"Spring has sprung, the gras has ris, I wonder where the flowers is?" My mother used to recite that little piece of doggerel every spring. I think she felt, like many Front Range gardeners, ready to be done with winter even though March is generally our snowiest month. If you're itching to get some garden soil under your fingernails, here are some titles to spur you on.

Gardeners come in all shapes, sizes and personalities. Former Westword columnist, Robin Chotzino, has put together a warm and witty collection of essays about some unusual gardening personalities she's met. Whether it's the publishers of an underground seed catalog or Texas Rose Rustlers who pilfer heirloom cuttings from old cemeteries, the escapades of the gardeners pro?led in People with Dirty Hands will keep you reading long into the night.

The garden as a metaphor for life is the theme that winds through The Invisible Garden by Dorothy Sucher. Although her garden is in Vermont, her graceful essays will resonate with gardeners in any climate.

William Alexander always wanted a garden and when he and his family moved to the Hudson Valley, he got his wish. Imagine his surprise, however, when at the end of the growing season, he determined that each of his cherished Brandywine tomatoes cost him $64. The $64 Tomato is a humorous yet philosophical look at the joys and heartaches (and expense!) of nurturing a small plot of earth.

Amy Stewart also wanted a garden. When she and her husband moved to Santa Cruz, Calif., after college, they found a seaside cottage with a small backyard and set to work. In From the Ground Up, Stewart takes us on her journey as a garden neophyte and we learn along with her the virtues of compost, the joys (and pains) of manual labor and the lives of earthworms. Stewart was so smitten with earthworms she went on to write a whole book about them entitled The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms.

From gardening neophytes we move to a couple of seasoned hands. Roger Swain, known as the "man with the red suspenders," hosted the PBS show Victory Garden for 15 years. Besides being a connoisseur of straw mulch and compost, he has written a number of gardening books, all of which benefit from his doctorate in biology from Harvard. Try Groundwork: A Gardener's Ecology and Saving Graces: Sojourns of a Backyard Biologist for starters. You can also catch him on DVD in People, Places and Plants.

Gardening in Colorado can be a challenge with our late snowstorms, hot, dry summers and early frosts. In his book The Zen of Gardening, Golden resident David Wann provides tips and techniques for gardening in the arid West combined with his unique blend of Zen wisdom, nature-based design and simple living philosophy. This book is an inspiration to gardeners both old and new.

You can check out these titles and many more at any Jefferson County Public Library location. Talk to your librarian for more recommendations.