#1 - Read & Grow

Gardening & reading about gardening are two separate hobbies.

Welcome to my first Substack post! I have been a life long bookworm, and long before I actually had a garden of my own to tend I loved reading gardening books and fiction books set in and around gardens.

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.

My veggie garden in its early years + my dormant garden ini the dead of winter.

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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.

Me stealing a quiet moment in the garden + a calm morning in my backyard

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.

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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

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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.