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.

Subscribe

For regular gardening book recommendations sent straight to your email, make sure to subscribe to The Gardening Bookworm newsletter

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.

Share

Do you know another gardening bookworm? Share this post with them!

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

Subscribe now

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
   

   ---

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.