Some Much-Anticipated Design & Gardening Books in 2024

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Happy 2024, dear friends! I hope you’re well! For those of you on the lookout for interesting new books on decorating and gardening, here’s a list of some exciting book launches this year, books that promise to inspire our future decorating & gardening projects. Some of the titles on this list are quite new, either newly launched or soon to be released, but some of them are older gems I discovered recently and have found inspirational. Create Academy‘s course, Cut and Come Again Masterclass, taught by Sarah Raven (which I’ll review in detail in a future post) has been an eye-opener for me, and a game-changer for many gardeners who wish to maximize the productivity of their garden patch. Following her Masterclass, I’ve become a fan of Sarah Raven’s no-nonsense approach to gardening, hence several of her books are included in today’s post. So, if you, too, are in need of a distraction from the cold winter weather, I hope something in today’s list will catch your eye. 

Sean A. Pritchard – Outside In

Discover how to plan your garden so you can display flowers and foliage in your home every month of the year, in this beautifully illustrated guide from popular Instagram and RHS Hampton Court Garden Festival gardener Sean A Pritchard.

“Inventive, considered, and thoughtful design.” House & Garden

In this, his first book, garden designer Sean Pritchard shows you how to plan a garden so that every month of the year there’s something to bring indoors and display in an engaging way and Divided by season with additional chapters on vessels, scent, color, texture and how
to plan for the gardening year.

​From the cheery joy of early spring daffodils to the velvety richness of late-summer dahlias, the deep glow of golden autumn leaves to the optimism of late-winter catkins, Sean explains how to grow, harvest, and arrange an abundance of nature’s treasure – whatever size your plot or your level of horticultural experience.

Gil Schafer – Home at Last

Bestselling author and popular American architect Gil Schafer returns with the final installment in his trilogy on the rewards of living in the American house.

The work of Gil Schafer—one of the world’s leading experts on contemporary traditional architecture—is beloved for its elegance, charm, and strong sense of history and place. Since his last book, Schafer has become a husband and stepfather, a change that has deepened his understanding of how a house must reflect and support the lives of those who live within its walls. Home at Last is a distillation of what he has learned and how he translates it to his work on houses that are adaptive to the evolution of life, depending upon a family’s needs.

The book includes homes he has designed in the mist-covered Hudson Valley, on a bluff above Lake Champlain, on the windswept shores of Block Island, and on the coast of Maine. Schafer shares the stories of these houses and their owners, exploring the choices made for architecture and interiors, and reemphasizing his guiding principles: how to create classical buildings that “live modern”; how to adapt buildings to different regions and ways of life; the connection to landscape; why fancy can coexist with simple, and traditional with modern.

With original photography by Eric Piasecki, layered with practical takeaways, Home at Last is a tribute to the power of the American house.

Bunny Williams – Life in the Garden

A natural sequel to the seminal An Affair with a House, this is Bunny Williams’ most ambitious book to date.

Inviting us into her impressive grounds with charming personal anecdotes, expert advice, and creative ideas for how to bring natural elements into the home, this is a testament to Bunny Williams’ love affair with the garden and woodlands surrounding her eighteenth-century manor house in Northwestern Connecticut.

A popular stop on the Garden Conservancy circuit, Williams’ property boasts a parterre garden, year-round conservatory, extensive vegetable garden, orchard, woodlands, an aviary with exotic fowl, and a rustic poolside Greek Revival–style folly. Each section of the garden is accompanied by a directory of featured plants—from native ferns and succulents to a wide variety of flowering specimens.

Stunning photographs—printed on two different specialty stocks—illustrate every aspect of the garden in different lights and seasons; during big parties and intimate gatherings. Throughout, the revered designer shows us how she incorporates nature in her interiors: in stunning floral arrangements, unique tablescapes, and elaborate holiday vignettes—where a rescued bird’s nest commands as much attention as a prized collector’s item. Whether in the intentional juxtaposition of high and low, or the considered placement of a garden bench to appreciate a particular view, home and garden together reflect the epitome of Bunny Williams’ inimitable style.

Bunny Williams – An Affair with a House

For 28 years the world-renowned interior designer Bunny Williams has been involved in a passionate love affair with an18th-century New England manor house that she found in sad repair. From the moment she walked up the driveway and her palms began to perspire, Williams knew she wanted the affair to last forever. In her sumptuous new book, An Affair with a House, the venerable decorator describes in detail how she and her husband, antiques dealer John Rosselli, rescued, nurtured, renovated, and decorated the well-worn house, giving it new life as they restored each room, resurrected the abandoned gardens, and filled this weekend home with family and friends.

Through photographs, anecdotes, how-to’s, and recipes, Williams provides a rare inside look at a top decorator’s retreat and explains how she approached the joys, pleasures, challenges, obstacles, and day-to-day realities of creating a beautiful, comfortable country home. An Affair with a House provides a wealth of advice on interior decor and such topics as mixing design styles, but it also addresses such practical matters as stocking the pantry and outfitting the linen closet. Beautiful photographs of the house, the gardens, and the property’s rustic structures provide an intimate glimpse of the couple’s lifestyle and illustrate a way of life we can all appreciate and learn from.

Mark Ellison: Building – A Carpenter’s Notes on Life & the Art of Good Work

In Building, a visionary carpenter shares indelible stories on building a life worth living, revealing powerful lessons about work, creativity, and design through his experience constructing some of New York’s most iconic spaces.

“This book is for people who are interested in doing anything well.”―Sam Sifton, The New York Times

Winner of the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award

For forty years, Mark Ellison has worked in the most beautiful homes you’ve never seen, specializing in rarefied, lavish, and challenging projects for the most demanding of clients. He built a staircase that the architect Santiago Calatrava called a masterpiece. He constructed the sculpted core of Sky House, which Interior Design named “Apartment of the Decade.” His building projects have included the homes of David Bowie, Robin Williams, and others whose names he cannot reveal. He is regarded by many as the best carpenter in New York.

Building: A Carpenter’s Notes on Life & the Art of Good Work tells the story of an unconventional education and how fulfillment can be found in doing something well for decades. Ellison takes us on a tour of the lofts, penthouses, and townhomes of New York’s elite, before they’re camera-ready. In a singular voice, he offers a window into learning to live meaningfully along the way. From staircases that would be deadly if built as designed and algae-eating snails boiled to escargot in a penthouse pond, to the deceptive complexity of minimalist design, Building exposes the tangled wiring, scrapped blueprints, and outlandish demands that characterize life in the high-stakes world of luxury construction.

Blending Ellison’s musings on work and creativity with immersive storytelling and original sketches, photos, and illustrations, Building is a meditation on crafting a robust life, and a delightful philosophical inquiry beyond the facades that we all live behind.

Sarah Raven – A Year Full of Pots

Master the art of growing flowers in pots year round with inspiration from stunning full-color images and expert advice from the Sunday Times bestselling author of A Year Full of Flowers.

Growing flowers in pots is a charming and accessible way to enhance any space, from large gardens to small city apartments. Get the pots right, and your garden will take on a cheerful energy of its own. They are the bubbles in the champagne, the cherries on the cake, the final flourish that brings a beautiful garden to life. And with pots, there is one iron rule: more is more.

Discover practical design tips that will enhance your containers. Use ingenious tricks when combining flower colors such as choosing a BRIDE (the star of the show), a BRIDESMAID (similar to the bride but smaller and less conspicuous), and a GATECRASHER (the color contrast, which brings the whole thing to life). Learn all about the types of forms and plant structures-THRILLER, FILLER, PILLAR, and SPILLER-and how to put them to best use. And even consider simple concepts with newfound importance, like mounting flower pots onto a wall or elevating them to the table so you see more of them, for instant impact.

Following the seasons, A Year Full of Pots shows you how to make your own evolving tapestry of color through long-lasting container combinations.

Caitlin Flemming & Julie Goebel – Sense of Place

Explore how the world around us can inspire meaningful, personal, and beautiful interiors to make a house a home in Sense of Place by interior design experts and Travel Home authors Caitlin Flemming and Julie Goebel.

For anyone interested in curating a home that is personal, functional, and beautiful, it’s important to understand how our surroundings impact our interiors. When a space evokes a strong sense of place––a sense of belonging and comfort––it becomes a place to rest and feel grounded, surrounded by those you cherish most. Evoking nostalgic attachment, the colors and textures of a landscape, or cultural traditions, meaningful and inspired interior design is bound to reflect the broader context of a place.

Mother-and-daughter team Goebel and Flemming break down the details of how top designers and creatives style their homes by drawing inspiration from place. From the pastoral beauty of the English countryside to the streets of Mallorca, and from the warm desert palette of New Mexico to the sunny streets of Los Angeles, Sense of Place juxtaposes interior shots, exterior landscapes, and local scenes to reveal the natural harmony between more than 20 homes and their exterior surroundings. With practical tips and evocative essays, interior design and travel enthusiasts alike will be inspired to design their homes to reflect lived experiences.

Sarah Raven and Vita Sackwille-West – Sissinghurst: The Creation of a Garden 

From 1946 to 1957, Vita Sackville-West, the poet, bestselling author of All Passion Spent and maker of Sissinghurst, wrote a weekly column in the Observer describing her life at Sissinghurst, showing her to be one of the most visionary horticulturalists of the twentieth-century.

With wonderful additions by Sarah Raven, Vita Sackville-West’s Sissinghurst draws on this extraordinary archive, revealing Vita’s most loved flowers, as well as offering practical advice for gardeners. Often funny and completely accessibly written with colour and originality, it also describes details of the trials and tribulations of crafting a place of beauty and elegance.

Sissinghurst has gone on to become one of the most visited and inspirational gardens in the world and this marvellous book, illustrated with drawings and original photographs throughout, shows us how it was created and how gardeners everywhere can use some of the ideas from both Sarah Raven and Vita Sackville-West.

Sarah Raven – The Cutting Garden

Gardening expert Sarah Raven teaches you how to plan and create a vibrant cutting garden from which glorious flower arrangements can be created in this complete and comprehensive guide.

Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced flower gardener, this stunning practical guide gives you everything you need to build your own cutting garden, from which you can harvest all kinds of beautiful blooms, and also teaches you how to make your own amazing floral arrangements.

From growing decorative flowers and foliage and maintaining a well-stocked cutting garden to creating floral arrangements ranging from simple bunches to romantic hanging globes, swags and medallions, this beautifully presented book provides all the information you need to get started with your own cutting garden.

A must-have for any flower-lover’s shelf, this helpful guide will help you fill your garden and your home with color!

Sarah Raven – A Year in the Edible Garden

This beautifully photographed guide celebrates the endless possibilities of the vegetable patch and shows that edible gardening can be both productive and stunning to behold.

International gardening and cooking expert Sarah Raven shares her wealth of knowledge about how to have a bountiful—and beautiful—kitchen garden. With the belief that we should all grow more of what we eat, she imparts her experience on making the most of any outdoor space along with sage advice about the best things to grow and harvest easily and efficiently along with their culinary uses. The varieties highlighted are accessible, but Sarah also includes many flavorful heirlooms as well as rarities difficult to find in markets.

Being connected to the food on our plate and to the landscape around us has never been more important, and everything Sarah does is strictly organic. She focuses on growing the freshest, healthiest, and tastiest produce without resorting to artificial inputs or chemicals.

Although the book is primarily focused on edibles, Sarah includes flowers (some edible too) because they attract pollinators and beneficial insects while beautifying the vegetable patch. Solid, practical advice is mixed with inspirational ideas, and aspirational photos of Sarah’s own show-stopping garden are sure to inspire any home gardener.

In a world in which visual stimulation is at our fingertips, with Pinterest and Instagram feeding us content at an ever-increasing pace, beautifully written and inspiring books on our favorite topics feel very much like a forgotten luxury. I hope that the books in today’s list will both enchant and inspire you on your your next home / garden adventure, and will do so with wisdom and grace.