See inside the gardens where literary giants from Tolstoy to Agatha Christie created some of their finest works in this visually stunning and fascinating book. 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 at Godmersham and Chawton, Agatha Christie at Greenway, Beatrix Potter at Hill Top, Roald Dahl at Gipsy House, Virginia Woolf at Monk’s House, Walter Scott, Thomas Hardy at Hardy’s Cottage and Max Gate , Robert Burns at Ellisland, William Wordsworth at Cockermouth and Grasmere, Rudyard Kipling at Bateman’s, Louisa May Alcott at Orchard House, Emily Dickinson at The Homestead, Amherst, Beatrix Farrand, Mount Desert Island, Maine, Elizabeth Lawrence, Winghaven Gardens, F Scott Fitzgerald in Montgomery, Robert Frost at Derry, Ernest Hemingway in Florida, Jack London at Beauty Ranch and Wolf House, Henry David Thoreau at Thoreau Farm & Walden Pond, Mark Twain at Hartford, Alice Walker in Eatonton, Georgia, Marcel Proust, Illiers Combray, Georges Sand, Nohant, Nr Chatelroux, Emile Zola, Medan South of Paris, Herman Hesse, Casa Camuzzi, Lake Lugano, Weimer Group: Goethe, Christoph Martin Wieland & Schiller, Alessandro Manzoni, Milan + Lake Como, Tolstoy, Yasnay Polyana Estate, Moscow. 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.

From Tresco to Lindisfarne, Anglesey to Sark, travel around the British Isles and discover the most beautiful and extreme island gardens on this visually stunning tour. The British Isles consist of more than 6,000 islands scattered around the main islands of Britain and Ireland. More than 100 of these British off-shore islands are inhabited - and where there are people, there are gardens. Lighthouse gardens, gulf-stream-soaked, tropical gardens, windswept remote gardens with giant and ancient yew trees, and gardens surrounding castles and monasteries of historical significance. Encounter a huge variety of habitats and gardening conditions, from coastal machair to woodlands, mountains, dunes and meadows, and explore a wide range of aspects, from shady dells, to sunny banks, deep-soiled productive gardens to rocky, alpine slopes. While they can differ dramatically with regards to aesthetics, what all island gardens share is the special light, magical atmosphere and indefinable magic that a proximity to water can bring. Here, Jackie Bennett reveals the challenges their gardeners face, the designs required in such extremes, and the skills their gardeners have mastered to survive and thrive, accompanied by stunning photography by garden and drone photographer Richard Hanson.