Books for the Small Space Flower Gardener
Some of my favorites (and why I'm excited about the ones yet to come)
My dream flower gardening book for small spaces doesn’t exist, at least not as a proper book in one volume. I would love to see more books dedicated to growing flowers in a small, urban, or temporary plot. Books that not only go over outdoor growing space but also the indoor: where do you keep all the supplies, and where do you put the grow lights? Books that give equal weight to both aesthetics and practicalities. It seems like most flower garden books veer commercial farm or at least very large yard, while most urban garden books focus on vegetables. And there’s nothing wrong with that at all, but I’d love to see more of a blending of the two worlds in book form. I love photos of gardeners in fields of flowers as much as the next person, but I think it would also be fun to see pictures of a city gardener lugging a bag of compost up three flights of stairs, or maybe figuring out how to take a tray full of perennials on the subway without making the other riders mad.
But new gardening books are coming out all the time, and since a lot of them are being written by young people it’s probably only a matter of time before that book does come out. Right now there are plenty of books out there that provide instruction and inspiration, and below are my very favorites. Some are actually geared towards small space growers, while others are more about flower growing on a larger scale. But I find that it’s totally doable to cobble together tips and take something that works in a big garden and apply it to my own small terrace garden in the city.
Floret Farm’s Cut Flower Garden
Erin Benzakein
This one is a given, as it was the the book that really started off my flower-growing journey, and I’m guessing that it was the inspiration and holy bible for thousands of flower farmers out there right now. If you grow flowers, there’s a good chance that you have this one on your shelf already. Erin Benzakein of Floret really knows her stuff, and she knows how to teach. Her detailed seed sowing instructions, complete with photos illustrating every step, took something that had seemed complicated and mystical to me and made it simple and doable. I followed the instructions and actually grew flowers!
Of course Erin’s aesthetic—flowers in pale shades photographed against vintage white slatted walls or Pacific Northwestern sunsets—is a big reason for her popularity, but her books are packed with solid information, too, as is her free, online library. I will say that this book leans more flower farm than personal garden, but if you’re growing flowers for the first time, I can’t imagine a better book to start out with.
A Year Full of Flowers
Sarah Raven
My ultimate gardening heroine is Sarah Raven, who, like Erin Benzakein, combines the aesthetic with the scientific equally, writing beautiful books full of heavily researched and trialed advice. Her namesake brand is huge in the UK, and her garden, Perch Hill, might be my dream garden. She also happens to be connected by marriage to Vita Sackville-West (her husband is Vita’s grandson), but that’s just incidental.
This is probably the most comprehensive of Sarah’s flower gardening books, covering everything from growing to arranging, and if I ever have a gardening question I look it up in this book first. It takes you through the entire year, listing out all of the tasks to do, flowers to start, and seasonal decorations to make each month. Perch Hill is a big garden, and if you’re like me your garden is nothing like it, but there’s still plenty of helpful advice in the book for gardens of all sizes. Only garden in containers? Sarah’s new book A Year Full of Pots is out next month.
How to Garden When You Rent
Matthew Pottage
This one’s not exactly a book dedicated to flower growing, though there are lots of flowers in it. It’s just that it’s rare to find a professional gardener whose own garden happens to be small, urban, and/or rented, so if they write a book about it then I definitely want to read it. Matthew Pottage is the curator of RHS Wisley (or rather, was, since it looks like he’s moving on to a similar role at The Royal Parks) and is a garden broadcaster for the BBC. He also happens to have a small garden of his own at a rented London flat.
As I mentioned above it’s tough finding an urban gardening book that’s not aimed at vegetable growers or beginners or both. Most of these books don’t give a lot of thought to aesthetics. They love to tell you how to grow some strawberries in an old pair of boots. This isn’t one of those books.
This book is for beginners and experienced gardeners alike. It covers the basics of seed sowing and plant placement, but it also answers the question of ‘Should I buy a clematis or plant a tree in a space I don’t own?’ And Matthew’s answer is definitely ‘Yes!’ Of course a rented garden can be anything from a tiny balcony to a great big yard, but there’s plenty of advice here on growing in containers in a small plot, utilizing all the space you have on hand. There are also some sneaky tips on guerrilla gardening on city property, which I especially love.
The Flower Yard
Arthur Parkinson
Of all the flower gardening books out there, this one is the most applicable to my own situation. Arthur Parkinson, Instagram garden star and occasional guest on Gardener’s World, wrote this book when his main gardening space was a small and bricked-over front courtyard in which he could only grow in pots. Remember when I complained that most books about growing in small spaces don’t give enough attention to aesthetic detail? This book is also not one of those books. It’s actually the complete opposite.
“To be a gardener is to be an artist,” Arthur writes. “There seems to be an abhorrent idea that beauty is something you can only aspire to and achieve in a grand house or in a large garden. But beauty doesn't bow to this; it can be nurtured in the smallest space, and here it can be truly fabulous.” He doesn’t waste his precious growing space growing vegetables—at least not ones that aren’t wonderful to look at.
Arthur works with Sarah Raven and occasionally appears on her podcast Grow, Cook, Eat, Arrange, and I love to hear them talk flowers. They’re both very aesthetically-minded and opinionated, and Arthur doesn’t hold back in his book, either. He likes dolly tubs (containers made of galvanized metal) but only when they’re older and not too shiny. He likes bold colors—not the pale, pastel-y ones that are so popular in Instagram flower world. And he really loves Absolutely Fabulous.
Like Matthew Pottage, Arthur encourages us not to be limited by traditional gardening advice, and to grow whatever we’d like, no matter how tiny our gardens. A small container garden can even be a plus, he says, because of the proximity of it to one’s living space. You don’t have to take a walk through your yard to see flowers when they’re right outside your door and on your windowsill.
Garden Notes:
Sweet peas are officially planted out into two big pots (one of them not shown) with teepees I made from bamboo canes and sticks I bought and found. The teepees don’t look great—hoping for them to be covered up with flowers soon.
I also planted three of the cerinthe seedlings out into a pot I found.
The rest of the seedlings are having a bit of a back and forth between the cold frame and grow lights. The snapdragons I was babying inside shot up all of a sudden, so I’ve put them out to harden off before planting, but took in some of the seedlings that have been in the cold frame since germination because they’re growing too slowly and I need them to pull their weight now.
My older rose has aphids. Maybe I should take it as a positive sign that spring is here?
This sounds like you have a book to write!
I feel the same, the book that we need most is missing and Sarah's raven's year full of pots comes closest. I'd love to write it someday but I've never written anything. But you have, I really love your writing!! Do you mean in the other comment that you need to get more urban gardening experience before you could do such a book? I think your knowledge about the subject is already quite advanced!
Also, I was wondering whether you think that a year full of flowers is valuable to have in addition to a year full of pots? I only have the pots book. (I also have Arthur Parkinson's one, which I love, as well as two dutch books on native plants in smaller spaces and growing ecological cut flowers.)