52 Living Books About Flowers and Gardens for Kids

Spring and summer are the best times to read books about flowers and gardens with kids. Each season begins and ends with new and exciting plants to see, smell, and sometimes even eat!

To help you have plenty of books on hand to last through both growing seasons, I’ve compiled a list of some of the best living picture books about flowers and gardens. Some of the books will have some scientific information, but I wanted to focus on beautiful literature that can draw kids in and plant a love for plants in their hearts.

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I hope you’ll fill baskets full of books from this list to savor over the next several months. I hope reading them creates familiarity and a gentle curiosity to notice plants along the way. One thing I know about familiarity and curiosity is that they can sometimes lead to passionate learning down the road. If not, a sweet love for the familiar things usually blossoms anyway.

Whether passionate about flowers and gardens or not, I can almost guarantee that children who are well-read in books about them will learn to notice them in the world. Noticing is the beginning of observation, and observation is a terrific skill for science.

Have I reminded you lately that nature study IS science? Even simple observation or gentle curiosity are valuable nature study skills. So, if you think about it, something as easy as reading living books about flowers and gardens can spark quite the bright fire of learning over time.

Living Books About Flowers and Gardens

The life and beauty of flowering or edible plants make them popular topics for authors. That’s good news for us because this list is wonderful and giant.

Living Books About Flowers

In spring, summer, and even autumn, flowers are everywhere. Wildflowers grow in giant fields, from the cracks in a sidewalk, and everywhere in between. Curated flowers might dance in the wind of your neighbor’s beautifully landscaped yard or spring forth in crowded bunches from a pot on the back porch.

No matter where you find them, you can be assured that each and every variety is beautiful. Surprisingly, each type of flower can be easily identified by its unique size, color, smell, petals, and leaves, yet fits into a flower family group where you can definitely see similarities.

Enjoy as many of these living books about flowers as possible this season. They will build your love for flowers and help you see the interconnected uniqueness among the varieties. You might even learn something about the science or history of flowers!

• A Little More Beautiful by Sarah Mackenzie
• Camille and the Sunflowers by Anholt Laurence
• The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss
• Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes
• The Empty Pot by Demi
• The Flower by John Light
• The Flower Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta
• Flower Garden by Eve Bunting
• Flowers by Gail Gibbons
• Flowers are Calling by Rita Gray

• From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons
• Inch by Inch by Leo Lionni
• Miss Ladybird’s Wildflowers by Kathi Appelt
• Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney
• The Night Flower by Lara Hawthorne
• Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert
• The Reason for a Flower by Ruth Heller
• Sidewalk Flowers by JonArno Lawson
• The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf
• The Sunflower House by Eve Bunting
• Zinnia’s Flower Garden by Monica Wellington

Living Books About Gardens

Whether you grow your own version of a garden or not, picture books about gardens are not to be missed. They help children learn to love the process of seeds sprouting through rich soil into magnificent plants that magically feed people.

I will warn you that the goodness in these books sometimes ignites a gardening desire. If that happens, lean into it! You don’t have to plow up the entire backyard but offer as much space as possible (even if that’s a single pot on the windowsill) to explore this rich learning opportunity.

Again, I hope you’ll fill your house with as many of the books from this list as possible this season!

• The Curious Garden by Peter Brown
• The Extraordinary Gardener by Sam Boughton
• The Garden Next Door by Collin Pine
• The Garden We Share by Zoe Tucker
• The Gardener by Sarah Stewart
• A Green, Green Garden by Mercer Mayer
• Hello, World! Garden Time by Jill McDonald
• How Plants Grow by Dona Herweck Rice
• In a Garden by Tim McCanna
• In My Garden by National Kids
• Jack’s Garden by Henry Cole

• Jayden’s Impossible Garden by Melina Mangal
• Lola Plants a Garden by Anna McQuinn
• Plant it! Grow it, Eat it by Little Grasshopper Books
• Plants – National Geographic Readers by Kathryn Williams
• The Secret Garden of George Washington Carver by Gene Barretta
• The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
• The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
• Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens
• Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt by Kate Messner
• The Wild Garden by Cynthia Cliff
• We Are the Gardeners by Joanna Gaines

Flower and Gardening How-To Books for Kids

• Gardening for Kids: An Easy Step-by-Step Parents Guide to Growing Fruits, Vegetables, and Flowers with Your Children by Isabella Woods
• Gardening for Kids: Learn, Grow, and Get Messy with Fun STEAM Projects by Brandy Stone
• Gardening Lab for Kids by Renata Brown
• Gardening with Emma: Grow and Have Fun: A Kid-to-Kid Guide by Emma Biggs
• How to Draw 50+ Flowers by Ellyse Mayfield
• Junior Master Gardener Handbook by Junior Master Gardener
• My First Garden: For Little Gardeners Who Want to Grow by Livi Gosling
• We Garden Together!: Projects for Kids by Jane Hirschi

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