REVIEW: Rotten Botany and Darkness in Bloom

I’ve kept a poison garden for years. Belladonna, datura, monkshood and wormwood all grow out back, and every one of them comes with a story. So I was thrilled when two new books on the darker side of the plant world showed up this fall. Whether you love spooky plant lore or just want a yard that looks like the Addams Family lives there, these two make a great pair.

Rotten Botany by Varla A. Ventura

Rotten Botany: Darkly Deceptive, Bizarrely Beautiful & Oddly Alluring Plants is out now from New Page Books, an imprint of Red Wheel Weiser. Ventura has studied herbalism and botany for more than thirty years, ran plant nurseries in Portland and San Francisco, and tends her own poison garden in Minnesota, so I knew I was in good hands.

The book is grouped into sections like the Lovely Lilies of Death, the Carnivores, the Deception of Orchids and the Poison Path. You’ll meet the corpse plant, the vampire lily, Dracula orchids, the bat plant and deadly nightshade. Each entry covers the plant’s names, origins and folklore, plus growing zones and tips if you want to raise your own “rottanicals.” The Poison Path chapter was my favorite, and I’d happily read a whole book of it.

Darkness in Bloom by Chloe Hurst

Darkness in Bloom: A Gothic Guide to Dramatic and Moody Plants comes from Timber Press. Hurst is the creator of The Goth Garden, where she shares the black-flowered backyard she has built at her home in Ontario. She’s also a senior graphic designer by day, and it shows. This is a gorgeous book, full of moody photos.

Hurst lays out her rules for going goth early on: nothing bright, cute or minimalist, and absolutely no yellow. From there she walks you through plant profiles and design tips for dark perennials, annuals and houseplants, plus spooky decor ideas to tie it all together. She also points out that plenty of dark plants still feed pollinators, which I loved to see.

I read these back to back and they fit together perfectly. Rotten Botany filled in the history behind plants I already grow, and Darkness in Bloom has me planning what to add next spring.

If You Want More

Red Wheel Weiser also published Ventura’s Enchanted Plants: A Treasury of Botanical Folklore and Magic, which pairs fairy tale lore with the magic and medicine of plants and includes a whole chapter on toxic ones. From Timber Press, look for Paul Bonine’s Black Plants: 75 Striking Choices for the Garden, a compact guide to dark-leaved and dark-flowered annuals, perennials, bulbs and shrubs that would sit nicely next to Darkness in Bloom.