艺术家和作家总是被鲜花所吸引。作为灵感或简单乐趣的来源，几百年来，花卉成就了许多最伟大和最令人难忘的艺术作品，这些作品用文字、线条和色彩来呼应和保存其主题的特殊美感。作者从不同作家的作品中选出了一些诗歌和散文，从莎士比亚和米尔顿，到雷金纳德•法勒和爱德华•奥古斯都•鲍尔斯，再到玛丽安•摩尔和西奥多•罗斯克等二十世纪的诗人。

诗歌和选段的插图来自皇家园艺协会林德利图书馆的杰出艺术作品收藏，该图书馆被公认为世界上**的园艺图书馆。

Artists and writers alike have always been drawn to flowers. As sources of inspiration or simple enjoyment, flowers have been responsible over the centuries for many of our greatest and most memorable works of art, works that echo and preserve – in words and in line and colour – the particular beauties of their subjects. This volume brings together a personal selection of poetry and prose from a broad range of writers, from Shakespeare and Milton, to Reginald Farrer and Edward Augustus Bowles, to twentieth-century poets such as Marianne Moore and Theodore Roethke. Familiar wild and garden flowers are here explored in all their moods and mysteries.
The poems and extracts are illustrated with botanical prints from the remarkable collection of artworks at the Royal Horticultural Society's Lindley Library, acknowledged as the world's finest horticultural library.