2025 Garden Book Reviews: Our Top Picks

While there’s usually not much to do outdoors in the garden during winter, it’s the perfect time to catch up on reading. Here are some recent releases that will keep any gardener entertained during the coldest months. Read these to inspire your spring planting plans!

The New Beautiful brings together 52 gardens first featured in Gardens Illustrated magazine, each one chosen to reflect the growing emphasis on ecology and sustainability in contemporary garden design. While aesthetics remain important, these gardens demonstrate how beauty can emerge from decisions based on climate resilience, wildlife support and responsible use of resources. 

The featured gardens, mostly in the UK, span a range of settings—from compact urban courtyards and rooftop plots to windswept coastal landscapes and expansive country estates. Each garden profile is concise yet insightful, overlaying the writer’s interpretation with comments from the designer and others involved in the creation or ongoing care of the site. Large photographs capture wide views and the context of surrounding landscapes, buildings and landforms.  

The gardens run from highly naturalistic schemes to more traditional, formally arranged spaces, demonstrating that ecological gardening can take many different shapes. Historic properties such as Sissinghurst Castle are shown evolving in response to modern environmental concerns, while urban gardens reveal how even small sites can become ecologically rich and beautiful.  

The book highlights both planting design and hardscape choices, including the use of reclaimed materials, the creation of microclimates and the practical considerations that go into long-term ecological stewardship. Because it gives readers a window into the designers’ thought processes, inspirations and intentions, The New Beautiful is as instructive as it is entertaining, providing food for thought on changes we might make in our own gardens. 

According to author Kelly Norris, Your Natural Garden, a follow-up to his New Naturalism (2021), is meant to be “a primer for creating an ecological garden,” and that’s exactly what it is. However, this book stands out from others on naturalistic planting or rewilding in how it treats the gardener as a crucial piece of the garden and also a deserved benefactor of the joys it can bring.  

Norris begins by acknowledging that gardens serve many purposes, and that while we often garden for pollinators, wildlife and the broader environment, we also garden for ourselves. He asserts that gardens shouldn’t be treated as separate from nature, but instead as parts of natural systems, and that the gardener can be a beneficial agent of ecological disturbance. 

The instructive angle of the book emphasizes planting as the central act of gardening—Norris encourages the mantra “just keep planting.” Instead of providing specific plant lists, he focuses on teaching readers about plant communities, how to match plants to specific site conditions and how to assess both locally native and regionally appropriate species. This way, each gardener can develop their own palette. He offers guidance on creating a personal garden style, with advice on design, editing plantings, understanding and encouraging ecological succession and establishing a long-term framework for the garden.  

Photographs of Norris’s own Des Moines garden and others show how natural gardens can be created in different contexts and ensure the book’s appeal across regions and tastes. 

Related article: An Interview with Kelly Norris, Naturalistic Garden Designer

The Book of Garden Flowers is much more than a reference guide—it’s a beautifully produced tribute to the long and colorful relationship between people and the flowering plants we’ve invited into our gardens.  

As both an artist and a gardener, Angie Lewin brings a keen eye to the flowers she has chosen to profile. Her artwork, which ranges from soft watercolor studies to bold screenprints and elegant wood engravings, gives the book a rich visual texture. Every page reflects her love of the subject matter. 

Christopher Stocks’s writing complements Lewin’s artwork perfectly. He offers engaging, well-researched histories of each flower—how it was discovered, who helped popularize it and why it became part of garden tradition. Readers meet an assortment of plant hunters, nursery owners, botanists and designers, stretching across centuries and continents and woven into the stories of specific flowers. 

For gardeners looking for practical information, there are plenty of helpful touches: notable species and cultivars are highlighted, and there are just enough tips on growing conditions and habits to give the reader a sense of how the plant might behave in their own garden. But makes the book special is how it balances fact, story and art. It’s a reminder that gardens are not only made of plants—they’re made of people, places and culture too. 

Glorious Gardens offers a lush and highly visual tour through the private gardens of 21 interior designers based in the United States and Europe. The book is about visual delight. Each garden is introduced with a brief page of text outlining the background of the designer and the story behind their outdoor space, followed by a generous sequence of full-page photographs that allow readers to explore its details.  

Because it lacks lengthy commentary or advice, the book invites readers to engage their own powers of observation and interpretation. For experienced gardeners—especially Horticulture readers—this approach is a strength. The photographs clearly convey structure, flow and planting intent, and it’s easy to pick up on ideas about color, texture and composition by studying the images. 

The book also reflects a connection between interior design and garden making. Although many of the featured designers worked with landscape professionals, they are deeply involved in day-to-day gardening and have a clear affinity for plants. The results are diverse and inspiring—garden spaces that feel thoughtfully curated yet thoroughly personal. Some are bold and sculptural, others soft and immersive, but all demonstrate how a strong artistic sensibility can translate into outdoor design. 

Pansies pays tribute to a group of plants that are often dismissed as seasonal fillers. Author Brenna Estrada makes a strong case for giving pansies and violas the respect they deserve—not only for their remarkable history in gardens and popular culture, but also for their resilience, diversity and beauty.  

The book begins with a fascinating look at their rise to prominence through the 19th-century nursery trade, offering plenty of historical context before shifting into practical territory. Estrada then walks readers through the nuts and bolts of growing pansies successfully today, whether in beds, pots or cutting gardens. 

Clear instructions are provided for starting plants from seed, as well as other methods of propagation, and Estrada offers detailed advice on caring for them throughout the growing season so that they become more than brief seasonal accents. She outlines the conditions in which pansies truly thrive, and shares strategies for helping them survive heat, drought and other challenges that pop up.  

In the final section of the book, readers are treated to portraits of standout varieties in every imaginable color—including nearly black selections. Drawing on her experience as a flower farmer, Estrada also includes guidance on using violas and pansies as cut flowers, encouraging gardeners to experiment with them in arrangements and mixed bouquets. In short, Pansies offers both inspiration and practical know-how. It will leave many readers looking anew at the humble six-pack at the garden center!  

My Garden by Dutch designer Jacqueline van der Kloet offers an engaging and richly illustrated tour through her property just outside Amsterdam, using a month-by-month structure that allows readers to follow its seasonal rhythm and transformations.  

Van der Kloet is internationally known for her colorful, naturalistic plantings—especially her masterful use of bulbs—and that expertise is on full display here. While bulbs play a starring role at her home, they are supported by a thoughtfully layered mix of perennials, shrubs and trees. For each month, she highlights seasonal standouts. She also includes side-by-side photos taken from the same spot in each month, to show changes over time—an idea readers will likely want to try in their own gardens. 

In addition to sharing her home garden, van der Kloet includes side trips to some of her public and private design projects around the world, several of which are accompanied by planting plans. Throughout, she offers practical advice on design, plant combinations, maintenance and—of course—bulb planting, including her favorite varieties by season and color. The book’s narrative is grounded in long experience but delivered in an approachable tone, making it both informative and enjoyable to read. My Garden provides plenty of ideas and inspiration, along with a vivid sense of how good design unfolds over the course of the year. 

Garden to the Max is a fun and thoughtful exploration of maximalist gardening in all its forms—which are more diverse than one might think. Visiting 20 gardens across the United States, Teresa Woodard shows that “going all out” in the landscape involves much more than simply filling space with bright colors and abundant plants.  

Similar to American Roots (2022), which Woodard co-authored, this book combines engaging garden tours with practical takeaways that readers can apply in their own gardens, regardless of scale. Bob Stefko’s personality-capturing portraits of the gardeners sit alongside his photographs of their outdoor spaces and close-up images of favorite details. Drone photography provides an interesting perspective, highlighting how these exuberant gardens stand apart from often minimalist neighboring yards. 

The book is rich with plant suggestions, hands-on tips and simple projects, making it suitable for gardeners who are ready to fully embrace maximalism—and those who might prefer to “max out” a single container or corner. And it shows that maximalism is not equal to excessiveness—it’s a thoughtful curation of plants, objects and structure that builds atmosphere and meaning. 

This is the 30th-anniversary edition of the book in which filmmaker, artist and activist Derek Jarman chronicled the creation of his iconic garden at Prospect Cottage in Dungeness, England. From 1986 until his death to AIDS-related illness in 1994, Jarman transformed the harsh shingle landscape surrounding his coastal cottage into a surprisingly rich and colorful garden, using driftwood and other seashore objects and plant species that had proven themselves resilient in the dry, windswept, barren conditions. 

This garden book is a deeply personal document that blends plant descriptions and practical notes with poetry, memories and reflection. It often feels like a diary or a long letter, and Jarman’s emotional connection to the landscape comes through on every page. He provides only little reference to his declining health,  
but it adds a poignant layer.  

Rereleased today, the book resonates strongly with current conversations around gravel gardening, rewilding and the use of regionally adapted plants that require little intervention. Jarman’s preference for species that belonged to the surrounding shingle habitat reflects a modern sensibility. As he writes, “You see it is rather a wild garden; I really recommend this—out with those lawns and in with the stinging nettles and kerbside flowers…I would like anyone who reads my book to try this wildness in a corner. It will bring you much happiness.” 

Photographs taken over the years by his friend Howard Sooley document the evolving garden and capture the atmosphere of Prospect Cottage, matching well with the contemplative tone of the text. Derek Jarman’s Garden remains inspiring and insightful today, encouraging us to make beauty despite all challenges.