GLORY IN THE FLOWER
Wordsworth’s love of gardening
Although Wordsworth is forever associated with the wild beauty of the Lake District, a new book reveals the Romantic poet’s love for nature in its more cultivated form, exploring the domestic flowers that inspired him throughout his life. It chronicles his literary use of flora, and reveals the poet to be a keen gardener, who structured his plots as carefully as his sonnets. Despite Wordsworth’s passion for horticulture, his fondness for untamed exuberance finally prevailed – the planting at Dove Cottage in Grasmere remains even to this day ‘a little nook of mountain-ground’. cg ‘Wordsworth’s Gardens and Flowers: The Spirit of Paradise’ by Peter Dale and Brandon C Yen (£30, ACC Art Books) is published in June.