This volume presents dozens of beautiful full-color photographs of the gardens at Dove Cottage, Rydal Mount, and Coleorton Hall. Many readers of Wordsworth know of his love for natural scenery, but it is a lesser-known fact that Wordsworth actually designed gardens, including the winter garden of his friend and patron Sir George Beaumont, who lent out his Coleorton estate’s farm to the poet and his family in the winter of 1806. Wordsworth once remarked that nature had fitted him for only three possible occupations—those of poet, art critic, and landscape gardener.
The photographs in this book are interspersed with anecdotes, excerpts of Wordsworth’s poems, and information about garden layouts of the poet’s design. The examples below illustrate the gardens at Wordsworth’s two most famous homes, Dove Cottage and Rydal Mount.
Contributed by Kyler Merrill