Artists and writers have always been drawn to flowers, as sources of inspiration, for simple enjoyment, and flowers themselves have been the muses for many of our greatest and most memorable works of art.
 
This volume brings together the best flower poetry and prose from a broad range of writers, from Shakespeare and Milton, to Reginald Farrer and Edward Augustus Bowles, to
twentieth-century poets such as Marianne Moore and Theodore Roethke. Wild and garden flowers are here explored in all their moods and mysteries.
 
The poems and extracts are illustrated with botanical art from the Royal Horticultural Society’s Lindley Library, acknowledged as the world’s finest horticultural library.
 
Addison • Betjeman • Bowles • Bradley and Cooper • Burns •
Burroughs • Capek • Carroll • Clare • Colette • Crabbe •
Ellacombe • Farrer • Fish • Gerard • Gilbert • Hanmer •
Hardy • Hopkins • Housman • Hudson • Hunt • Jekyll •
Johnson • Lawrence • Longfellow • Marvell • Milton •
Mitchell • Moore • Parkinson • Pitter • Plunkett • Ridler •
Roethke • Rohde • Rossetti • Sackville West • Seward •
Shakespeare • Silkin • Sitwell • Stevenson • Swinburne •
Thomas • Williams • Williamson • Wither • Wordsworth

Charles Elliott is an editor and writer who lives in London and gardens in Monmouth near the Welsh border. He is a regular contributor to Horticulture magazine, and has been a magazine editor and senior editor for Alfred A. Knopf in New York. He has written several books, including The Potting Shed Papers and More Papers from the Potting Shed. He lives in Monmouthshire and West London.