Wordsworth's Gardens

Front Cover
Texas Tech University Press, 2001 - 224 pages
Readers of the poems of William Wordsworth have likely encountered at least in some small way his love of the garden and gardening. And those who've visited the Great Britain's Lake District know well that Wordsworth was master of more than one craft.Each year, thousands of visitors from throughout the world treat themselves to an enchanting taste of Wordsworthian England on the grounds of Dove Cottage and Rydal Mount. There they find themselves awed by the aesthetic of the poet who designed the functional and pleasure grounds of the Wordsworth family gardens.Whether you've ever had the fortune to stroll the very terraces on which Wordsworth paced out his lines for posterity, you can do so again and again in this elegant full-color photo study by Carol and Richard Buchanan.In all of Wordsworth scholarship, no one has so definitively connected the themes of Wordsworth's poetry to his philosophy of gardening or has truly in one work demonstrated how nature in the raw and rocky Lake District became the soul and backbone of a poet and gardener who would not be enslaved by the tastes of his day.Counterposing poems of the garden and the letters and journals of Wordsworth and his eloquent sister Dorothy, Carol Buchanan, in her quiet and sensitive manner, manages to picture the whole Wordsworth: poet, gardener, and devoted and longsuffering family man. Illuminating Buchanan's perspective on Wordsworth's gardens, and on the Lake District that shaped Wordsworth's sensibilities, are three never-before-published garden plans and more than one hundred breathtaking photographs by Richard Buchanan.The general layout and functional economy of the argument and explanations are very satisfying--like walking through a well ordered garden; and the authority of Buchanan's discussions of the gardening work and thoughts of the Master is worn so unassumingly that no reader will be intimidated, yet scholarly readers will recognize the thoroughness of her study and be delighted at their own level.--Mark L. Reed

From inside the book

Contents

THE ODE AND THE DUNG
23
THE LOVE OF FLOWERS DOVE COTTAGE
55
A Gardening Partnership
60
The Gardens Structure
64
The Love of Gardening
72
The Plants
74
Life in the Garden
81
The Garden Today
83
Doras Rock
130
The Healing Garden
134
Building the Garden
135
The Terraces
138
The Voice of Waters
154
The Plantings
159
The Kitchen Garden
172
The Garden Today
173

THE GARDEN AS POEM THE WINTER GARDEN AT COLEORTON
89
A Gift of Friendship
90
Beginning of the Winter Garden
94
The Design
95
The Winter Garden Today
109
ROCK OF AGES THE RYDAL MOUNT GARDEN
115
The Situation of the Property
118
The Traumatic Years
120
Poetry of the Rydal Mount Years
123
Spiritual Shift
125
The Symbolism of Stone
129
WORDSWORTHS GARDEN LEGACY
177
Portfolio of Lake District Scenes
183
WORDSWORTHS GARDENS IN HIS POETRY
195
THE PLANTS
199
DESCRIPTION OF THE GARDEN BY CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH JR
205
RHODODENDRONS INTRODUCED INTO BRITISH CULTIVATION
207
Notes
209
Selected Bibliography AND FURTHER READING
213
Index
219
Copyright

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page xiii - tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes. The birds around me hopped and played, Their thoughts I cannot measure : — But the least motion which they made, It seemed a thrill of pleasure. The budding twigs spread out their fan, To catch the breezy air; And I must think, do all I can, That there was pleasure there.
Page xiii - I HEARD a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sate reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind. To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran ; And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made of man.
Page 5 - The Tower of Babel, not yet finished. St. George in box : his arm scarce long enough, but will be in a condition to stick the dragon by next April. A green dragon of the same, with a tail of ground-ivy for the present.
Page 7 - If we would copy Nature, it may be useful to take this Idea along with us, that Pastoral is an image of what they call the golden age.

Bibliographic information