7 Best Gardening Books for Beginners
Starting your very own garden can be a daunting task for a beginner gardener. Where do you begin? When should you sow seeds? How do you protect your garden from pests?
These are all questions every beginner gardener needs the answers to. Luckily, they can be found in gardening books specifically written for beginners.
If you are anything like me, gardening never came naturally. Anything I touched would die, I didn’t know how to improve the soil in my garden, and every year my plants would all flower at the same time, and then die at the same time.
I didn’t have a clue how to create a beautiful, year-round garden…until I invested in some gardening books for beginners
This list of books is some of my absolute favorites that have helped me to create the perfect garden for myself.
This post contains affiliate links that earn me a commission at no additional cost to you.
If you are a beginner gardener too, I highly recommend trying these books. They will teach you:
- What to plant and when
- How to grow your food
- Which are the best plants to grow that won’t die easily
- How to manage pests
- How to encourage beneficial wildlife into your garden.
Check out these 7 best gardening books for beginners and start creating your perfect outdoor space:
1. Royal Horticultural Society Gardening Through The Year
This is the perfect gardening book for beginners created specifically to be easy-to-follow and guide you with what to do throughout the year.
If you are a beginner gardener, then I would certainly start with this book. The ‘Gardening Through the Year’ book is broken up into monthly chapters to help you know exactly what to do each month in your garden.
From harvesting to growing flowers it covers everything with easy-to-do lists, reminders, and get-ahead tips for the following months.
Plus, if you are a visual learner, this gardening book includes lots of illustrations demonstrating what to do. There is also a large photo appendix of 350 plants helping you select the best plants for your garden based on care requirements and growing habits.
Buy the RHS Gardening Through the Year Book here.
2. 100 Plants That Won’t Die In Your Garden
As a beginner gardener, you may be feeling frustrated as your plants seem to die each season, no matter what you try.
This book is excellent at ensuring that doesn’t happen again. The 100 Plants That Won’t Die in your Garden book helps beginner gardeners by listing 100 plants that can thrive almost anywhere.
Each plant is introduced with top tips on how best to look after it. Underneath are bullet points for easy reading sharing where it is best to plant each flower, its flowering season, and key important details.
This gardening book covers perennials, bulbs, annuals and biennials, grasses, conifers, shrubs, and finally climbers. It has everything you need to help have a flourishing garden all year round.
Take a look at this gardening book here.
3. Good Bug Bad Bug
As a beginner gardener, bugs can seem like nothing but unwanted pests. But actually, many bugs are beneficial to your garden.
So how can you tell the difference?
Well, to the untrained eye, you can’t. That’s where this gardening book comes in.
Ideal for beginner gardeners, ‘Good Bug Bad Bug’ covers over 30 different bugs you might find in your garden. With color photos included, this book makes it easy to identify which are destructive and which insects are beneficial to your garden.
In addition, Jessica Walliser, the author, covers how to attract more useful insects and remove unwanted bugs without the use of toxic chemicals.
Buy this highly recommended book here.
4. Planting For Wildlife
Being new to gardening, you might be more conscious of creating an environment that is safe and welcoming to wildlife.
Not all wildlife will harm your garden. But with more and more wildlife numbers decreasing, you can help by providing them with a safe space in your garden.
‘Planting for Wildlife’ by Jane Moore covers how to create a welcoming garden for wildlife without the need for acres of land.
She shares simple ways any gardener, no matter how experienced, can create an inviting space for a range of wildlife such as birds, bees, and hedgehogs which are all beneficial to your garden.
Create your very own wildlife-friendly garden with this book here.
5. Week By Week Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook
For the beginner gardener who wants to grow your vegetables, the ‘Week by Week Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook’ is an ideal place to start.
This book helps you plan your time and manage different tasks involved in growing your crops. You will learn how to add nutrients to the soil, sow from seeds, manage garden pests, and harvest your vegetables.
With weekly to-do lists, schedules, and manageable tasks, this gardening book will help you grow a range of vegetables from seed including broccoli, asparagus, and carrot.
Buy the Week by Week Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook here.
6. Homegrown Herbs
Following on from growing your vegetables from scratch, another popular topic for beginner gardeners is how to create their very own herb garden.
Herbs are brilliant to grow at home. Whether you choose to grow your herbs indoors or outside is up to you, but growing herbs will provide you with immediate access to fresh herbs that you can use in your food and drinks straight from your garden.
Tammi Hartung’s book ‘Homegrown Herbs’ is a good place to start. She covers 101 herbs helping beginner gardeners grow their herbs from seeds.
This book includes sowing seeds, maintenance, harvesting, and drying, along with how to maximize the use of your herbs through food, remedies, body care products, and crafts.
Homegrown herbs have everything a beginner gardener needs to successfully start and grow their very own herb garden.
Purchase your very own Homegrown Herbs book here.
7. The Royal Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Gardening
Finally an ‘oldie but a goodie’! The RHS Encyclopedia of Gardening should be owned by every gardener, no matter your experience.
Full of over 500 step-by-step sequences covering every gardening technique you can think of, this book has everything a beginner gardener could need.
With photographic explanations, different types of plants, practical elements of gardening, and protecting your plants, this encyclopedia will help you become a confident gardener.
If you could only select one book from these top 7 gardening books for beginners, this would be the book to buy. It’s detailed, clear, and written by experienced gardeners, you can be sure this book is going to help you create your perfect garden space.
With these 7 gardening books, you will grow from a beginner gardener to a confident expert. These books each compliment each other either focusing on a specific gardening topic or providing a detailed catalog of plants or techniques.
Though I recommend purchasing the RHS Encyclopedia of Gardening if you can only select one, I do believe there are benefits to also investing in the others too.
Good Bug Bad Bug for example will help you protect your plants without the use of chemicals. Whereas Homegrown Herbs specifically focuses on supporting you to grow and use your herbs from your garden.
