My favorite garden read for 2021 was The Earth in Her Hands 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants. In this beautiful and empowering book, Jennifer Jewell introduces 75 inspiring women. I savored each bio, usually reading only one each evening. If there’s a gardener on your holiday gift list, consider this lovely book.

The Earth in Her Hands celebrates the important contributions women make to the wide world of plants--in the fields of horticulture, environmental science, botany, floral design, farming, landscape architecture, herbalism, food justice, and more. These influencers are creating change from the ground up. (From Amazon).

Profiled women include flower farmer Erin Benzakein; codirector of Soul Fire Farm Leah Penniman; plantswoman Flora Grubb; edible and cultural landscape designer Leslie Bennett; Caribbean-American writer and gardener Jamaica Kincaid; soil scientist Elaine Ingham; landscape designer Ariella Chezar; floral designer Amy Merrick, and many more. Rich with personal stories and insights, Jewell’s portraits reveal a devotion that transcends age, locale, and background, reminding us of the profound role of green growing things in our world—and our lives. (From Amazon).

Jennifer Jewell is a gardener, garden writer, and gardening educator and advocate. Since 2016, she has written and hosted the national award-winning, weekly public radio program and podcast, Cultivating Place, a coproduction of North State Public Radio in Chico, California. Particularly interested in the intersections between gardens, the native plant environments around them, and human culture, she is the daughter of a garden- and floral-designing mother and a wildlife biologist father. Jennifer has been writing about gardening professionally since 1998, and her work has appeared in Gardens Illustrated, House & Garden, Natural Home, Old House Journal, Colorado Homes & Lifestyles, and Pacific Horticulture. (From Timber Press, publisher).