Flowering Outdoors: Gardens & Parties by Margot Shaw
(Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2026)
As founder and editor of Flower magazine, Margot Shaw obviously knows just about all there is to know about flowers. And in this new book, she shares her secrets for making flowers the focus of gardens and using them to enhance your balconies, tables, patios, terraces in almost any location, from dense urban cities to the expansive countryside.
In a foreword to the book, designer Bunny Williams says Shaw, in this book, will show the reader how to live and how to entertain in the garden. As Williams puts it, “Page after page will give the reader a feast for the eyes as well as ideas to try for themselves.”
The first part of the book spotlights acclaimed floral design experts and their essential recommendations for entertaining outdoors. You’ll visit Anne Hamilton’s home in Newport, Rhode Island; Frances Schultz’s ranch in California; Fiona Tilley’s rooftop terrace in New York City; and several others. You’ll then move on to gardens in the US (mostly in eastern part of the country), but also in the UK and France. All of these gardens have loads of flower beds, and you’ll garner inspiration for your own place from the beautiful photos that accompany each entry. Finally, Shaw shows you how to successfully incorporate garden elements such as planters, containers, architectural structures, and furniture to make your landscape a place where you, your family, and your friends can relax and simply enjoy the show.
How Flowers Made Our World by David George Haskell
(Viking Penguin Random House LLC, 2026)
Most likely, we wouldn’t be here without flowers. As biologist and author Haskell notes in the preface to this book, 90 percent of all plant species on the planet are flowering plants. “Without them,” he says,”humans would not have evolved, nor could we feed ourselves today.
Flowering plants are some of life’s great revolutionaries. They belong at the center of the story of how our world came to be.” And in this book, you’ll find out exactly why.
Using specific plants and places as starting points, you’ll find out, for example, in the chapter on magnolias, you’ll discover that “When Tyrannosaurus stomped through the subtropical forests of the late Cretaceous, magnolia-like plants had been thriving for fifty or more millions years.” And did you know — from the chapter on Goatsbeard — that garden strawberries “are the hybrid offspring of North American and Chilean species of strawberry, an unlikely union achieved during an eighteenth century breeding experiment in France.” ? You’ll also learn about the Chelsea Flower Show, Brooklyn Bridge Park, the International Perfume Museum Gardens in France, and much, much more.
That’s just a brief sample of what Haskell offers about the importance of flowers in human development over millennia. But best of all, Haskell is an excellent and beautiful writer. This is clearly the best written book about a horticultural subject that I have ever read.
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