The Curated Garden: Books & Podcasts

The best gardening books and podcasts for thoughtful gardeners

A garden is never quite finished, which is both the problem and the charm. It’s equal parts fantasy and frustration. There’s always a gap to fill, a pot to shift, or a plant making a bid for freedom. That’s the strange and humbling pull of gardening: it keeps you looking, guessing, learning, and, most importantly, growing.

A great gardening book or podcast understands this perfectly. Whether you’re planning flowerbeds and borders, looking for small garden ideas, coaxing herbs along on a windowsill, or wanting something good to listen to while you water, weed, and wander about with secateurs in green-thumbed hand, these are the titles we would keep close.

For better borders

How to Create Beautiful Flowerbeds and Borders by Robyn Booth is a useful companion for anyone planning a new border, refreshing a tired flowerbed, or trying to understand why some gardens seem to look great in all seasons.

Robyn Booth is a senior gardener for the National Trust, and the book draws on the kind of practical garden knowledge behind some of the country’s most admired flowerbeds and borders. It looks at colour, texture, plant combinations, growing conditions, pollinators, shade, sun, drought tolerance, and seasonal interest.

What makes it valuable is the way it encourages you to think beyond single plants. A successful border needs rhythm, contrast, softness, height, and repeat. It needs something to carry the eye when the early flowers have gone over. It needs plants that can work together, rather than a row of hopeful purchases from the nursery looking faintly unrelated once they are in the ground.

For anyone searching for flowerbed ideas, border planting advice, or National Trust garden inspiration, this is the book we’d start with.

For starting small

Give it a Grow by Martha Swales has a more hands-in-the-soil spirit. It’s friendly, practical, and refreshingly open to whatever outdoor space you have available.

The projects cover vegetables, fruit, herbs, flowers, and wildlife, with ideas for gardens, patios, balconies, windowsills, and small outdoor spaces. There are garlic greens for the windowsill, tumbling strawberries, bulb lasagnes, and small ponds for wildlife.

The tiny pond idea feels especially pleasing because it proves that wildlife gardening doesn’t need to begin with a grand redesign. It turns out that even a washing up bowl sunk into a corner can become a small habitat, bringing water, shade, insects, and movement into a space that had previously been doing very little.

This is a strong choice for beginner gardeners, renters, busy people, and anyone who wants simple garden projects that still feel rewarding. It’s also a useful reminder that gardening doesn’t require the perfect plot.

For your five-a-day

Irresistible Salads by Sophie Knox Richmond belongs in the kitchen rather than the garden, ideally somewhere close to the olive oil, lemons, and the herbs. If you have a producing veg patch but tend to run out of ideas on how to use it all, this is the book for you.

It’s a recipe book for generous salads with real substance. It moves through grains, beans, pulses, pasta, potatoes, slaws, dressings, and mezze style plates, with recipes such as roasted fig, Parma ham, and Dolcelatte, or lemon and chilli butter beans with mozzarella and pesto.

It feels right for the part of the year when food becomes lighter and brighter. A bowl, a sharp dressing, something creamy, a handful of herbs, and a plate taken back outside for eating.

For those looking for summer salad recipes, colourful lunch ideas, garden party food, or simple dishes for outdoor eating, this is the one to keep within reach.

For those who know gardening is a gift

Poems for Gardeners, edited by Gaby Morgan with an introduction by Alice Vincent, is a more contemplative take on gardening.

Arranged by season, the collection moves from spring shoots through summer growth, high summer, autumn, and winter. It gathers poems about birds, plants, trees, flowers, weeds, bugs, butterflies, weather, wildlife, frost, and bare branches, with work from poets including William Wordsworth, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson.

It’s a lovely gift for a keen gardener, but also the kind of small book to keep on the greenhouse shelf and read in fragments. Gardening is full of little actions squeezed in between the rest of life. Pulling a few weeds as you go by, remembering to water seedlings just in time – these all make the perfect excuse to read a few lines.

For anyone looking for garden poetry, seasonal nature writing, or a thoughtful gardening gift, this has the right mixture of beauty, familiarity, and quiet surprise.

For listening while watering

Gardening is, by its very nature, hands on. This means that podcasts are the ideal companion while you potter. They can follow you through watering, weeding, deadheading, seed sorting, greenhouse tidying, or searching the borders for misplaced tools.

Roots and All

Best for thoughtful gardening conversations.

Roots and All is a good place to begin if you enjoy proper plant conversations with depth. It has a broad, thoughtful feel and suits gardeners who like detail, plant knowledge, and curiosity beyond the usual seasonal jobs.

This is one for listening while watering, seed sorting, greenhouse tidying, or tackling the sort of task that is easier with a voice in the background.

RHS Roots

Best for practical gardening advice.

RHS Roots brings the authority of the RHS into an accessible audio format, with practical gardening advice across plants, techniques, and seasonal questions.

It is a useful podcast for gardeners who want reliable guidance without having to rummage through five different sources before making a decision.

Grow, Cook, Eat, Arrange by Sarah Raven

Best for real garden questions.

Sarah Raven’s Grow, Cook, Eat, Arrange Q&A episodes are especially useful for garden problems that appear mid task, when you are standing over a sad looking plant and wondering whether to cut it back, feed it, move it, or accept defeat.

The appeal is its directness. It answers the kind of questions gardeners actually have, often at the exact moment they need answering.

Why Women Grow

Best for reflective listening.

Why Women Grow takes a more personal route, looking at gardens through creativity, wellbeing, memory, and connection to place.

It is a garden podcast for slower listening, especially if you are interested in the emotional pull of growing, rather than only the practical work of planting, pruning, and feeding.

The Ins & Outs

Best for gardens, interiors, and outdoor living.

The Ins & Outs, hosted by interior designer Jojo Barr and garden designer Pollyanna Wilkinson, is broader than a pure gardening podcast, which is part of its charm.

It moves between interior and outdoor spaces without ever taking itself too seriously. It’s as if you’re listening to an improbably informative chat between really good friends - which you are. Personal colour and seemingly endless professional knowledge are blended to humorous effect. If you love a cheeky chat about all things aesthetic, this is the podcast for you. 

Between them, these books and podcasts cover the useful, the edible, the lyrical, and the technical. The pleasure of a garden is its ever-evolving nature, and there’s always something new to learn. Read a little, listen for a while, steal one useful idea, then get back to winging it.