After the winter we had, spring couldn't come soon enough. While the days are still a bit chilly, that doesn’t mean we can’t look ahead to warmer, sunnier days and find inspiration for spring projects in books celebrating the beauty of a well-tended garden or a thoughtfully curated home.
The Summer House: Lakeside Cottages, Seaside Retreats, and Country Idylls (Rizzoli International, $45) by Jaci Conry, editor of Boston Home , showcases a dozen summer retreats around the Northeast, including Ariel Ashe’s Martha’s Vineyard abode, and captures the magic and romance of seasonal homes.
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Of course, a beautiful home is not complete without an equally inviting outdoor space, and The Contemporary Cottage Garden: Climate-Friendly, Mindful Methods for Growing Flowers and Food (Timber Press (OR), $27.99) by Paula Hubbard offers guidance on how to cultivate a classic cottage garden, where flowers and vegetables co-mingle. She also provides tips on ways to make your garden adaptable to modern times, with concern for pollinators, biodiversity and changing climates.
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International gardening and cooking expert Sarah Raven does not limit a garden’s potential to the warmer months in A Year in the Edible Garden: A Month-by-Month Guide to Growing and Harvesting Vegetables, Herbs, and Edible Flowers. (Rizzoli International, $19.98). She emphasizes the importance of kitchen gardens as a way of connecting with the land, and offers sage advice on what to plant, how to harvest it efficiently and the culinary uses of your plentiful plants.
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And what to do with your cottage garden’s bounty? Find inspiration in A Feather and a Fork: 125 Intertribal Dishes from an Indigenous Food Warrior (Rodale, $35) by Crystal Wahpepah with an introduction by award-winning novelist Tommy Orange. In it, Wahpepah centers the history of the tight-knit Native American communities in Oakland, which grew in the 1950s from people relocated from their reservations across the country. Through storytelling, reconnecting with the land and eating with the seasons, Wahpepah transforms generational trauma into power.
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One way that we can all reconnect with the land is through foraging, and in The Coastal Forager (Skittledog, $40), Mark Williams, one of the United Kingdom’s leading wild-food educators and a founding member of The Association of Foragers, takes us to the water’s edge to discover the plentiful food that can be found along the Atlantic coast. Recipes, illustrations, photos, ethnobiological histories and more educate about the coastal vegetables, seaweeds and shellfish right in our Island’s own “backyard.”
As Benjamin Franklin said, “A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body,” so with beautiful books on your shelves about the verdant and bountiful world at your door, you should feel right at home.
Molly Coogan is co-owner of Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven.
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SPOTLIGHT
Flora Culture: How Flowers Shape Our World
— a new book from Christin Geall, author of Cultivated: The Elements of Floral Style.
Christin Geall first came on my radar when I was newly obsessed with flower growing and arranging several years ago. My colleague at the Vineyard Gazette, Jane McTeigue, suggested I read a book called Cultivated: The Elements of Floral Style by her friend – Christin Geall. Little did I know that I would read this book back to front twice — and reference it many more times. I learned so much from Christin about color theory, shape and form (geometry!), designing for the camera and the history of floral design and art.
As happens in life sometimes, Christin the mythical hero (and globe trotter) showed up in human form right here on Martha’s Vineyard, where she now lives seasonally with her husband. Twice the opportunity to go to one of her flower seminars came up, and both times I was off-Island —argh. (Not to worry, I did eventually get to meet Christin!)
All this is to say that I’ve been waiting not so patiently for her new book to come out. I had a sense it was going to be something special, as she slowly revealed on her Substack, Cultivated by Christin, what she was working on. Now that Flora Culture: How Flowers Shape Our World (Rizzoli, $45) has been published, I understand the wait. It’s a masterpiece.
Flora Culture is an abecedarium — a collection of topical essays arranged alphabetically, from aesthetics to zeitgeist. Each essay is generously illustrated with photos (by both Christin and others) and botanical art from around the world. Most are on two- or four-page spreads, making them digestible for short bouts of reading. Because despite my urge to sit down and read from A to Z all at once, the essays are best dipped into one at a time, leaving you time to think through the provocations Christin presents. For instance, I didn’t know that 40 percent of Europe’s flowers are grown in Kenya — and you can guess who’s not making money off them and what the effects of commercial growing operations have on local ecosystems.
I think of Flora Culture as doing for flowers what Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma did for meat (and edible plants), in that Christin’s goal is to make you think much more broadly and deeply about the current and historical impact of flower growing — from our own backyards to nearly every corner of the world. I’m rethinking my plastic weed cover (though if I get rid of it, where does it go?) and giving up peat moss. I’m going to choose perennials and shrubs over annuals when I can — and definitely plant more trees.
But mostly I’m going to look forward to immersing myself in this fascinating, beautiful “manifesto” as Christin refers to it.
Bunch of Grapes Bookstore has signed copies of Flora Culture in stock now. Follow Christin on Instagram @cultivatedbychristin.
— Susie Middleton
This article appears in Spring Home & Garden – 2026.