Summer Reading’s Plant a Seed… Read! theme is all about growth, discovery, and the unexpected places a good story can take root. From gardens that bring neighbors together to flowers that help heal old wounds and landscapes filled with secrets from the past, these novels explore the powerful connections between people and the natural world.
If you’re ready to cultivate your next great read, dig into these garden-inspired stories of friendship, resilience, history, and new beginnings.
Looking for more recommendations? Stop by the Library and ask a staff member for their favorite book. And don’t forget to sign up for Summer Reading!
The Heirloom Garden by Viola Shipman
Iris Maynard lost her husband in World War II, her daughter to illness and, finally, her reason to live. Walled off from the world for decades behind the towering fence surrounding her home, Iris has built anew family … of flowers. Iris propagates her own daylilies and roses while tending to a garden filled with the heirloom starts that keep the memories of her loved ones alive. When Abby Peterson moves next door with her family – a husband traumatized by his service in the Iraq War and a young daughter searching for stability – Iris is reluctantly yet inevitably drawn into her boisterous neighbor’s life, where, united by loss and a love of flowers, she and Abby tentatively unearth their secrets, and help each other discover how much life they have yet to live.
The Twilight Garden by Sara Nisha Adams
Between the houses of No.77 and No.79 on Stoke Newington Green in London, there is a shared garden. It was a beautiful thing once, a little oasis in a bustling city for neighbors by day and the local foxes at twilight. Now it’s overgrown and neglected, an empty patch of greenery lost to time.
But that suits neighbors Winston and Bernice just fine, their houses may share the garden, but they’re not exactly neighborly. But one day, a mysterious parcel drops through Winston’s door at No.77. It contains no note, only a bundle of photographs of the garden in bloom many years ago, vibrant with flowers and wildlife, filled with people from every corner of the community. Is someone trying to tell them something? As a seed is planted. Winston and Bernice lay down their arms and pick up their gardening gloves.
As they dig and plant, scrub and water, the garden begins to come out of hibernation, and the frostiness between them slowly begins to thaw. In finding their green fingers, the unlikely pair also start to hatch a bigger plan, could the revitalized garden help to revive the community spirit that’s been languishing for so long? With a little help from the secret gardener sending the parcels, they’re determined to find out.
The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly
Present day: Emma Lovett, who has dedicated her career to breathing new life into long-neglected gardens, has just been given the opportunity of a lifetime: to restore the gardens of the famed Highbury House estate, designed in 1907 by her hero Venetia Smith. But as Emma dives deeper into the gardens’ past, she begins to uncover secrets that have long lain hidden.
1907: A talented artist with a growing reputation for her ambitious work, Venetia Smith has carved out a niche for herself as a garden designer to industrialists, solicitors, and bankers looking to show off their wealth with sumptuous country houses. When she is hired to design the gardens of Highbury House, she is determined to make them a triumph, but the gardens–and the people she meets–promise to change her life forever.
1944: When land girl Beth Pedley arrives at a farm on the outskirts of the village of Highbury, all she wants is to find a place she can call home. Cook Stella Adderton, on the other hand, is desperate to leave Highbury House to pursue her own dreams. And widow Diana Symonds, the mistress of the grand house, is anxiously trying to cling to her pre-war life now that her home has been requisitioned and transformed into a convalescent hospital for wounded soldiers. But when war threatens Highbury House’s treasured gardens, these three very different women are drawn together by a secret that will last for decades.
