While I understand that social media is a highlight reel, unless people are constantly recycling old photos and videos from previous gardening years and passing it off as what they do in a single week or day in the garden- how else are they producing so much damn gardening content all the time?

I always think I haven’t completed enough tasks or made enough big transformations in my garden to share. I’m trying to get over that by forcing myself to stick to a weekly garden journal here on Substack. Garden updates, big and small, all progress and failures shared every Sunday.

So what to write about when my gardening time was limited last week because… life? I give you, an inventory of weeds I found in my flower beds this week.

For this list I am choosing to define a weed as a plant that I did not plant in my flowerbed or that is taking over/smothering other plants. Some things on this list might not be considered a weed in your area or by you.

Without further ado; the weeds I happily yanked from my flowerbeds this week:

#1 - Cow vetch

As much as I hate this weed; it’s also one of the most satisfying to yank out. The roots are pretty shallow so it comes out easily. It forms a bit of a mat, so you can get a large clump cleared with little effort. I’ll admit when it’s in flower, the little purple flowers are kind of pretty. But this plant just smother’s and chokes out my Hostas so its got to go.

#2 - Dandelions

I don’t hate dandelions in quite the same way so many people do. I actually think they’re pretty when they colonize a lawn. My own lawn included. Every spring our front lawn is dandelion heaven and we make zero attempts to control them. They die out in a couple of weeks and they’re good food for early pollinators so it’s not worth the effort for us to try and control them. I don’t need a weed free front lawn, I’m not the Queen. But I draw the line when they start to encroach on my flowerbeds. Their taproots can get really deep and strong and they’re difficult to pull out without breaking the damn stem and leaving half the root still in the ground.

#3 - Quack grass

I hate this stuff with a passion. It takes over and makes a flowerbed look unkempt in a hurry. It’s hard to get out by the root without digging it and it’s ugly.

#4 - Evening primrose

This is one that a lot of people wouldn’t consider a weed. I don’t technically either; more of a nuisance. When we bought our house 12 years ago I pulled a lot of the flowers out as the previous owners had 80% annual flowers in the flowerbeds up against the front of the house. I love a pretty annual to fill in a spot here or there but there was zero chance I was going to replant an entire flowerbed from scratch every year. My first goal was to flip the two original flowerbeds to almost all perennials. My mom gave me 4 single stems of some yellow evening primrose from her garden. I didn’t do any research; I planted them and have regretted it ever since. They spread like wildfire and leave behind ugly dead hard stems when they’re done flowering. I like the look of them en masse… somewhere else.

In addition to some light weeding, I managed to:

• Plant one of my patio containers with 6 celery plants and 2 parsley plants.

• Cut back & dug out all the dead lemon grass from a second patio container.

• Laid down more tarp in another section of my veggie garden that isn’t going to be planted this year.

• Purchased 10 bags of garden soil, in anticipation of filling in 2 metal raised beds that will eventually be the start of my strawberry patch.

• Moved said bags of soil, while holding my baby, to the garden from my car… where they have been sitting unopened since I put them there several days ago. The bags of soil, not the baby. 🤷‍♀️

That’s all I was able to check off my gardening list last week.

Happy Gardening,

Until next Sunday,

Jess

I had big plans for my gardening season this year. After closing up my vegetable garden last year (short version: I was too pregnant), I was sure I would be able to hit the ground running this year…. but it’s been almost five years since I’ve been in the throes of babyhood and it seems I’ve forgotten what it was actually like to try and function on little to no sleep. Most days I am lucky if I have the energy to stand in the shower. Just like my first kiddo, baby #2 is not a sleeper. Pure velcro baby, contact or car naps only. Heavy duty gardening just isn’t going to be in the cards for me this year.

At first, I will admit to feeling incredibly resentful. Why do I have to give up my beloved hobby?! Why can’t this baby just please.take.a.nap! Mama just wants to spend a few hours in the garden- ALONE. Gardening, after all, is one of the things that has had the most positive impact on my mental health. Who needs a little mental health pick-me-up more than a mom in the throes of postpartum mom life?

But, instead of circling around that way of thinking and making myself more and more frustrated, I’m choosing to be positive. I’m looking at this as a chance to slow down with my garden plans (which is very hard for me) and rethink some of my design ideas, research a little more before making any big changes and giving the soil in my annual veggie beds a chance to recover from 10 straight years of planting.

So, for this gardening season some of the things I will be working on and/or researching are:

1. Designing/Planning a perennial fruit orchard in my veggie patch.
   This area will one day include strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries. For this year I’m reading and learning as much as I can about growing berries and starting the ground work for prepping the soil and area around where the berries will go. As this mostly involves a lot of reading and designing using my garden planner, I feel like I should be able to reasonably stick to working on this with some consistency. I will include booklists and reviews of the gardening books I use.

2. Slowly plucking away at weeding my perennial flower beds.

   2 of my 3 beds are up against my house, so nice and close. I won’t be able to dedicate long stretches to weeding sessions, but I can reasonably pick at weeds here and there when my toddler is playing outside and my baby is in the stroller napping.

1. General clean up around the veggie garden.

   Things have gotten a tad out of control and messy due to neglect and procrastination. Grabbing piles of weeds, fallen branches, etc. and tossing them on the campfire (convienently located next to the veggie garden) is manageable in small bursts when we’re all playing in the backyard.

2. Read as much as I can.

   Books about gardening, soil health, garden design, all of it.
   This will include physical books and audio books. Long car rides when the baby won’t nap have become one of the best times for me to listen to audiobooks. Reviews and audiobook lists will also be included here in the newsletter.

3. Document my slow progress in my garden.

   The plan is to show up here and document what I worked on in this garden journal series. Anticipated posts for this series will be every Sunday. I am challenging myself to show up and write about the previous week in the garden, no matter what it looked like. If I completed a task, procrastinated, exceeded expectations, got frustrated, all of it.

That’s it. That’s realistically all I will probably be able to manage this summer and fall. I love to be in my garden, but some days I have to prioritize napping when the baby naps (ooooouu, how I hate it when people tell me to do that, but sometimes it is necessary).

Keeping my to do list short and not placing crazy demands on myself in the garden is what I hope will prevent me from burning out. You can absolutely get burnt out from your hobbies and doing the things you love and I don’t want that to happen for me and my garden.

For now, I leave you with a photo from one of the earlier seasons in my garden, when I had endless amounts of free time and slept 9+ hours a night!

Until next Sunday,
Jess.

A couple of evenings ago as my toddler (4) and my baby (3 months) were both crying at the top of their lungs; it hit me that the sun was still out. It was 5:20 pm and it was still light outside. It might seem like an odd thing to notice while dealing with two crying children but this is a new method for coping with overstimulation I’ve recently learned in therapy: call out something good.

Instead of joining in and melting down myself; say something good you notice out loud. It goes along with the similar practice of saying something you see, touching something or naming out loud what is causing your anxiety. In this particular moment; it worked for me.

The moment of “how the $!?@& do I do this for 2 kids at once?! I can’t split myself in two!” passed and truly only lasted a couple of minutes… once the baby was soothed and my toddler was no longer upset I was able to come back to the fact that it was in fact still light out, when only a few days ago it feels like it was still pitch black out at this time. It gave me a small thrill knowing winter is slowly coming to an end (painfully slowly, but still). It also brought to mind how I am going to manage my garden this year with not one, but two kids under five who need my attention.

Gardening will inevitably teach you something; if you’re willing to learn and pay attention. Not just about plants or soil; but about yourself. Managing my gardens (one veggie garden and 3 perennial flower beds) has taught me the following about myself (among other things):

1. I often set unrealistic expectations and take on more than is actually feasible for one person to manage (then get mad at not having enough time or energy to maintain it)

2. I despise asking for help and may be slightly on the “control freak” spectrum. 😬 (okay; a major control freak)

3. I procrastinate…. a lot.👀

I came to these realizations pretty quickly into my gardening journey which started 11 years ago when my husband and I bought our first house. However, I haven’t actually bothered to make any attempts to actually do anything about these quirks; that is until last year.

Last gardening season (2025) I was pregnant with my second child. And forty years old. Pregnancy is hard… being pregnant at 40 hit harder than the first one. Being pregnant at 40 with a 4 year old: Yikes. Being pregnant at 40 with a 4 year old while also working 40 hrs a week; intense.

I made the decision last spring to “close” my vegetable garden for the 2025 season and instead enjoy being pregnant and dedicate as much time as I could to my son; before he was no longer an only child and started school. I desperately wanted to garden, but had to admit I simply didn’t have the capacity (mentally or physically) to manage my veggie garden the same way.

I have one bed of perennial herbs (oregano, marjoram, thyme, lemon balm and mint) and a well established asparagus bed in my veggie plot. They basically tend themselves at this point; but the rest of my veggie plot was tarped off to keep weeds and grass from taking over. This spring (2026) is when I had planned to remove all the tarps and go full tilt at the garden again… but that moment where I was trying to figure out how to split myself in two has me rethinking that plan.

One of my favourite gardening accounts (both on Instagram and here on Substack) is frontyardveggies. In her weekly newsletter, Pizza Friday, Amy recently shared her method for prioritizing her gardening tasks and it inspired me to write out all the tasks I had intended to do this year. From there I’m going to attempt to do future Jessica a solid and scale back and prioritize which tasks I’ll actually dedicate my energy to this year and which ones I can (and should) leave for later seasons.

The list of gardening tasks that have been piling up in my brain:

• Start a berry patch (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries)

• Start my fruit tree orchard (apples and plums, maybe pears)

• Continue pulling out the daylilies from my flowerbeds, which I started last year

• Start a new hollyhock bed along my fence

• Move the snowball bush plant in my driveway garden to a new location along my fence line

• Dig up several pine tree saplings I planted along the creek several years ago as they’re getting large and need to be moved to their permanent locations

• Replant my wildflower patch in my back patch of yard

• Finish building my mini frog pond beside my veggie garden

• Build a bug hotel beside my compost bay and figure frog pond

• Add perennial flower patch/border along east side of my veggie garden

• Do a mass planting of purple coneflowers and black eyed susan’s along the front ditch of my yard

• Yank out the lily of the valley from my front flowerbed

• Continue expanding my patio garden containers

• Put a trellis entryway to my veggie garden

• Add a “mud kitchen” area in or bedside my veggie garden for my kids

Each of these tasks will have to be broken down into smaller sub tasks so I can truly decide if I have the capacity to both start AND finish them this year. “Start a berry patch” in reality is probably a ton of smaller tasks (prep the soil, clear the space of weeds, build trellises, etc,) I’m great at starting projects, not so great at finishing them (that would be the procrastination kicking in).

While I mull over which tasks to cull from my to do list this, I naturally head to my bookshelves to help to determine the workload of each task. I find slowing down before the season gets going and doing as much research as I can while the garden is still buried in snow helps me have a realistic understanding of the workload I’m contemplating taking on.

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Gardening Books to help you plan your season

I’ve currently got the below books checked out from my local library:

Martha Stewart's Gardening Handbook: The Essential Guide to Designing, Planting, and Growing―Martha Stewart's Handbook For Growing Beautiful Plants and Vegetables

This book is HUGE. It’s 386 pages in total. The illustrations are gorgeous and like all of Martha’s books it’s beautifully and logically organized and well laid out. I’ve had to check it out from the library multiple times as it’s too big for me to get through before it’s due. I’m primarily referencing this book for inspiration and design tips to help plan layout structure changes. The basic layout of my veggie garden will remain the same (it’s one large square, with 10-12 smaller beds within it, walking path around each bed) but where I put my trellises, bean poles, and a couple of planters can change from year to year.

I’ll eventually purchase this one for my permanent collection of gardening books. Once i’ve fully finished it, I’ll review it here.

Homegrown Berries: Successfully Grow Your Own Strawberries, Raspberries, Blueberries, Blackberries, and More

I’ve also checked this book out multiple times this winter. I love how everything is neatly laid out and the chapters are sectioned according to which type of fruit you want to grow and where you’re at in the process (just starting out or maintaining your fruit beds). I always have a notebook handy when flipping through this one as it’s inspiring lots of to do lists, further research and ideas for how I want to lay out and plant my future fruit patches. I’m primarily referencing this one for how to properly prep a new fruit bed to set it up for long term success, right from the get go. The area where I plan to put my fruit beds will need soil testing and potential amendments before I can actually start planting fruits.

I plan to also purchase my own copy of this book for my permanent collection as it’s been very useful and I feel as though I’ll reference back to it a lot as I learn to grow fruit.

Books I’m pulling off my own bookshelves:

Rewild Your Garden: Create a Haven for Birds, Bees and Butterflies

Frances Tophill is one of my favourite gardener’s. I love watching her on Gardener’s World. I purchased this book when it first came out in Canada and I’ve pulled it off my bookshelf so many times. It’s beautifully illustrated and provides practical tips for how to encourage bugs, bees and butterflies to visit your garden. I’ve been using this book as inspiration for how to incorporate and plan a bug hotel in my veggie plot, as well as what to do about my frog pond that I have stopped and started more times than I can count.

Canadian Gardener's Guide 3rd Edition

I bought the Canadian Gardener’s guide the first year I started gardening and it’s been pulled off my bookshelf and leafed through more times than I can count. I always have this book close at hand when planning my garden every year. I use it to make sure what I want to put in each bed will grow well together and what kind of conditions each plant needs to thrive.

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What’s on your gardening radar for this year? Share your plans in the comments 👇

Other books I’m reading & listening to this week:

On Audible: Still working my way through Ten Tomatoes That Changed The World by William Alexander.

Physical book: The Hidden Kingdon of Fungi by Keith Seifert

Gardening Show I’m currently loving:

American Garden’s with Monty Don

Until next week, Happy reading! - Jess

Several years ago I came up with the idea to start a blog about gardening that centred around gardening books that would an also include a personal garden diary. I’ve had many starts and stops with it and found that running my own website with a full-time job, maintaining multiple gardens, and having 2 young kids is just more than I have the capacity to take on. However, I love to write and still very much want to continue sharing my love of gardening books. So, I’ve shuttered my website and decided to take up residence here on Substack instead.

As I’m currently on maternity leave for all of 2026, I hope to be able to eke out some time each week to post about my favourite gardening books (both fiction and non-fiction) as well as document my gardening season. I hope you’ll follow along with me and we can discover and discuss great gardening books and maybe share gardening tip or two.

If you’d like to receive notifications when my weekly post goes live, please consider subscribing to The Gardening Bookworm

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Gardening as multiple hobbies

11 years ago my husband and I bought our first house and I promptly turned a large patch of grass in the backyard into a vegetable garden. I have been toiling away at that veggie patch every season since.

One of the lessons I learned as a gardener is that gardening, like reading, is actually a combination of several different hobbies. (as any bookworm knows, reading books & buying books are two separate hobbies!). Gardening can be broken down into multiple hobbies that all intersect. Depending on what your other interests are they can include:

• Seed collecting

• Growing stictly perennials or annuals

• Growing cut flowers or just being a veggie gardener

• Canning and preserving your harvest

• Collecting vintage gardening tools

• Herbalism

And for me, it’s reading about gardening and/or collecting gardening books. For those of us that have short growing seasons (hello, Canadian winters) the secondary gardening related hobby can often help us satisfy our green thumbs during the cold winter months when growing anything is near impossible.

Reading & gardening both lead to personal growth

Studies have shown that the act of gardening has many therapeutic benefits. Working in the garden can help to reduce stress by reducing cortisol levels. (Don’t believe me, check out this article from Psychology Today)

For me, the act of using my hands to plant, weed and observe my garden helps my mind to slow down and allows me to be present in the moment. When I feel like I’m being pulled in a million directions and my mind is ticking its way through my never ending to do list, being able to temporarily suspend that is a relief and important for my mental health.

I find that reading also provides a similar sense of relief and escape. Pairing these two hobbies together, the feeling of relaxation and peacefulness is enhanced. It’s also impossible to garden for any length of time without experiencing a bit of self-discovery. There’s nothing quite like weeding the same bed over and over to teach you that you may not be as patient as you once thought. (Why must they keep coming back?!) Likewise with reading, if you read regularly and vary what and who you read, you will inevitably learn about the world around you, and thus yourself.

Books can help amplify the experience of gardening by engaging your mind, while your body is soothed by the physical act of gardening and the presence of nature.

3 Ways Books Amplify Gardening

1. Provides Knowledge

No gardener can know everything about every plant. Having a well curated garden book collection means you always have the knowledge of more experienced gardener’s at hand. Sure, you can whip your phone out and google it - and in today’s technical world, there is a time and place for that. However, I find the slowness of sitting down and reading about a particular garden task or question in a physical book means I’m more likely to take in the information.

2. Provides Connection

Memoirs of other gardener’s, and fiction set in gardens helps to remind us of the long and profound impact nature and gardening has had on the human experience. Reading stories of other gardener’s experiences can help us see similarities between ourselves and others that we otherwise might not have thought existed.

3. Provides Stillness

Is there anything more relaxing than resting under the shade of a tree, in your favourite outdoor chair, with a good book? There sure is, doing so after a long and satisfying day of working in the garden. Pausing to rest and read in or around the physical space you have created and tended to can help further your appreciation for the garden.

How to pair books & gardening

Some of my favourite ways to combine my love of books and my desire to be in the garden:

• Listen to Audiobooks
  The soothing sounds of nature is one of the things I love most when working in the garden… but sometimes gardening requires you to power through tasks that are not necessarily enjoyable. For physical tasks that I am prone to procrastinate with (like weeding) I find listening to an audio book c an help make the task less tedious.
  

• Create a Reading Nook

  Create a space in or around your garden where you can rest, enjoy a cup of tea, and read. Whether it’s a hammock in a nearby tree or a little seating area, these little nooks are ideal reading spaces. Designing a resting and reading space in your garden is also a great way to get your creativity flowing.
  

• Pair books with the season

  I like to read gardening books in the opposite season that the book would apply to. For example, books about seed starting would be read in the dead of winter for me… Or books about starting a fruit orchard would be read in the fall, when my garden is being put to rest for the season. This way I have time to do further research and plan how I will incorporate what I learn or what inspires me into my next season.

Gardening Books to Inspire You

To help inspire your gardening journey here is this week’s curated list of gardening books to check out. These are books best read in January, for those who are still in the throes of winter and unable to work in the garden.

1. For Practical Information:
   The First-Time Gardener: Growing Vegetables by Jessica Sowards
   Plant Families: A Guide for Gardener’s and Botanists by Ross Bayton
   Heirloom Vegetable Gardening: A Master Gardener’s Guide to Planting, Seed Savings, and Cultural History by William Woys Weaver
   

2. For Personal Reflection:
   Unearthed: Love, Acceptance, and Other Lessons from an Abandoned Garden by Alexandra Risen
   The Ballast Seed: A story of motherhood, of growing up and growing plants by Rosie Kinchen
   The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature by Sue Stuart-Smith
   

3. For Fictional Escapes:
   The Twilight Garden by Sara Nisha Adams
   The Sparrow Sisters by Ellen Herrick
   The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly
   

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Books I’m currently reading/listening to:

On Audible: Ten Tomatoes that Changed the World by William Alexander
On Hoopla: The Moonlight Gardening Club by Rosie Hannigan
Physical book: The Hidden Kingdom of Fungi by Keith Seifert

Garden themed show I watched this week:
Martha Gardens, Season 1, Episode 3.

Fictional garden books are great reads to have on your shelf. When it’s raining, or simply too hot to be out in the garden, these dreamy fictional gardens will satisfy both your green thumb & your inner bookworm!

With the warmer weather upon us, it’s time to start compiling our #tbr piles for this summer! Whether you’re a fan of historical fiction, mystery or romance – this list of fiction set in a garden will help you find your next great read.

So cozy up my fellow gardening bookworm & find your next great read below!

Help keep independent bookstores in business! Consider buying one of the below titles at your local bookstore. Not sure where to shop? Try @millstreetbooks!

Gardening Books for Historical Fiction Lovers

If historical fiction, wartime drama, and dreamy English gardens are your thing, you’ll love these books:

• The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly

• The Victory Garden by Rhys Bowen

• The Kew Garden Girls at War by Posy Lovell

• The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys

Fictional Gardens with magical vibes

Herb magic, green witchery, cozy cottages and gardens that give you all the magical vibes more your jam? You’ll find it all in these magical gardens:

• The Sparrow Sisters by Ellen Herrick

• The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman

•  The Apothecary’s Garden by Jeanette Lines

Fictional Gardens with a touch of mystery

Mysterious family secrets, long forgotten truths, hidden treasures locked inside abandoned gardens are all waiting for you in these fictional gardens:

• The Forbidden Garden by Ellen Herrick

• The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

• The Daughters of Foxcote Manor by Eve Chase

• Perennials by Julie Cantrell

• Where the Hornbeam Grows by Beth Lynch

• The Garden of Lost and Found by Harriet Evans

Fictional Gardens filled with love

The enduring power of friendship, the excitement of new romance and the courageousness of a mothers love. Love in it’s various forms can be found amongst the plants in these fictional gardens:

• Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

• The Moonlight Gardening Club

• When the Apricots Bloom by Gina Wilkinson

• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgsoon Burnett

Gardens that'll make your heart stop

Grudges, revenge and maybe even a little bit of violence. If suspenseful page turners are what you’re looking for – you’ll find the thrill you’re looking for in these fictional gardens:

• The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison

• In the Garden of Spite by Camilla Bruce

• Hemlock by Susan Witting Albert

What are your favourite fictional garden books?

I hope you were able to find your next great gardening read! Have you read any of the books above? Tell me your favourites in the comments below!