Gardens have long been recognised as havens of calm and natural beauty providing respite from the rigours and stresses of life, and the subject has attracted many of the finest lyrical writers in the English language. Gloriously illustrated with over sixty watercolours and oil paintings by Linda Benton, Come into the Garden celebrates the pleasures and satisfactions afforded by tending gardens as well as the splendour of the plants found in them. Ben Jonson muses on the ripening of garden fruits, John Evelyn points out how difficult it is to keep the grass out of paths, John Keats evokes the dainty sweet pea and Edward Thomas provides a description of an autumnal bonfire. This collection of verse, drawn from the work of eighty poets and spanning four hundred years, includes a selection of old favourites together with a wealth of less familiar poems that will delight lovers of poetry, gardeners and indeed anyone who appreciates what Rudyard Kipling called ‘the glory of the garden’.