This collection of classic garden writing presents the garden as place of solace in our busy world, a retreat for lovers, and even an earthly paradise. Bringing together a wide range of voices from across the centuries and around the globe―from Pliny in first-century Italy to Robert Louis Stevenson in nineteenth-century Hawaii― Pleasures of the Garden features fiction and poetry, memoirs and letters, all in celebration of gardens. The gardens themselves vary widely, too, including the stately landscaped parks of Georgian England, the exquisitely managed gardens of Japan, and the painterly gardens of the Arts and Crafts movement. At times lyrical and light-hearted, at others analytic or inspirational, the works compiled here from such authors as Jane Austen, Rudyard Kipling, Charlotte Brontë, Alexander Pope, D. H. Lawrence, and many more reveal that gardens have long nurtured much more than the plants they contain―their peace, order, and seclusion also have a long tradition of inspiring the pen and fueling the soul.             Our backyard gardens may not compare with the long-lost Hanging Gardens of Babylon, but Pleasures of the Garden reminds us that they are nonetheless part of a long and storied tradition. No green thumb should be without it. Christina Hardyment is the author of Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands , also published by the British Library, among other books, and reviews regularly for the Times (UK) and Independent .