Sarah Beth Durst chats books and flowers perfect for The Enchanted Greenhouse

Guest post by Sarah Beth Durst, author of The Enchanted Greenhouse. 

I have never had much luck with flowers. Plants see me and despair. It’s my mom who has the green thumb in the family. When I was growing up, she used to have the most magnificent gardens: roses, peonies, lilies, daisies, every flower imaginable. I was the kid sitting in the
branches of the catalpa tree with my nose in a book, hoping she didn’t call me to come dig in the dirt. As far as I was concerned, all the glorious flowers simply grew magically around me.

My mom’s beautiful gardens were the inspiration for the magical greenhouses in The Enchanted Greenhouse. I wrote this book because I believe everyone deserves a place where they can feel surrounded by magical plants, tiny dragons, love, and kindness. And in honor of that, I want to share with you my favorite book-and-flower pairs:

Flower: Lily-of-the-valley
Book: The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip
Lillies-of-the-valley are secretive, beautiful, and deadly, and so are the mythical creatures that Sybel protects in her hidden mountain home, until the outside world intrudes. This is a classic fantasy written by a master of beautiful, lyrical prose.

Flower: Skeleton flower
Book: The Lighthouse at the Edge of the World by J.R. Dawson
The petals of skeleton flowers become translucent in the rain, just as the ghostly waystation for the dead is only sometimes visible outside Chicago. A transcendently lovely book about death and life.

Flower: Lavendar
Book: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna
Lavendar is soft, sweet, and gentle, and to me, the lovely house with the gabled roof where the lonely witch Mika creates her own found family is infused with the scent of lavender. A wonderful cozy fantasy. Like Jane Eyre, but about really nice people. So, nothing like Jane Eyre.

Flower: Rose
Book: Never the Roses by Jennifer K. Lambert
The sorceress Oneira obsesses over a rare species of roses as part of her personal penance for all the very murdery acts she committed against her will. A lush and lovely romantasy about guilt and forgiveness.

Flower: Water lily
Book: Greenteeth by Molly O’Neill
A lake with water lilies may look serene, but under the surface, there’s a lot going on. Greenteeth stars the most brilliantly-written, unforgettably unique heroine I’ve ever read: Jenny Greenteeth, a lake monster.

Flower: Camellia
Book: The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong
Camellia, the tea plant, reminds me of this wonderful cozy fantasy about Tao, a woman who can read your fortune in tea leaves (but only small fortunes—it’s not safe to read big fortunes). This book is about found family and reading it feels exactly like drinking a cup of truly excellent tea.

Flower: Garlic
Book: Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis
Gav wakes up with no memory, which is unfortunate since everyone believes he’s an evil wizard. This hilarious and adorable novel features a local garlic festival. Also, killer moat squid, but I’ve chosen it for this list because of its ties to garlic. And because it’s awesome.

Flower: Orange blossom
Book: The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst
This one is my book. Set in the world of The Spellshop, it’s about a librarian and a gardener and a truly excessive number of magical plants. Even though it has a ton of flowers in it, I’m choosing to pair it with orange blossoms because they remind my librarian, Terlu, of her life before she was transformed into a statue for the crime of creating a sentient spider plant. This book is the story of what happens after she wakes—flesh again—on a nearly abandoned island full of magical greenhouses.

Happy reading, everyone! And remember to stop and smell the flowers!