Brooklyn Botanic Garden Handbooks: A Series with a Cult Following

Whenever I visit a used bookshop, I march straight to the garden section. Once there, I’ll scan the shelves for slender paperback spines about nine inches tall. I’m looking for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s handbooks, and whenever I find one, I feel like I’ve hit the jackpot. My gardening book library is full of beautiful coffee table books, and I have my fair share of instructional tomes like the indispensable Reader’s Digest Illustrated Guide to Gardening, but for practical, actionable advice and ideas, nothing beats BBG’s handbooks. 

The Garden began publishing the single-topic guides in 1945. According to Elizabeth Peters, the director of digital​ and print media at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the original format was more like a bound magazine, published quarterly. “Over time these became the more intentionally edited and assigned books you are familiar with,” she adds.

The primers had something of a heyday in the 1990s and early aughts under the leadership of Janet Marinelli, who was BBG’s editorial director for 17 years. “The series was esteemed for leadership in ecological practice topics, including native plants, wildlife support, building soils and plant communities, and an overall right-plant, right-place ethos,” Peters notes. But the series came to a halt in 2015, ending its run after the publication of Japanese-Style Gardens.

“The rise of the Internet and the ubiquity of information and broader focus on the ecological practices we had been promoting eroded the audience,” says Peters. “Rather than moving to publishing coffee-table type books, we phased out the series and now focus on digital content.” The Garden still sells more than a dozen of its handbooks through its site, including Easy Compost, which Peters notes was one of the most popular titles in the series, but for the rest, you’ll have to scour secondhand shops, Amazon’s marketplace, or eBay. 

I’m not alone in my enthusiasm for the out-of-print guides. Erin Scottberg, a writer, garden designer, and Brooklyn Botanic Garden-certified urban horticulturist, has also amassed a collection of the out-of-print guides. “These booklets are so well-written and laid out, making them easy to digest,” Scottberg says. “Each one covers a specific topic that’s narrow enough to not be overwhelming, but not so narrow that they’re not applicable.”

Horticulturalist Heather McCargo, the founder of the non-profit Wild Seed Project, also has a longstanding fondness for the series. She recalls becoming a member of the garden just to gain access to the handbooks. A few years back, McCargo and her team were contemplating a new format for their annual report when she was inspired to create their own single-topic handbooks. (The Wild Seed Project books are the exact same proportions as their predecessors, so they sit beautifully together on a shelf.)

For many of us, myself included, nothing beats the physicality of a small book. “I love the scale: They’re designed to be flipped through with just one hand,” says Jess Gildea, McCargo’s colleague at the Wild Seed Project. “You can have your seed catalog open in front of you, your guide in one hand, and a pen in the other.” And unlike a digital article, you can make notes in the margins, underline key information. 

So, if you’re browsing a bookstore in the Northeast, keep an eye out for these treasured books. Or kickstart your own collection with a bundle of handbooks (more here and here, and the motherlode here).

See also:

• In Gratitude: How a Gift from a Boss Led to a Love for Gardening Books
• 10 Easy Pieces: Editors’ Favorite Gardening Books
• Alexa’s Library: 9 Favorite Classic Garden Books