Author Description

‘Gardens’, wrote Sir William Temple in 1685, are ‘an employment and a possession for which no man is too high or too low’, and today a love of gardening continues to unite the owners of country estates and cottage gardens, allotments and window-boxes, worldwide. In this delightful anthology, Elizabeth Seager, herself a keen gardener and writer on gardening, explores gardens old and new in the company of their creators and the sometimes eccentric gardens who tended them. From Sayes-Court in the 17th century to Sissinghurst in the 20th, gardens have attracted writers, and John Evelyn and Vita Sackville-West are joined by diarists, poets, and novelists to describe real gardens and fictional ones, including the famous ‘Secret Garden, beloved by generations of children. Triumphs and disasters, advice and technique are all recorded and freely given, and the variety of pleasure afforded by a garden, and the pursuits that can be enjoyed in one, are here celebrated by Dean Hole and