Discover the flower gardens, vegetable plots, landscapes and writing hideaways of 30 great authors – from Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Orchard House’ where she wrote Little Women and Agatha Christie at Greenway, to Virginia Woolf at Monk’s House and the Massachusetts home of Edith Wharton.

Fully illustrated with specially commissioned photography plus archive images, and spanning centuries and continents, this book  visits the homes and gardens that inspired novelists, poets and playwrights. It shows how outdoor spaces were important to writers in many different ways and offers insight into the lives and creative processes of beloved authors.

Writers featured include:

Jane Austen in Kent and Hampshire, Agatha Christie in Devon, Beatrix Potter in the Lake District, Thomas Hardy in Dorset, Walter Scott and Robert Burns in Scotland, William Wordsworth in Cumbria, Virginia Woolf and Rudyard Kipling in Sussex, Frances Hodgson Burnett in Kent, Jack London in California, Edward James in Mexico, Jean Cocteau and George Sand in France and Goethe in Germany.

This deeply insightful book sheds new light on some of literature’s greatest works, offers rare glimpses into the lives of these brilliant minds, and showcases in stunning full colour the gardens in which these writers spent their time.

Each chapter of this beautifully illustrated book presents an introduction to the wild plants and creatures to expect at that time of the year, lists of seasonal tasks with straightforward instructions on how to carry them out, detailed profiles of plants in bloom, and a practical project aimed at encouraging more wildlife into the garden, including making a wildlife pond, building a nest box, planning a herb bed, planting a wildflower meadow and more.

With appendices covering wildlife gardening in containers and suggested garden layouts, this guide offers a wealth of gardening information in an accessible format, allowing gardeners to find the advice they need, exactly when they need it.

The most alluring image of an artist at work is surely one where he or she has come out of their studio, set up their easel on the garden path, pulled on a hat to shade their eyes from the sun and taken their brush and palette in hand.

This sumptuously illustrated and fascinating book delves into the  stories behind the gardens which inspired some of the most beautiful and important works of art.

These gardens not only supplied the inspiration for creative works but also illuminate the professional motivation and private life of the artists themselves – from Cezanne’s house in the south of France to Childe Hassam at Celia Thaxter’s garden off the coast off Maine.

Flowers and gardens have often been the first choice for artists looking for a subject. A garden close to the artist’s studio is not only convenient for daily material and ideas, but also has the advantage of changing through the seasons and over time. Claude Monet’s Giverny was the catalyst for hundreds of great paintings (by Monet and other artists), each one different from the one before. Sometimes a whole village becomes the focus for a colony of artists as at Gerberoy in Picardy and Skagen on the northernmost tip of Denmark.

This book is about the real homes and gardens that inspired these great artists – gardens that can still be visited today. The relationship between artist and garden is a complex one. A few artists, including Pierre Bonnard and his neighbour Monet were keen gardeners, as much in love with their plants as their work, while for others like Sorolla in Madrid, his courtyard home was both a sanctuary and a source of ideas.

This book is as unmissable for art lovers as it is for anyone who knows the joy of time spent in gardens, offering an intriguing insight into the lives of these great painters and the gardens which inspired them to their creative heights. ]]> https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/writers-garden/ Thu, 07 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/writers-garden/

In this book of 25 gardens, the author examines how the poet, writer, novelist derived a creative spirit from their private garden, how they tended and enjoyed their gardens, and how they managed their outdoor space.