The RHS Book of Garden Verse

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• Publisher: Frances Lincoln
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780711256514
• eBook ISBN: 9780711263369
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Art Techniques
• Index: Literature

From the RHS comes this celebration of the garden, spanning the centuries and the globe. From the Garden of Eden to small backyards, from scented memories to bonfires and neighbours' rights, from suggestive slugs to paranoid palm-house gardeners, the poems burst out in a biodiversity of fun, exotic beauty and earthy philosophy. There's something for everyone, with a glorious array of gardening classics, perennial favourites and more recent contributions from Dorothy Parker, Sylvia Plath and John Agard. 

Each poem is illustrated with a botanical print, a hand-coloured or black and white engraving, or a watercolour drawing - all from the remarkable collection of botanical art at the Royal Horticultural Society's Lindley Library, acknowledged as the world's finest horticultural library. Together they create a colourful collection to invigorate gardening enthusiasts, delight landscape-lovers and inspire armchair gardeners everywhere.

GARDENS

MY GARDEN

A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!

Rose plot,

Fringed pool,

Ferned grot –

The veriest school

Of peace; and yet the fool

Contends that God is not –

Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool?

Nay, but I have a sign;

’Tis very sure God walks in mine.

Thomas Edward Brown (1830–97)

CHERRY-RIPE

There is a garden in her face

Where roses and white lilies blow;

A heavenly paradise is that place,

Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow:

There cherries grow which none may buy

Till ‘Cherry-ripe’ themselves do cry.

Those cherries fairly do enclose

Of orient pearls a double row,

Which when her lovely laughter shows,

They look like rose-buds fill’d with snow;

Yet them nor peer nor prince can buy

Till ‘Cherry-ripe’ themselves do cry.

Her eyes like angels watch them still;

Her brows like bended bows do stand,

Threat’ning with piercing frowns to kill

All that attempt with eye or hand

Those sacred cherries to come nigh,

Till ‘Cherry-ripe’ themselves do cry.

Thomas Campion (1567–1620)

PARADISE

Thus was this place

A happy rural seat of various view;

Groves whose rich Trees wept odorous Gumms

and Balme,

Others whose fruit, burnisht with Golden Rinde

Hung amiable, Hesperian Fables true,

If true, here only, and of delicious taste:

Betwixt them Lawns, or level Downs, and Flocks

Grasing the tender herb, were interpos’d,

Or palmy hilloc; or the flourie lap

Of some irriguous Valley spread her store,

Flow’rs of all hue, and without Thorn the Rose:

Another side, umbrageous Grots and Caves

Of coole recess, o’re which the mantling Vine

Layes forth her purple Grape, and gently creeps

Luxuriant; mean while murmuring waters fall

Down the slope hills, disperst, or in a Lake,

That to the fringèd Bank with Myrtle crownd

Her chrystall mirror holds, unite thir streams.

The Birds thir quire apply; aires, vernal aires,

Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune

The trembling leaves, while Universal Pan

Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance

Led on th’ Eternal Spring.

from Paradise Lost, Book 4
John Milton (1608–74)

THE GARDEN

How vainly men themselves amaze

To win the Palm, the Oke, or Bayes;

And their uncessant Labours see

Crow...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Seasons
• Gardening
• Plants
• Creatures
• Gardens
• Past, Present, Future
• List of Illustrations
• Index of First Lines
• Acknowledgments
• Copyright