A classic in the literature of the garden, Green Thoughts is a beautifully written and highly original collection of seventy-two essays, alphabetically arranged, on topics ranging from "Annuals" and "Artichokes" to "Weeds" and "Wildflowers." An amateur gardener for over thirty years, Eleanor Perenyi draws upon her wide-ranging knowledge of gardening lore to create a delightful, witty blend of how-to advice, informed opinion, historical insight, and philosophical musing. There are entries in praise of earthworms and in protest of rock gardens, a treatise on the sexual politics of...

Oft quoted but seldom credited, Charles Dudley Warner's My Summer in a Garden is a classic of American garden writing and was a seminal early work in the then fledgling genre of American nature writing. Warner--prominent in his day as a writer and newspaper editor--was a dedicated amateur gardener who shared with Mark Twain, his close friend and neighbor, a sense of humor that remains deliciously fresh today.

In monthly dispatches, Warner chronicles his travails in the garden, where he and his cat, Calvin, seek to ward off a stream of interlopers, from the neighbors' huge-hoofed...