Bedside Companion for Gardeners: The Deserted Garden

A mix of fact and fiction, fantasy and experience, the Bedside Companion for Gardeners is a treasure trove of green-fingered inspiration where practical advice blends seamlessly with poetry and prose from intrepid gardeners past and present. Dip in and out of this collection with an entry for every night of the year that draws on writing through the ages and from across the globe.

The book is compiled by Jane McMorland Hunter, a keen gardener herself and passionate about books and poetry. For November, we find garden writing and poems celebrating autumn, including The Deserted Garden by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

The Deserted Garden

Verses 1–6 | Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

I mind me in the days departed,
How often underneath the sun
With childish bounds I used to run
To a garden long deserted.

The beds and walks were vanished quite;
And wheresoe’er had struck the spade,
The greenest grasses Nature laid,
To sanctify her right.

I called the place my wilderness,
For no one entered there but I;
The sheep looked in, the grass to espy,
And passed it ne’ertheless.

The trees were interwoven wild,
And spread their boughs enough about
To keep both sheep and shepherd out,
But not a happy child.

Adventurous joy it was for me!
I crept beneath the boughs,
and found A circle smooth of mossy ground
Beneath a poplar tree.

Old garden rose-trees hedged it in,
Bedropt with roses waxen-white,
Well satisfied with dew and light,
And careless to be seen.

From Bedside Companion for Gardeners: An anthology of garden writing for every night of the year, edited by Jane McMorland Hunter. Out now!