The 7 Best Gardening Magazines 

SOUTHERN LIVING Best Southern Gardens 

This issue of “Southern Living” magazine was released on its 50th anniversary as a special edition. It places a spotlight on the most beautiful gardens in the South. Inside, you will find 223 ideas for garden containers, beds, and borders.

"Southern Living" magazine is a well-established publication, known for its taste and culture with regards to life in the South. This anniversary edition has 112 pages and has plenty of ideas, advice, and photographic tours of the gardens in the South. Aside from being informative, the beautiful cover is a great addition to your coffee table display.

There is a wide range of ideas in this book, but they are also all concise, given the number of pages. This magazine has excellent photography that will inspire you to build your dream garden.

This only focuses on gardens in the South, so if you are living in a climate different from the South's, some of the ideas you get from the garden tours will have to be adjusted. This is a coy from 2016, and some recommended products may no longer be available, and ideas and advice may have developed over time.

The Best of Organic Gardening 

“The Best of Organic Gardening” has 240 pages packed with gardening advice and techniques. Edited by Mike McGrath, this is a great paperback guide with plenty of illustrations.

This magazine is said to be America’s best-loved gardening magazine. The advice and techniques gathered here are based on 50 years’ worth of readers proving them to be useful and practical.

The advice in this magazine is so plentiful that one reader says you can pick it up and ready any chapter at random. The text is very informative, especially for organic gardening and without the use of chemicals. While it is an old issue, readers say they keep coming back to for the timeless inspiration and basic information.

This is an old copy, dating back to 1995, so while basic advice and techniques can still be useful, you will have to adapt them to the present day. There are not a lot of color photographs inside.

Florida Getting Started Garden Guide

The climate of Florida makes for some amazing native plants and incredible gardens, which are featured in “Florida Getting Started Garden Guide.” Written by gardening experts Georgia Tasker and Tom MacCubbin, both novice and experienced gardeners will find this guide useful.

This is a magazine that is specific to Florida. It features advice on planting, growing, and caring for 150 of Florida's top ornamental and native plants. The guide covers every type of plant, from flowers to trees to shrubs.

The authors of this guide both hold degrees in horticulture and have received certification from Florida International University so you can count on their expert advice. The magazine has plenty of large color photographs and extensive information on Florida gardening, including pest control and over 175 plant recommendations. 

This is a guide that is specific to the region of Florida, so if you are not a gardener living in Florida, this advice and tips in here may not necessarily work for you and your garden.

The New Sunset Western Garden Book: The Ultimate Gardening Guide

“The New Sunset Western Garden Book: The Ultimate Gardening Guide" is the ninth edition of the previous best-selling editions of "The Western Garden Book." This edition features thousands of color photographs, new illustrations, and trustworthy gardening information for gardening beginners and experts alike.

This is the completely redesigned and re-updated guide that has been around for more than 80 years. Inside, you will find an extensive photo gallery, climate zone maps, growing season graphs, a plant encyclopedia, and a visual guide for every step you need to take to construct your very own garden.

The information in this magazine is wide-ranging and helpful for a gardener of any skill level. It is well-organized and has reliable references. It breaks down the specific climate zones in the U.S., so no matter where you’re growing plants, you can find the appropriate information. Readers say it is a definitive guide and the bible for home gardeners.

There are always new varieties of plants, and you may not be able to find any reference to them in this guide. Also, if you live in places with unique plants, they are not thoroughly covered by this guide.

Southeast Home Landscaping

This is the third edition of “Southeast Home Landscaping,” which is the creative homeowner’s guide to creating and maintaining a garden landscape. You can trust the tips and advice here since it was written and edited by Roger Holmes, the editor of "Fine Gardening" magazine and Rita Buchanan, a botanist, horticulturist, and passionate gardener designer.

In this magazine, you will find 54 beautiful designs created by landscape professionals, specifically for the Southeast. For your reference are 200 plants suited for the region and step-by-step guides for building paths, patios, fences, arbors, ponds, trellises, and garden walls.

This guide features over 450 color photos and illustrations to inspire you. Reading this is like having a team of professional garden designers on hand, giving you their best advice. The information is clear, concise, and easy to follow.

Many of the plans and designs of this guide do not make use of native plants and promote non-native hybrids as well as some invasive species. If you are new to the region, it lacks some information about landscaping zone recommendations.

Beginner's Illustrated Guide to Gardening: Techniques to Help You Get Started

The “Beginner's Illustrated Guide to Gardening” is made for young and novice gardeners. As an illustrated guide, you can rely on beautiful photographs and illustrated instructions to advise you on how to turn your overgrown, weedy yard into a gorgeous garden.

You can count on this guide to be informative and straightforward thanks to its author, Katie Elzer-Peters, a horticulturist and gardening teacher. The magazine has 192 pages of outlined instructions and crucial information on everything you could possibly grow in your home garden, from vegetables to flowers to trees.

This will be a handy resource for beginners, thanks to the detailed instructions that are easy to understand and follow. It covers a range of topics that every novice gardener needs to understand, such as bald lawn spots, improving soil, and a glossary of terms.

If you are a gardener with adequate to expert gardening experience, the information in this guide may be worn out for you.

The Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener's Handbook

Taking care of a vegetable garden requires a lot of organizing and multi-tasking because every vegetable has different needs, but the “The Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener's Handbook” will take the stress out of your work. With weekly to-do lists, you can be sure you’re doing the right thing to ensure a bountiful harvest from your vegetable garden.

Inside this guide is practical planning advice for every week of the growing season, with strategies for garden planning to put your garden to bed. Included is a weekly checklist and working notebook and a customizable planner.

This is a fantastic resource for vegetable gardeners who do not know how to keep track of the multitude of tasks it takes to have a robust and productive vegetable garden. The checklists and the journal are especially important for tracking your progress. It is also geared towards organic gardening.

One thing that is unclear about this guide is how to apply the weekly to-do lists to different zones in a vegetable garden. Also, if your growing season is very long, it might not fit the schedule outlined in this guide.