WORDSWORTH’S GARDENS AND FLOWERS: THE SPIRIT OF PARADISE by Peter Dale and Brandon C Yen

ACC Art Books, £30 ISBN 978-1851498956

A thoughtful look at William Wordsworth as both gardener and poet, through the gardens he created and his literary use of flowers.

Think of William Wordsworth and flowers and there’s very probably one in particular that comes fluttering to mind. But authors Peter Dale and Brandon C Yen are among ‘those who’ve had enough of daffodils’. They are more interested in exploring how nature – and the space between ‘wilderness and culture’ filled by gardens – informed Wordsworth the poet.

Had he not been a poet, Wordsworth could easily have had a career in garden design. He was at one point commissioned by Sir George and Lady Beaumont to create a Winter Garden for their home Coleorton Hall in Leicestershire. That garden and others Wordsworth created for himself at Dove Cottage and later at Rydal Mount, are the subject of the first part of this book written by Dale.

Dale visited the gardens and dug through journals and letters to discover what plants were grown and how the gardens might have looked. He also paints a vivid picture of everyday life for William and his sister Dorothy – the plants they loved, the food they ate, their liberal guilt over using sugar from cane cut by slaves – and of Wordsworth the gardener, still getting his hands dirty in his seventies.

In the second part, Yen moves the focus from the gardens to the flowers, exploring the cultural, religious and political significance of a host of flowers – from roses to the humble pilewort – that offered muse to Wordsworth’s poetry, with insights that make you want to revisit familiar poems and discover others for the first time.

Almost every plant is illustrated by a botanical print taken from a contemporaneous book – two in particular by Robert Thornton and William Baxter – making this a beautiful as well as a fascinating book.