66 books like Botanica's Roses

The first three books on my list concentrate on building form and space, with little about function.

The ‘pattern language’ is different, mapping human activities onto appropriate built forms, and advocating repeated patterns that have been found to work.

Christopher Alexander wants us to use the patterns in designing responses to situations, but they also help to judge how well-built spaces fit their contexts in analysing architecture.

Although Alexander maps activities onto his own preferred design style, the patterns are not inherently specific to any style or period of architecture.

Despite being written 50 years ago, this one-of-a-kind book is still fresh and relevant.

For years Henry Mitchell wrote for The Washington Post about the agony and the ecstasy of gardening and, consequently, everything else. This classic is laced with pith, wit, gems, and instruction throughout. No one does it better or funnier. The easiest path is to quote the man himself: “Shasta daisies are far more agreeable and lovely than one thinks they are going to be.”

For more than half a century the Sunset Western Garden Book was the first and last word for Western gardeners. This compendium established a zonal system specifically for the nuanced West, and provided exhaustive, accurate, updated, and unbiased information, plant by plant, variety by variety, from A to Z. It offered a selection guide for specific situations suited to inland heat and the temperate coast. It provided basic information about planting, pests, soils, pruning, and weeds. I sold hundreds of copies of this indispensable volume to nursery customers. My co-workers did the same. That the sun has set on this essential field guide to gardening in the West is a bitter pill. Our Western gardens are diminished without it.

Most of us who took action on our ache to “get back to the land” gave ourselves over to a rustic bucolia we’d created in our minds. And, yes, as it turned out, it was all of that, the harmony of seasons, the deep peace, the night sky, the quail, and deer. It was other things, too, things we hadn’t reckoned on—isolation, endless labor, and the hourly rate of the well man. Readable and entertaining, Get Your Pitchfork On! eases the urban to rural transition with hard-won practical advice. It will infuse your dream, whatever its scale, with a healthy dose of preparedness to assure its best chance of success. 

Historically, California native plants were often grown in European gardens before they were accepted into California gardens. Now they are being grown in California for their beauty and frequent drought tolerance. Here you will see photos of plants in garden landscapes with information about the regions in which they will grow, their needs, and their care. 

This book is different in perspective from the other ones on my list, since it focuses on climate change caused drought and the actions individual human beings might have to resort to in the face of the stresses of the environment and a corrupt political world. Yet this is an engaging climate change-related thriller, more at the micro-level. Ex-Marine Martin Makepeace is faced with dire choices as he has to save his loved ones in a world where water has become an impossible scarce resource…

This is one of the scarier disaster novels I’ve read, targeted at young adults rather than middle-grade readers.

People die in frighteningly believable ways in this story about a severe water shortage in California. I live in a semi-arid region that has been experiencing more frequent droughts in the last few years, so this novel’s premise felt plausible: the taps are literally turned off.

As well, the various characters’ reactions to the crisis reflected people I know, from preppers to climate changer deniers to those who dig deep and find kindness no matter how bad things get.

Possibly the best and rarest of all publications about the start of the women’s music movement, this volume was prepared by the students at the University of California at Santa Cruz to serve as a textbook (and record of their experiences) for the first-ever course on feminism and music. Still available to good sleuths who find used copies floating around, the title page is Women in American Music. Women’s Studies, Kresge College, University of California, Santa Cruz, Spring 1975.

The idea for the class was initiated by Karlene Faith, who went on to be an influential producer and distributor; the book she helped edit includes interviews with early Olivia artists who were guest speakers and performers in the class. Before her untimely death, she too was working on a history of Olivia Records.

This is the first book of the three-book Darwath Series. A powerful wizard, in an attempt to save his world, winds up pulling a couple of people over from Earth. The relationships and the struggles, along with the wry humor, make this book great. All of Hambly’s fantasy books that I’ve read have worlds where magic does not come easy, and I always appreciate the price that magic users have to pay. This series of hers has a frighteningly good tale—that ending!

This was a hard pick because I could easily have chosen any of Joanne Bischof’s other books.

She writes with such excellence and depth of feeling that you bond with the characters and go through their trials alongside them. I chose The Gold in These Hills over her other equally loved books because I read it with tears streaming down my face. The theme of restoration after loss and betrayal resonated with me. Deep despair gives way to soul-stretching hope.

Beautiful, quotable prose stuck with me long after I finished. If you want a novel about second chances that speaks deeply to the heart, give this one a try.