Why am I passionate about this?

I am a photographer of gardens and botanical still-lifes. I have a passion for plants and flowers and love reading about their historical and cultural significance. I am always curious about the meanings that humankind has ascribed to flowers in different cultures and eras. I have written and photographed three books that revolve around my passion for flowers.


I wrote

In Bloom: Creating and Living With Flowers

By Ngoc Minh Ngo,

Book cover of In Bloom: Creating and Living With Flowers

What is my book about?

In Bloom is my second book dedicated to the study of the muse Flora. My exploration took me to an…

Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

The books I picked & why

Book cover of Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

Ngoc Minh Ngo Why did I love this book?

This is a book that I have read and reread several times. The author is not a garden writer but a professor of Italian literature at Stanford University, and Gardens is a unique work in garden literature. Harrison’s essay – erudite, thoughtful, and fascinating – examines the urge to garden throughout history. The book takes you on a journey to all gardens – real and imagined – from the Garden of Eden to the Garden School of Epicurus and the homeless gardens in New York City, to Versailles and the Paradise gardens of Islam. With its wide-ranging topics and cultural references, the book invites repeated readings, especially when I want to think more deeply about what gardening reveals about our human condition.

By Robert Pogue Harrison,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Gardens as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Humans have long turned to gardens - both real and imaginary - for sanctuary from the frenzy and tumult that surrounds them. With "Gardens", Robert Pogue Harrison graces readers with a thoughtful, wide-ranging examination of the many ways gardens evoke the human condition. Moving from the gardens of ancient philosophers to the gardens of homeless people in contemporary New York, he shows how, again and again, the garden has served as a check against the destruction and losses of history. Alive with the echoes and arguments of Western thought, "Gardens" is a fitting continuation of the intellectual journeys of Harrison's…


Book cover of The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

Ngoc Minh Ngo Why did I love this book?

Another author of wide-ranging intellect, Pollan takes us through the history of the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato from the viewpoint of the plants. The chapters on the apple and the tulip are my favorites. Pollan has me looking at my favorite flowers in new ways – rose and peony, in his view, are Dionysian flowers, “deeply sensual” while the tulip is Apollonian, all clarity and order. But beauty, as defined by the Greeks, is when “Apollonian form and Dionysian ecstasy are held in balance,” thus the most beautiful flowers are “the ones that partake of their opposing elements.” Pollan’s brief history of flowers ends with an idea that forms the basis of my work: “There, somehow, both transcendence and necessity. Could that be it–right there, in a flower–the meaning of life?”

By Michael Pollan,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked The Botany of Desire as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A farmer cultivates genetically modified potatoes so that a customer at McDonald's half a world away can enjoy a long, golden french fry. A gardener plants tulip bulbs in the autumn and in the spring has a riotous patch of colour to admire. Two simple examples of how humans act on nature to get what we want. Or are they? What if those potatoes and tulips have evolved to gratify certain human desires so that humans will help them multiply? What if, in other words, these plants are using us just as we use them? In blending history, memoir and…


Book cover of The Land Where Lemons Grow: The Story of Italy and Its Citrus Fruit

Ngoc Minh Ngo Why did I love this book?

This book combines the best in travel writing with history, art, and food. Attlee takes the readers through Italy, from Lake Garda’s lemon houses and the gardens of Tuscan villas to the scented bergamot groves in Calabria to a marmalade kitchen in Sicily. Along the way, we learn about the “garden poem,” a genre of poetry practiced in the 10th and 11th centuries by Islamic poets living in Sicily. The book also includes recipes for a chocolate tart from Capri, a lamb stew from a 13th-century Arabic cookbook, candied peels, and drinks using the abundant variety of citrus available in Italy. It’s a book for all the senses, a great read for gardeners during the winter months.

By Helena Attlee,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The Land Where Lemons Grow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Land Where Lemons Grow is the sweeping story of Italy's cultural history told through the history of its citrus crops. From the early migration of citrus from the foothills of the Himalayas to Italy's shores to the persistent role of unique crops such as bergamot (and its place in the perfume and cosmetics industries) and the vital role played by Calabria's unique Diamante citrons in the Jewish celebration of Sukkoth, author Helena Attlee brings the fascinating history and its gustatory delights to life.

Whether the Battle of Oranges in Ivrea, the gardens of Tuscany, or the story of the…


Book cover of Orwell's Roses

Ngoc Minh Ngo Why did I love this book?

This tour de force of a book is a profound and illuminating meditation on what Orwell’s simple act of planting seven roses can mean, in terms of questions about who we are and how we spend our life. Solnit weaves together seamlessly stories of roses, nature, 20th-century revolutionary politics, literature, and people to reimagine how we might live a life with both beauty and justice. She writes with clarity, passion, and wisdom. Sprinkled throughout the book are thought-provoking reflections on a wide range of subjects: trees and their relationship to time, the fusion of avant-garde art theories and radical political ideas in Tina Modotti’s 1924 photograph Roses, Mexico; the political and cultural implications of one’s identity; the inhumane treatment of workers in the flower industry in Columbia; and what it is that we love when we love flowers, just to name a few. It’s a heady but deeply inspiring book.

By Rebecca Solnit,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Orwell's Roses as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'I loved this book... An exhilarating romp through Orwell's life and times' Margaret Atwood

'Expansive and thought-provoking' Independent

Outside my work the thing I care most about is gardening - George Orwell

Inspired by her encounter with the surviving roses that Orwell is said to have planted in his cottage in Hertfordshire, Rebecca Solnit explores how his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist, and the intertwined politics of nature and power.

Following his journey from the coal mines of England to taking up arms in the Spanish Civil War; from his prescient…


Book cover of The Gardener's Year

Ngoc Minh Ngo Why did I love this book?

This is a very slim volume by the Czech novelist, playwright, and essayist who gave us the word “robot” in a play in 1921. In this book, Capek takes readers through a year, month by month, in his backyard garden in Prague. The writing is full of humor, the tone conversational, with observations that resonate with all gardeners–from the fickleness of the weather to the pleasures of reading plant catalogues in the winter. But the true subject of Capek’s musing is the complexity of human nature. For the writer, the garden is a metaphor for what makes us human. It is ultimately a very hopeful book, and Capek ends it with these words: “The right, the best is in front of us. Each successive year will add growth and beauty. Thank God that again we shall be one year farther on!”  

By Karel Capek, Josef Capek,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Gardener's Year as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"This very entertaining volume with its delightfully humorous pictures should be read by all gardeners." — Nature
"Mr. Čapek writes with sympathy, understanding, and humor." — The New York Times
"Has a mellowness and a charm that give it a high place in the humorous literature of gardening … will delight the amateur gardener, and indeed everyone else." — Saturday Review
The creator of this book is best known internationally as the author of R.U.R., the science-fiction play that introduced the term "robot" to the world. Karel Čapek's satiric gifts take a different turn in this impishly comic book, which…


Explore my book 😀

In Bloom: Creating and Living With Flowers

By Ngoc Minh Ngo,

Book cover of In Bloom: Creating and Living With Flowers

What is my book about?

In Bloom is my second book dedicated to the study of the muse Flora. My exploration took me to an Italian photographer’s retreat in Piedmont, a florist’s farm in upstate New York, a painter’s chateau in France, a writer and horticulturist’s home in Tangier, among others. It is a celebration of the magic and beauty that flowers can inspire.

You might also like...

The Bloomsbury Photographs

By Maggie Humm,

Book cover of The Bloomsbury Photographs

Maggie Humm Author Of Radical Woman: Gwen John & Rodin

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Woolfian Gym devotee World-traveller

Maggie's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

An enthralling portrait of the Bloomsbury Group’s key figures told through a rich collection of intimate photographs. Photography framed the world of the Bloomsbury Group. The thousands of photographs surviving in albums kept by Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, and Lytton Strachey, among others, today offer us a private insight into their lives.

Maggie Humm brings together a curated selection of these photographs to offer us a fresh portrait of the Bloomsbury Group, showing them in a new, domestic intimacy. She brings to life the texture of Bloomsbury: their pastimes, children, clothes, houses, servants, pets, and holidays.

The Bloomsbury…

The Bloomsbury Photographs

By Maggie Humm,

What is this book about?

An enthralling portrait of the Bloomsbury Group's key figures told through a rich collection of intimate photographs

Photography framed the world of the Bloomsbury Group. The thousands of photographs surviving in albums kept by Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, and Lytton Strachey, among others, today offer us a private insight into their lives.

Maggie Humm brings together a curated selection of these photographs to offer us a fresh portrait of the Bloomsbury Group, showing them in a new, domestic intimacy. She brings to life the texture of Bloomsbury: their pastimes, children, clothes, houses, servants, pets, holidays. Several photographs are…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in gardening, gardens, and plants?

Gardening 88 books
Gardens 45 books
Plants 24 books