heirloom gardening library.
The English Flower Garden
This is the most beloved book of my collection. Robinson, born in 1838, led the Victorian English garden movement away from the rigid annual plantings of the mid -1850's to the informal perennial and mixed borders still popular today. The English Flower Garden, originally published in 1883, is not a decorative book. There are hardly any pictures, and those that are present are in black and white. However, Robinson's writing is so crammed with information that it is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in heirloom gardens. I have not found another book that is so comprehensive in its coverage of plants of the time. He uses botanical names, which may be off-putting to some of you but is invaluable to anyone researching plants from the past, goes into great detail about propogation and cultivation of each species, and lists his favourite varieties and cultivars for each.