I enjoy reading about gardens nearly as much as I enjoy gardening; which is to say, immensely. I’m as big a voyeur about gardens as I am about homes, so I love a big, glossy picture book. (Bonus points if it has multiple shots per garden.) But I am also drawn to essay collections, memoirs, how-to, you name it. Though gardens are year-round entities where I live, the first week of summer is high garden time, and, as such, a prime opportunity to share some of my favorites from a very long shelf.

• Old Herbaceous: A Novel of the Garden by Reginald Arkell
A bagatelle, but worth the few hours it takes to read simply because how often do you run across a novel with a professional gardener as its protagonist?

• The Garden Primer by Barbara Damrosch
Largely a reference book and almost entirely about vegetable gardening. Damrosch is a good teacher. (Mine’s the 1988 edition!)

• We Made a Garden by Margery Fish
I find a first-hand account of a garden like this more enjoyable and ultimately far more helpful than most how-to books. An extremely charming book.

• French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France by Richard Goodman
Another memoir of a garden, this one in rural France. It was the first such book I read, I believe, in 1993, so it holds a special place.

• This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader by Joan Dye Gussow
A remarkably thought-provoking, personal tale about the making of a vegetable garden — and, even more so, about rethinking the way we eat. A precursor to the many books now out on the subject, but the best of its kind.

• The Jewel Box Garden by Thomas Hobbs
Hobbs has great taste in gardens and is an opinionated tour guide (the best kind).

• A Book of Gardening: Ideas Methods Designs by Penelope Hobhouse
Rather dry, but lots of good info. If some of these books are ice cream, this one is fiber. (Hobhouse is a legend and I’ve enjoyed her elsewhere.)

• Sharp Gardening by Christopher Holliday
I like a crazy, dense, spiky, Mediterranean garden, and that’s what this book is packed with from cover to cover — photos and plant info alike. I’d have happily paid the cover price just for the pics of the last garden included.

• In a Mexican Garden by Gina Hyams
I don’t imagine I’ll ever have a courtyard, no matter how much I might want one, but they feature prominently in this lovely collection of Mexican gardens. A girl can dream.

• Great Gardens in Small Spaces by Melba Levick
Kind of a mixed bag of gardens, but lots of them. One of them literally changed my idea of what a “garden” even is. Plus it includes many of my favorite gardens.

• Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education by Michael Pollan
A wildly informative book — on everything from the history of the suburban lawn to the origins of certain roses. The only thing that would have made it better is if he’d actually shared more about the specific decisions he made in his own garden. I want to know more!

• A Garden Story by Leon Whiteson
Whiteson’s story of recovering his own backyard (when he was meant to writing) was hugely motivational for me when we first got our own run-down patch of dirt to tend. I’ve read it a couple of times but it’s been a few years — time for a reread.

• The Sunset Western Garden Book
An invaluable reference and starting point for plant info.