This collection of classic garden writing celebrates the garden as a place of solace in a busy world, a retreat for lovers and an earthly paradise. Gardens have been cherished in all times and cultures, and this anthology reveals a wide range of voices, from the classic to the little-known, the lyrical to the light-hearted. Fiction and poetry inspired by gardens - from The Secret Garden to the poems of Rudyard Kipling - are featured alongside letters and memoirs about the real gardens created and enjoyed by some of the world's greatest writers. The anthology threads its way from ancient Egypt to English suburbia, from Pliny in first-century Italy to Robert Louis Stevenson in nineteenth-century Hawaii. It admires a wide array of gardens, from the stately landscaped parks of Georgian England and the exquisite artificial gardens of Japan to the painterly Arts and Crafts gardens of Gertrude Jekyll. Many of the gardens described by writers from history can still be visited today, including those of William Morris, John Clare, Thomas Jefferson and Jane Austen, and this beautiful book is sure to be treasured by those who love to visit and read in gardens as well as those who tend their own. It is superbly illustrated throughout with garden and flower pictures from around the world and across the centuries.

Author Biography

Christina Hardyment is the author of more than ten books on literature and social history, including most recently Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands and The World of Arthur Ransome. She reviews regularly for The Times and The Independent