A Fountain of Flowers

London: Michael Joseph, 1974.

Bates's last work of nature writing focuses on specific flowering plants, their scents and names, plant discoveries and history, and related topics like birds and planting from seed. Similar to his other gardening works, the book rarely strays into the kinds of observations on society, nature, and modern life that characterize his other non-fictional work.

The preface and twenty-four essays express Bates's philosophy that "true gardens" are not made "wholly of professional skills or tomes of encyclopaedic knowledge or even of green fingers: but love." Sixteen pages of color plates by Patrick Matthews are of special interest in consisting partly, or possibly completely, of photographs of Bates's own garden, including one photograph of the family home in Kent.

Almost the entirety of the volume is derived from Bates's "From My Garden" series of articles in Living Magazine (only the preface and chapter 11 are known to have been first-published elsewhere).

• Preface: On the Making of a Garden
• Chapter 1. Some Odds and Gems
• Chapter 2. Little Latin, More Greek
• Chapter 3. Of, Among Other Things, Grass Skirts
• Chapter 4. A Riotous Assembly
• Chapter 5. Variegations on a Theme
• Chapter 6. Evening Primroses
• Chapter 7. A Race of Rainbows (not identified in Living yet)
• Chapter 8. The Handkerchief Tree
• Chapter 9. The Gardens of Leonardslea
• Chapter 10. A Chinese Discovery
• Chapter 11. The Nature Trail on Hothfield Common
• Chapter 12. The Sea Shore is Also a Garden
• Chapter 13. Grasses Galore
• Chapter 14. Primulas
• Chapter 15. Fritillaries
• Chapter 16. All Seeds Bright and Beautiful
• Chapter 17. Little People
• Chapter 18. Geraniums: Tricolors and others
• Chapter 19. White World
• Chapter 20. Of Birds (Both Kinds)
• Chapter 21. A Day Stolen From April
• Chapter 22. Hedging Yourself In
• Chapter 23. Proteas
• Chapter 24. The Scents of Summer

The Times Literary Supplement calls it "a delightfully exuberant and infectious love of nature and an enthusiasm for the many varieties of plants growing in his own garden are conveyed to the reader in a generous outgoing way which is irresistible."

Reviews:

• Times Literary Supplement (December 13, 1974, p. 1421, Camilla Sykes, attached)