Everything You Can Do In The Garden Without Actually Gardening

Within the garden we can create our own kingdom and do precisely what we want, as this book delightfully demonstrates: it is not about gardening but about what we do when that is done (or not done). Philippa Lewis looks at how people have spent time in the garden. We can all be tempted by the idea of a deckchair, reading or dozing (maybe even smoking), or taking a gentle walk, perhaps even playing tennis or croquet.

But some people have been considerably more imaginative. The poet Blake and his wife liked to lie naked in their summerhouse, reading aloud to each other from Paradise Lost. Lawrence of Arabia rode a camel in his Northumberland garden.

Menageries, parties, shooting, follies, grottoes, drawing: the notion of what a garden can be used for is endlessly various. What gardener would not want to lay down their fork and take up this book to be reminded of all the pleasures there are in being out of doors?