This column first appeared in CityView Magazine’s “Home and Garden” Issue May 2026 edition.
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero
Books about homes and gardens are especially enjoyable to read because they can feel safe and comfortable to us. Often the home and garden are characters in the book. Even when they are not, they enhance our enjoyment of the settings, surroundings, and the characters.
Whether explored through novels or visually striking coffee table books, homes, and gardens encourage us to appreciate the settings that surround us and the role they play in enhancing everyday life. These books invite readers to slow down, imagine possibilities, and rediscover the simple pleasure of beauty in everyday surroundings.
1. Life in the Garden by Penelope Lively
Now in her 93rd year, Lively muses, “To garden is to elide past, present, and future; it is a defiance of time.”
Penelope Lively takes up her key themes of time and memory, and her exploration of art, literature, and gardening in this philosophical and poetic memoir. From the courtyards of her childhood home in Cairo to a family cottage in Somerset, to her own gardens in Oxford and London, Lively takes us on a tour from Eden to Sissinghurst and into her own backyard, traversing the lives of writers like Virginia Woolf and Philip Larkin while imparting her own sly and spare wisdom.
2. The Thing About Home by Rhonda McKnight
“Home is not a place—it’s a feeling.”
When former model and current social media influencer Casey Black faces the embarrassment of a damaging viral video—and the shame of being left at the altar at her renewal marriage ceremony—she knows she needs to escape. Leaving New York City to return to her home in South Carolina and her family, she hopes this will bring her the comfort she needs. When she arrives at the picture-perfect farm with its history, culture, and Southern charm, however, she wonders if it is enough to bring her peace? Will her family be able to help her learn more about her past that her controlling mom never shared? Will reading her great-grandmother’s journals help or hurt? If so, perhaps secrets finally revealed can bring the healing that nothing else can!
3. A Joy of Gardening by Vita Sackville-West
“You cannot expect your soil and your plants to go on giving you of their best if you are not prepared to give something back in return. This is as true of gardens as of human relationships.”
The author of numerous collections of poetry and 13 novels, Vita Sackville-West was also an enormously successful gardener. She designed gardens in England and wrote a popular column in the London newspaper The Observer. In this collection of essays, she offers practical advice as well as lovely suggestions for beautiful gardens. In the end the garden can bring so much joy to the gardener.
4. A Place in the World: Finding the Meaning of Home by Frances Mayes
“Where you are is who you are.”
Known for her travels, author Frances Mayes explores the enduring search for home and belonging. Drawing on her experiences in Italy, the American South, France, and Mexico, A Place in the World reflects on how houses, objects, and relationships shape identity. The book examines the lasting influence of each place she has lived and the balance between movement and rootedness that defines the idea of home.
5. The Kew Gardens Girls by Posy Lovell
“Can the women of Kew keep the gardens alive in the midst of war?”
During World War I, while the men were off to war, three women volunteered to help as gardeners at Kew, the Royal Botanic Gardens. Based on true events, this historical novel humanizes the story of the women who were in the midst of the suffrage movement and the turbulent social changes affecting them. Each has their own secret, but each wants to do their part for their country. The gardens seem to be a haven for them, but not everyone wants the women there or for women to change from the traditional roles expected of them.
6. At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
“Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.”
Well-known author Bill Bryson shares his story of the Victorian parsonage in England where he lives with his family. While creating a home out of this old house, he realized he knew nothing of its history, so he went about studying each room. As he went from room to room, he saw that he could write a history of the world from inside his comfortable home. The kitchen tells so much about nutrition, the difficulties of cooking, and even the spice trade; the bathroom provides the opportunity to learn about hygiene in older times; and the bedroom is the place to learn about sleep, sex, and death. He is able to show how a home is the basis for the evolution of private life. With Bryson’s talent for humor and beautiful prose, he shows us how those things happening out in the world can end up in our home. Just look at how we depend on the television to learn about the news of the world.