The Well-Read Gardener

Club members recommend their favorite gardening books. You can find these books at Firelight Book & Candle (on Sunset Drive in Blowing Rock), ask for the Book Club Discount.

Garden Tour

Join us June 2-6, 2026 for a tour of some of America’s top gardens. Read more…

Stop the Knot (weed)

Japanese knotweed (Reynotria japonica) has been identified in Blowing Rock. Please help slow the spread of this highly invasive plant. Learn more.

• Bad Naturalist: One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop, Paula Whyman (2025). Story of a woman who attempts to restore 200 acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
• Flower Confidential – The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful, Amy Stewart (2008). Those pretty posies in the vase have a story, likely spanning thousands of miles and several countries.
• How to Catch a Mole, Marc Hamer (2022). Hamer may be Aldo Leopold’s successor – his lyric prose transports us to the Welsh hills as plies his trade as a mole catcher.
• Kiss the Ground: How the food you eat can reverse climate change, heal your body, and ultimately save our world, Josh Tickell (2017). Made into an enjoyable movie (presented by Woody Harrelson). If you only read one book on soil, this may be the most important one for environmental advocates.
• Night Magic (2024). Leigh Ann Henion. This book introduced me to creatures that depend on natural darkness to survive, and what we lose by pouring artificial light across the landscape. Now I’m appreciating darkness and motivated to persevere it.
• The Cabaret of Plants: Forty thousand years of plant life and the human imagination, Richard Mabey (2015). Delightfully written, exploring the romance between people and plants.
• The Earth Moved: On the remarkable achievements of earthworms, Amy Stewart (2004). Stewart introduces us to one of the smaller, but most powerful earth movers on our planet.
• The Food Explorer: The true adventures of the globe-trotting botanist who transformed what America eats, Daniel Stone (2018) Why do we enjoy Meyer lemons here, who paid the price for them gracing our table, and what is the broader cost of them in this country? The fascinating stories of the food on our plate, I experience the grocery store in a whole new way since reading this book.
• The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World, Peter Wohlleben (2016). While I may not always be comfortable with his language, Wohlleben introduced me to the complex relationships of a forest.
• Weeds: In defense of nature’s most unloved plants, Richard Mabel  (2012). Mabey’s humor and sly approach endears his subject to even the most hardened weed-pulling gardener. I now look at these unwelcome plants with new appreciation.

Shop Local

• Almost Rodeo
• At Home in Blowing Rock  
• Best Cellar
• Beth Verish Barn Quilts
• BRAHM
• BR Frameworks & Gallery
• BR Chamber of Commerce
• BR Country Club
• BR Furniture Gallery
• BR Market & Deli
• BR Parks & Recreation
• The Brass Exchange/Windwood Antiques
• Camp Coffee Roasters  
• Christmas in Blowing Rock  
• Coal Miner’s Daughter
• Common Good    
• de Provence et d’ailleurs
• The Embers
• The Fig Leaf
• Finley House Couture
• Firelight Book & Candle  
• Flavia’s Cake
• Fabled Pizza
• Funky Tulip/Tazmaraz
• Foothills Brewing
• Gideon Ridge
• Gregory Alan’s
• Grounded Works
• Hanna’s
• High  Country Candles
• Inn at Ragged Gardens 
• The Incredible Toy Company
• Jerky Outpost
• The Last Straw
• Linville Land Harbor Golf Club
• Mac House Designs
• Mexican Rock
• Monkee’s
• Myers Kitchen
• The Moon at Blowing Rock
• Najla’s Boutique
• NEACO
• Peddlin’ Pig
• Ricky Evans Art Gallery
• Rustic
• Say Cheese
• Six Pence Pub & Restaurant
• Social on Main
• The Speckled Trout Restaurant & Bottle Shop
• The Spice & Tea Exchange 
• Steve Galluzi-Local Artist
• Sunset Tees & Hattery 
• The Blowing Rock
• United Community Bank
• Unwound
• Village Pharmacy
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• Wildbirds Galore & More 
• Caron Baker Wike