THE special twist of this anthology of garden writing – prose and verse – is its division into historical periods. Thus its offerings run from Genesis recording the creation of the garden of Eden, to an alarm over the death of bees in a recently published book.

Each period, nine in all, is given its own short but informative introduction, and fiction – Jane Eyre encountering Mr Rochester in his garden, the execution of Jude the Obscure’s pig (kept in his garden, of course) – share this richly varied plot not only with poems but elegant and/or informative writing on a host of gardening subjects: William Cobbett on shrubberies, Christopher Lloyd, creator of the glorious garden at Great Dixter in Sussex, on composting and mulching.