We have a timely Spring-related Rec League request from Reader Jacquelyn:
I was wondering if you could great spring romances, especially with a garden theme. A little witchy is great but since I largely prefer historical romance, I’m not looking for anything overwhelmingly supernatural (though I’m sure many others would love that, too).
Amanda: GARDEN SPELLS GARDEN SPELLS GARDEN SPELLS!
I wrote a Squee from the Keeper Shelf post on Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Au ). It’s not historical, but definitely witchy!
Sarah: Sarah Addison Allen would definitely help her out.
Also the Nora Roberts’ In the Garden trilogy, Blue Dahlia, Black Rose, Red Lily. One of the main characters runs a nursery – though it’s a suspense story.
Amanda: I want to say I read something with a “florist” heroine, but my memory is failing me.
Sarah: A Nora? One of the bridal quartet has a florist heroine – Bed of Roses ( A | BN | K | G | AB ).
Oh – and Sarah Morgan’s New York trilogy has characters who work in gardening and landscaping, including some heroes who make roof gardens on NY buildings
Amanda: I think it was the Morgan books!
Sarah: Yes, the first three From Manhattan With Love books feature three friends, and one is a florist.
Amanda: Laura Florand’s La Vie en Roses series has a lot of flower themes! I’ve read A Wish Upon Jasmine ( A | BN | K | AB ), which deals with feuding perfumers.
I also discovered a pretty handy Goodreads list of gardeners and gardening in romance!
What books would you recommend for Jacquelyn? Anything that hits all her notes: historical, gardening, and witchy?
Okay, so it definitely falls under “overwhelmingly supernatural” but the graphic novel Taproot by Keezy Young is an m/m romance between a gardener and a ghost and it is. so. cute.
It’s not a historical, but I really enjoyed Fairytale of New York by Miranda Dickinson. The heroine is a florist.
I think I really enjoyed some Victorian plant explorer books, I’m guessing by Susanne Lord. It is possible that I am misremembering or conflating details, but I’m almost positive about it.
However, I vaguely recall there was a book I was really excited about where the heroine is the daughter of an Amazon explorer, but there was seriously unacceptable casual racistism in the opening, and now I’m twitchy about botany in historical romances, where it was once catnip.
I think there’s a Julia Quinn where the heroine marries a guy for his greenhouses?
Also, fwiw, I generally love Sarah Morgan’s books, but the one with the Brooklyn landscaper hero was a deal breaker for me.
Pamela Clare’s DEADLY INTENT. The heroine is gardener after leaving the military.
BREAKING FREE by Cherise Sinclair. This is BDSM, but the heroine is a landscaper.
I’ll second or third the Nora Robert’s In The Garden trilogy, as well as the one in the Bride Quartet.
JILTED by Sawyer Bennett. The hero owns a landscape company.
There is another one that released this year. I don’t know the author or title. I read about it in one of my plethora of author/publisher/blogger emails. The hero owns/works for a landscape company. This is going to bug me until I figure out the title.
THE BOURBON KINGS by JR Ward. The heroine is the head gardener at the estate. The couple in this book is also prevalent in the other two books in the trilogy, though the main stories tend to focus on other family members.
THE PERFECT POISON by Amanda Quick. It’s what I call “paranormal light”. It’s from her Arcane Society series, which crosses over two of her pen names.
How about The Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan? One of my absolute favourite historicals with a lady scientist/gardener protagonist.
Another shout-out for Nora Roberts’s In the Garden trilogy.
It’s not exactly romance, but Rosamunde Pilcher’s THE SHELL SEEKERS has a strong gardening element (ha! That sounds hilarious now that I’ve typed it out). The older heroine has an amazing garden and gardening is what brings the youngest couple together. It’s also WWII historical. I love that book.
I feel like I’m spacing on another few books. I’ll come back if brain-block ends.
Ellen Herrick’s The Forbidden Garden. It has three sisters with magical abilities related to gardening and run a nursery. The book follows one of the sisters who is hired to bring a “cursed” garden at a old British estate back to life. It’s more magical realism than romance, but there is a romance and HFN. It’s the second in the series, I think the first is called The Sparrow Sisters. I haven’t read that one but I’m pretty sure there’s at least an HFN. It’s very much in the vein of Garden Spells.
The heroine of RUSHING AMY, but the late Julie Brannagh, is a florist.
“For Amy Hamilton, only three Fs matter: Family, Football, and Flowers. It might be nice to find someone to share Forever with, too, but right now she’s working double overtime while she gets her flower shop off the ground.”
There are also many Amanda Quick Regencies with floral themes, including one with a perfume maker, I think.
@Sara Rider, thanks for The Forbidden Garden rec! I am on a baking/magical baking binge, but magical gardening sounds like a nice tangent.
Isn’t one of the heroines in Lauren Danes Diablo Lake series a witchy gardener? Or am I misremembering?
@Kate I hope you enjoy it! I listened to it in audio recently and thought it was charming.
Anne Gracie’s “The Spring Bride”.
Contemporary: Nalini Singh’s Cherish Hard has a landscaping hero.
And also Amanda Quick’s Crystal Garden — neither of the characters are gardeners but the garden itself features heavily into the storyline. Also in the paranormal light/historical category.
It tilts toward YA, but Ann Lawrence’s “The Half-Brothers” is a lovely story set in an alt-Renaissance Europe setting. Both the romance and the gardening sneak up on you.
The Miles Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold, Mile’s ultimate match, Ekaterine, is a gardener and this features prominently in their romance. Ekaterine first appears in Komarr and the romance continues in A Civil Campaign. She wrote the cover copy herself wherein references to Blackadder are sprinkled in and the dedication is partially to Georgette Heyer and Jane Austin. Also, while not exactly “gardening”, Chalice by Robin McKinley is a romantic fantasy with magical bees.
“She” = the author, not Ekaterine. 🙂
Maybe Barbara Michaels’s “Vanish with the Rose”. It’s suspense, not romance, but there is a romance. Not historical.
Maybe the Margaret of Ashbury novels by Judith Merkle Riley (A Vision of Light, In Pursuit of the Green Lion)? The latter takes place from Winter into Spring, and do have some supernatural/ medieval Christian theme. It’s not about gardening as such but definitely about growth and growing love and spiritual growth (not necessarily in the spiritual genre sense though).
A couple of older books:
“Must be Magic” by Patricia Rice has a bit of magic and is definitely a historical about an agronomist and a perfumer.
“The Wild Child” by Mary Jo Putney – she’s all about the gardens and the topiary as far as I can recall.
“The Truth about Love” by Stephanie Laurens is all about a painter who wants to paint a magnificent garden.
For gardens in outer space there are garden-themed novellas by Viola Grace- “Garden” and “Knotted”
I also recommend both of Ellen Herrick’s books about the Sparrow sisters. And anything by Sarah Addison Allen, but especially Garden Spells. And The Shell Seekers. All favorites of mine. A book I read and loved a couple of years ago was Season of the Dragonfiles by Sarah Creech which has gardening and magical elements and is set near Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.
Less magical, but historical and hysterically funny, are the “Mapp and Lucia” stories by E.F. Benson which have plenty of social battles at garden parties in a small English town and awkward romances among middle-aged townspeople. The e-version of Make Way for Lucia, which has all six or seven books, is 99 cents on Amazon. I’ve promised myself a re-read this summer.
This is an older title, but I love the book and still have the Signet version.
A Promise of Spring by Mary Balogh. The heroine is older than the hero and he’s a wonderful beta hero too!
there was a series about Irish sisters. The first one was glass artist and her lover gallery owner; the other sister really loved gardening and turned their house into hotel and fell in love with writer. Anyone knows the title?
Sometimes I wish I could incorporate a tiny little HABO into these Rec Leagues. I have these fleeting memories of books that might meet these criteria. Real? or Memoryless? Like–I seem to recall a historical with a unappreciated botanist heroine who specialized in sundews. Then there was the one with a woman moving into a charming house in the south only to find that the groundskeeper is the (former?) owner. The worst was a Jane Jameson novel by Molly Harper. Yes, supernatural, but there was remade garden designed for a heroine who can only come out at night. Cuz vampire. The description of the scented white garden was really lovely, but which of four books in the series did it occur.
Guess I just read too damned much. Oh well, no regrets here. I did shake a couple of titles out though. SEP’s First Star I’ve Seen Tonight features an occasionally alphaholic, ex-athlete hero who grows tomatoes on his urban balcony. More than a hobby, veggie growing turns out to be a major character revealing and redeeming thread. Also Nuts by Alice Clayton features an organic farmer hero. Not quite a garden, but there’s lots of dirt and growing things, and I think it would make an outstanding spring read. Finally, I totally second the suggestion of Florand’s La Vie en Roses series. Her writing is so lush, you can almost smell the lavender, jasmine and, of course, roses.
Ivy, that sounds like Nora Roberts Born in trilogy. One of my favorites!
C.D. Reiss’s WHITE KNIGHT is a second-chance romance between a couple who met as teenagers when he worked on her family’s garden. As teens, she was from the town’s wealthiest family and he was a boy from the wrong side of the tracks; 13 years later, their money status is reversed. Roses play a very important and symbolic role in the book. (Although WHITE KNIGHT can be read as a stand-alone, it really is a better experience to read KING OF CODE first, because you see the terrible ruin into which the family’s beautiful rose garden has fallen…and why.)
Marrying Winterborne by Lisa Kleypas features a heroine who specifically seems focused on orchids. No witchy feels, sadly, but definitely a book I loved.
Also, I’ll second the Nalini Singh rec for Cherish Hard because holy cow, that book gave me all the feels!
The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley- Set at an estate in Cornwall that has large working rose gardens and a greenhouse, it’s a little historical, a little magical and one of my absolute favorite books.
It meets the garden theme, but when I read “spring romance” I also think of new beginnings and fresh starts. The heroine travels to the estate and the gardens to start over after her sister’s death (not really a spoiler it’s in the first few pages) and ends the book beginning a whole new life. The contemporary sections read more like literary fiction than contemporary romance to me, the historical sections are passionate (no explicit sex scenes in her books though) and the magical realism is weaved in with just the right amount of skepticism to be believable. I can’t recommend it highly enough!
Lord Carew’s Bride by Mary Balogh. The heroine mistakes the hero for a landscape designer. Not exactly a gardener, but working with plants is similar.
Elizabeth Hoyt’s “The Raven Prince” has a hero who is very passionate about farming (Does that count?).
Adding another vote to the recs for Chalice (love love love it!) and Cherish Hard. I’ll also add:
The Dare and the Doctor by Kate Noble – historical, heroine is a horticulturalist developing a hybrid strain of roses.
Her Naughty Holiday by Tiffany Reisz – contemporary, heroine owns a successful nursery business in Oregon.
Wild Designs by Katie Fforde – contemporary, heroine dreams of being a garden designer and is using the for sale house nearby as a greenhouse; hero buys said house.
THE IVY TREE by Mary Stewart.
It’s not a historical, but it is a old school romance with an aristocratic lord-of-the-manor hero and classic feel, so may work for you in the same way. THE LONE WOLFE by Kate Hewitt has a heroine who’s restoring the gardens on the hero’s family estate so he can sell it, and naturally the whole thing is a metaphor for how she’s bringing him back to life the way she is the gardens.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006IIX86G/
Rose Daughter, Robin McKinley.
I have a number of historicals with very significant gardens, but little practical gardening. In case these still fit the bill:
Mary Wesley, The Camomile Lawn. The lawn is an important character in this sweet, sexy, sad family drama. It’s a beautiful portrait of several generations, and of how much a mystery we can be to ourselves, and how much we need each other. One of the characters, who’s 10 at the start of the book, is the object of sexual fondling, so if that’s a NOPE for you, be warned. (She’s lovely and has a good life, though.)
Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger’s Child. This book is catnip to me: minor poets, WWI, drama of all sorts, unreliable narratives… and, at the heart of it all, two acres of untended landscape, an idyll, intense romance that can only be glimpsed obliquely.
Ian McEwan, Atonement. This book wrecks me and I love it… and there actually IS practical gardening. The absolutely dreamy Robbie Turner works as gardener for the estate where he’s grown up, to the conscious and unconscious admiration of the sisters of the house… Flowers are put in a Sèvres vase. Sex is had in a library. Robbie writes “I will become again the man who walked to you across the park at dusk, swaggering on the promise of life.” I cry a lot.
A.S. Byatt, The Children’s Book. Another multigenerational family drama! This covers the 1880s to the First World War. The scene where everyone is gathered in the garden with a German scientist singing about golden apples (from Rheingold, but the Hesperides allusion is impossible to miss) is one of my favorites. The garden is significant throughout, as they’re Artsy-Craftsy types.
Another offering from Byatt: “Morpho Eugenia” is a novella about a (rather charming) young scientist who becomes increasingly disturbed by parallels between ant society and that of the wealthy patrons on whom he depends… as I recall! it’s been a while since I read it. (It’s part of the Angels and Insects pair of novellas, and was adapted under that title with Mark Rylance and Kristin Scott Thomas.)
Tracy Chevalier’s At the Edge of the Orchard is a rich, poignant look at a family who settles in the Black Swamp of northwestern Ohio… and the apple trees they attempt to grow there. There’s quite a bit about grafting and growing seasons here, and the gentle man who loves his apple trees is a very appealing protagonist.
The absolutely lovely, classic Thornyhold by Mary Stewart. Also I seem to remember Mary Balogh’s The Arrangement had a fairly prominent gardening element to it, where the hero trying to build a garden in his estate that can accommodate his blindness.
If gardening and cosy mystery (with occasional romances) are your thing, the BBC tv series “Rosemary and Thyme” is wonderful.
The garden is rather tangential to the plot, but I recommend The Peculiar Folly of Long Legged Meg by Jayne Fresina. It’s such a great book.
Persey is a dowager duchess who loves the estate’s gardens. So she’s a bit put out when a relative hires a new gardener to ‘improve’ it. And then there’s the mystery of exactly who Persey is, where she came from and what secrets she’s hiding.
IIRC, Elizabeth Hoyt’s Lord of Darkness had a lovely garden metaphor mirroring the emotional arc with the flowering trees in the garden initially near death due to not being cared for, and, because romance, blossoming when cared for.
Although not a large part of the plot, gardening is a very important interest of the heroine in the historical My Dearest Rogue by Elizabeth Hoyt – the heroine is going blind and the hero is her bodyguard (she is a lady and he a former soldier – there are class issues if that’s your catnip like it is mine). I really liked this one.
Provocative in Pearls by Madeline Hunter (historical) – marriage of convenience (another one of my catnips) into which the heroine was coerced and so she wants a divorce. BUT the only thing she finds appealing about him (at first!!!!) is all the work she can do on his gardens in the country and at his town home. I loved this book.
When I first started reading romance, Andrea Pickins wrote a couple of my favorites – I originally read Code of Honor about twenty years ago so my memory might be off, but I believe the heroine paints flowers and plants and the rake hero has a secret interest in botany. At least that’s how I remember it.
And I just finished Hot in Hellcat Canyon by Julie Anne Long (contemporary) and had a bunch of mixed feeling about it (parts I absolutely loved and others I actively hated). The heroine’s hobby is nursing sick plants back to health.