Here are the best new gardening books to give for Christmas in 2024.
I’ve categorised them into ‘best gardening books for beginners’, ‘advanced gardening books’, ‘books for vegetable growers’, ‘gardening books for kids’ and more.
However, many of these books appeal across more than one category.
Note that links to Amazon are affiliate, see disclosure.
Best new gardening books for beginners
Gardening books for beginners should inspire and inform. They’re not just practical ‘how-to’ manuals, but should also help new gardeners feel more confident, with a realistic idea of what they can achieve.
If the beginner is interested in vegetable gardening, then see ‘books for vegetable gardeners.’
RHS Horti Curious by Ann Treneman
Horti Curious by Ann Treneman (Mitchell Beazley) is a ‘Gardener’s Miscellany of Fascinating Facts & Remarkable Plants.’ I picked up this book, intending to flick through it quickly. I was immediately gripped. Turnips and sprouts in the same plant family? But lettuce not the same family as cabbage?
This is a compendium of gardening terms and practical, basic information. It is all delivered in a concise and readable way, interspersed with fascinating asides, myths and legends. For example, if you don’t want a guest to return, sweep your steps with bay leaves just after they’ve left.
But it’s also a serious gardening book – there are lessons in propagation, how to grow an orchard and what tools to buy along with the fun facts.
A dedicated plant hoarder would find this book just as informative and fascinating as a beginner – whether you’re an experienced gardener or new to gardening, I guarantee you’ll find something interesting here.
A Year in a Small Garden by Frances Tophill
A Year In A Small Garden by Frances Tophill (BBC Books) would be a perfect present for any garden lover, especially those new to gardening. It’s a good read. Frances Tophill is highly knowledgeable about plants but she conveys the information in a light and easy way, so you almost don’t realise how much you’re learning.
She’s realistic about the limits of a small garden in terms of design and also budget. There’s no major landscaping and her one big spend is a greenhouse made from recycled windows. She points out that this involves high labour costs – it takes 3-4 days to make as opposed to buying a new one that can be erected in a morning. But it is more individual and environmentally friendly.
Frances doesn’t promise any quick hacks either, pointing out that a flower border takes around three years before you can really see how it’s going to turn out.
Taking that Frances is also a professional gardener who works in major gardens, this book would also be good for anyone who has down-sized from a larger garden to a smaller one.
But all garden lovers will enjoy A Year In A Small Garden and learn something.
‘Advanced’ gardening books
You don’t want to give a keen gardener a book full of information they already know. The ideal solution is a book that is an enjoyable personal account or goes into some depth about a particular aspect of gardening.
These books are delightfully readable, so you don’t have to reserve them for ‘advanced gardeners’!
Project Mushroom by Lorraine Caley & Jodie Bryan
Project Mushroom – A Modern Guide to Growing Funghi by Lorraine Caley & Jodie Bryan (with Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, Quarto) is all about identifying, growing and using mushrooms. It’s a welcome addition to the world of growing your own. Books on foraging for mushrooms have been in the horticultural top 10s for a few years, but you only need to hear one story about mis-identifying a wild mushroom to be put off.
The grow-your-own world hadn’t talked much about mushrooms until the Caley Brothers came along. They can now be found at all the garden shows, with contemporary and inspiring displays.
Considering that speciality mushrooms are still relatively expensive in the shops and you don’t need much space to grow your own, this should be a winner.
Written with the botanic experts at Kew Gardens, this has a practical but contemporary feel to it. There’s even a section on how to make decorations with mushrooms. Short-listed for the Garden Media Guild Practical Gardening Book of the Year.
Project Mushroom – A Modern Guide to Growing Funghi and Unforgettable Gardens by the Gardens Trust – two books with a difference!
Unforgettable Gardens by The Gardens Trust
Unforgettable Gardens by the Gardens Trust (Batsford) explores the history of UK garden design through five centuries of our most important gardens. This collection of 50 historic gardens, parks and designed landscapes starts with the few gardens that still survive from the 16th century followed by gardens from the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
Garden history is particularly fascinating because planting is so temporary. A garden can be lost to neglect in a decade, but these gardens have historical records, photographs, illustrations and are placed in their social context.
One garden, Kenilworth, has been completely reconstructed from archaeological evidence and letters. There are stories about the gardens’ creators, from Elizabethan court favourites to the 20th century’s Beth Chatto and Christopher Lloyd.
Gardening inspiration books
Every year the best new gardening books are celebrated in The Garden Media Guild Awards. The awards also cover gardening in magazines, radio, podcasting, TV, photography, video and social media.
The GMG awards are judged by gardening and garden media professionals.
In an era when there is so much information available, yet it’s difficult to know which advice you can trust, a ‘GMG short-list’ or ‘GMG winner’ badge on a book, magazine or other media is the mark of excellence and horticultural accuracy. See the GMG Awards shortlists here.
In 2024, the ‘GMG Gardening Book of the Year’ was awarded to Jinny Blom for What Makes A Garden, so that is my number 1 recommendation for an inspiring gardening book.
What Makes a Garden by Jinny Blom
What Makes a Garden by Jinny Blom shines a light on how she plans and thinks about gardens. It’s not a book about the rules of garden design, but about how to approach a garden holistically. When Jinny is designing a garden, she considers art, conservation, architecture, the environment and even how the garden affects the senses.
Accurately described by its publishers as ‘thoughtful yet practical and informative’, this book is a joy for any garden lover. The judges of the GMG Gardening Book of the Year said that ‘this mix of the practical, the philosophical and the inspirational…made this book stand out.’
Lonely Planet’s Tree Atlas by Matt Collins and Thomas Rutter and Jinny Blom’s award-winning What Makes A Garden are a mixture of advice and inspiration.
Lonely Planet – The Tree Atlas by Matthew Collins and Thomas Rutter
Lonely Planet – The Tree Atlas by Matthew Collins and Thomas Rutter is a wonderful combination of travel, history and trees. It identifies 50 of ‘the world’s most amazing trees and where to find them.’ Beautifully illustrated by Holly Exley, as well as photographed, it gives you the story of each type of tree, where it fits into its environment, its quirks and details of its leaves, flowers, bark and seeds.
The tree varieties range from familiar ones, such as Norway spruce, sugar maples and silver birch to the less well known Dragon’s Blood tree, Quiver tree and the Joshua Tree.
You don’t have to be planning a trip to enjoy this book on trees – it is ‘forest bathing’ in coffee table book form. You’ll learn so much about what trees really mean to a landscape and why they are important.
But there is also practical advice on where you can find the trees and what the best time of year is to visit the area where they grow best.
Best new gardening books for vegetable gardeners
Huw Richards and Charles Dowding are two of the top names in books for vegetable gardeners in 2024. Both have successful YouTube channels in their own names.
Compost – Transform Waste into New Life by Charles Dowding (DK Books)
Anyone who is serious about eco-friendly gardening, growing your own or improving their soil will want Compost by Charles Dowding. Home-made compost is at the heart of his No Dig approach to gardening. (See this post on No Dig Flower Borders)
If you put one layer of homemade compost a year, on top of your soil, and leave it there, you’ll need less or no fertilizer. You won’t need to dig, except to put plants in the soil. And Charles’ trials have shown that you will get excellent crop yields.
Compost – Transform Waste Into New Life covers composting for all kinds of homes, from smallholdings to balconies and from pallets and Hotbins to wormeries. He ‘busts the myths that put people off composting’ with the aim of demystifying composting.
Charmingly illustrated with woodcuts, this is a good book for anyone interested in gardening in an eco-friendly way.
Charles Dowding’s Compost would be useful to all gardeners, not just veggie growers. And Huw Richards The Self Sufficiency Garden was short-listed for the GMG Practical Book of the Year.
The Self-Sufficiency Garden by Huw Richards and Sam Cooper
The Self-Sufficiency Garden by Huw Richards and Sam Cooper (DK Books) is the book for anyone who wants to grow as much food as they can and eat it all year round, even if they don’t have much space. This would restore the focus of any Veggie Grower by giving them a good new challenge for 2025 – to eat your own homegrown food every day of the year!
The book is based on Huw and Sam’s trial garden. It’s half the size of a standard allotment (125 square metres). They managed to grow 6 portions of veg a day per person or 586kg of food in total. Once the garden was set up, it took around 4 hours a week to manage.
The Self-Sufficiency Garden is a very practical book with how-tos on making raised beds, covered beds, compost and compost bins. There are also instructions on freezing, preserving and other methods of making home-grown food last all year round.
New gardening books for kids
The Little Gardeners Handbook – A Beginner’s Guide to Gardening by Michael Holland.
The Little Gardeners’ Handbook – A Beginner’s Guide to Gardening by Michael Holland (Big Picture Press) won the GMG Practical Book of the Year.
To quote the Garden Media Guild judges:
‘The Little Gardeners Handbook showed charm and beauty, whilst displaying no compromise on accuracy. The practical instructions were clear, and the supporting layout was presented in a manner that confirms the book’s contributors as masters of their subject.
The tone was perfect, un-patronising, and ideally pitched to its target audience. All generations will find this an incredibly useful and inspirational title.’
You can’t say better than that!
New gardening books for container gardeners
The world of container gardening covers both indoor and outdoor areas. Whether your planters are on patios, balconies, porches or inside on windowsills, shelves and walls, plants in pots need more care than plants growing in the ground.
If you rent or you don’t have any outdoor space, container gardening gives you a chance to connect to the natural world. (See these posts on how to decorate with indoor plants and ideas for pots in a rented garden.)
Hello Tiny World by Ben Newell
Hello Tiny World – A Journey Into The Enchanting World of Creating Terrariums by Ben Newell (DK Books) is about how to create terrariums.
These ‘tiny worlds’ have become increasingly fashionable. And they’re a great way to create a ‘mini garden’ inside.
It explains the principles of creating terrariums, with step-by-step projects, plant care advice and invaluable information about which plant groups to choose.
Ben is a major name in the world of creating terrariums, with an RHS Gold Medal to his name plus millions of social media followers around the world.
Hello Tiny World was short-listed for the Garden Media Guild Practical Book of the Year.
And it’s a thoughtful book as well as a practical one. Ben muses on the comparisons between the balance of life on our planet and the equivalent balance in a terrarium – the interplay of plants, animals, soil, light and water.
Hello Tiny World is a guide to creating terrariums and the RHS Greener Guide – Containers by Ann Treneman covers everything you need to know about growing plants in containers successfully.
The RHS Greener Guide – Containers by Ann Treneman
Containers – The Sustainable Guide to Growing Flowers, Shrubs and Crops in Pots by Ann Treneman (Mitchell Beazley) is a much needed addition to the world of container gardening. While the issues around sustainability and eco-friendly practices are now widely discussed in gardening as a whole, relatively little has been said about pots.
Part of the RHS Greener Gardening series, this is a detailed and practical look at growing plants successfully in containers. The sustainability and wildlife-friendly aspects are an integral part of having beautiful pots.
Ann Treneman won an RHS People’s Choice and a Silver-Gilt award at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show for her kitchen garden in pots. And she has also won awards for her journalism in The Times. So this is a well-written, highly readable book, as well as a mine of information for anyone interested in container growing.
Best new gardening books for wildlife-friendly gardeners
Gardeners are growing increasingly aware of the importance of their role in supporting wildlife.
Habitat loss is a huge issue in gardens and the environment generally. The more homes we build, the less space there is for wildlife shelter and food.
And the natural world – from funghi and insects onwards – contributes in some way to almost everything we rely on to live.
Planting Wildflowers by Jane Moore
Planting Wildflowers – A Grower’s Guide to Welcoming the Wild by Jane Moore (Hardie Grant) is part of the ‘A Grower’s Guide’ series. The books are aimed at encouraging wildlife into your garden. (one of Jane’s other books is featured here in Why You Need A Butterfly Garden).
It’s a very pretty book with charming illustrations, but there’s also good solid information inside. It covers why wildflowers are important, how to grow wildflowers in different ways and wildflower folklore. It’s relevant to both UK and US wildflowers.
Whether you’re a keen amateur gardener wanting to take your ‘wild’ gardening up a notch or a complete newbie, this book is highly readable.
It’s also small enough to buy as a ‘stocking stuffer’, ‘stocking filler’ or little extra present.
One Garden Against The World by Kate Bradbury has been nominated for two awards. Jane Moore’s Planting Wildflowers is part of the delightful wildlife-friendly book series ‘The Grower’s Guide to…’
One Garden Against The World by Kate Bradbury
One Garden Against The World – In Search of Hope in A Changing Climate by Kate Bradbury is about her own small wildlife-friendly garden. It’s humming with wildlife. Toads, frogs, bats and bees share the space with Kate and her rescue dog, Tosca.
This is both a diary and about finding positive ways to make a difference – for individuals and communities alike.
One Garden Against The World has been short-listed for two awards – the Garden Media Guild Beth Chatto Environmental Award and also The People’s Book Prize.
It’s thoughtful, highly readable and would make a good present for anyone either interested in gardening or the environment.
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