40+ FREE Books to Inspire Wannabe Gardeners

This book list comes from Garden Books, Old and New (1926), which was basically an annotated purchasing guide for book collectors, gardeners, libraries, and so on! It focused on recently-published books about gardens on a variety of topics, including informational books like flower encyclopedias, this history of gardens in various countries, how to grow certain trees, etc.

This particular list is from the “Inspirational” section and is more focused on memoirs and personal accounts about gardening. Quite a few of them are available as either ebooks from Project Gutenberg or PDFs scans from Internet Archive and HathiTrust, and so I’ve put together a list of links. Remember, all these books are in the public domain and are now free to download and read. Enjoy!

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👉 Related: Author Frances Hodgson Burnett Book Index — she wrote The Secret Garden!

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Gardening Book List

1. The Amateur Garden by George Washington Cable (1914)
2. The Chronicle of a Cornish Garden by Harry Roberts (1906)
3. Chronicles of a Country Garden by Harry Roberts
4. Days and Hours in a Garden by Eleanor Vere Boyle (1884)
5. Elf King’s Flower by Sarah Phelps Stokes Halkett
6. Essays on Gardens by Albert Sieveking
7. Floral Biography or Chapters on Flowers by Charlotte Elizabeth (Tonna) (1842)
8. Flowers and Gardens: Notes on Plant Beauty by Forbes Watson (1901)
9. The Friendship of Nature by Mabel Osgood Wright (1894)
10. Garden Grace by Louise Driscoll (1924)
11. Garden of a Commuter’s Wife by Mabel Osgood Wright & Barbara Osborne Wright (1901)
12. The Garden of Ignorance by Mrs. George Cran (1913)
13. A Garden of Pleasure by Eleanor Vere Boyle (1895)
14. Garden Portraits by Amelia Leavitt Hill (1923)
15. The Garden That I Love by Alfred Austin (1896)
16. Garden Whimseys by Charlotte Rider Lomas (1923)
17. Gardening by Myself by Anna B. Warner (1872)
18. Haunts of Ancient Peace by Alfred Austin (1902)
19. In a Gloucestershire Garden by Henry Nicholson Ellacombe (1895)
20. In Praise of Old Gardens by Vernon Lee, et. al. (1912)
21. In the Garden of Peace by Helen Milman Crofton (1896)
22. In Veronica’s Garden by Alfred Austin (1895)
23. Intelligence of the Flowers by Maurice Maeterlinck (1906)
24. An Island Garden by Celia Laighton Thaxter (1904)
25. Life of Francis Parkman by Charles Haight Farnham (1900)
26. A Little Book to Garden Lovers by Florence Van Fleet Lyman (1925)
27. My Garden of Dreams by Abram Linwood Urban (1913)
28. My Summer in a Garden by Charles Dudley Warner (1898)
29. Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits and Plants in All Ages and in All Climes by Charles Skinner (1911)
30. Old Country House by Richard LeGallienne (1902)
31. Old English Gardening Books by Eleanour Sinclair Rohde
32. Old-fashioned Flowers and Other Out-of-door Studies by Maurice Maeterlinck (1905)
33. Old Time Gardens by Alice Morse Earle (1901)
34. On Gardens by Francis Bacon and Abraham Coverly (1907)
35. Pot-pourri from a Surrey Garden by Maria Theresa Earle (1898)
36. The Praise of Gardens by Albert Forbes Sieveking (1885)
37. Ros Rosarum Exhorto Poetarum by Eleanor Vere Boyle
38. Ruins and Old Trees of English History by Mary Roberts (~1839)
39. Seven Gardens and a Palace by Eleanor Vere Boyle (1900)
40. Sun-Dials and Roses of Yesterday by Alice Morse Earle (1902)
41. Ye Gardeyne Boke by Jennie Day Haines, editor (1906)
42. A Year in a Lancashire Garden by Henry A. Bright (1879)

Source

Evans, Mary. Garden Books, Old and New (Philadelphia: The Pennsylvania Horticulture Society, 1926). PDF on HathiTrust: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015031200747