Gardening is widely recognised as an activity which promotes mental and physical resilience in individuals. Certain kinds of gardening have also attracted growing interest over the last half century because of their potential to contribute to ecological resilience and social cohesion. This chapter asks what role literary narratives of gardening play in building these three dimensions of resilience in readers and facilitating socio-political change. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911), Jamaica Kincaid’s My Garden (Book) (2001) and Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood (2009) are examined as popular forms of garden writing (children’s literature, autobiographical essay, science fiction) which demonstrate the diversity and importance of a genre hitherto overlooked by literary ecocritics.