Shakespeare’s Summer: Master, shall We?

SONNET 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Shakespeare gardens, created out of reverence for the bard, can be found throughout many locations in both the US and Britain. Of these gardens, one of the most famous is that found in Central Park, where it is located on the West Side of the park and 79th street.
What had formerly been known as the Garden of the Heart was, in 1916, renamed the Shakespeare Garden to mark the 300th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death. Following in the tradition of already established Shakespeare Gardens, the Garden was filled with the beautiful plants and flowers mentioned in the works of the playwright, as well as those featured in his own private garden in Stratford-upon-Avon.
The Garden covers four acres of plants that change according to season. Included among these are plants such as rosemary and pansies, alluded to by Ophelia in Hamlet, thistle, mentioned in the play Much Ado About Nothing, and even a white mulberry tree that is said to have grown from a graft of a tree planted by Shakespeare himself in 1602. To aid you in your quest to identify the various species of plant life located within the space, bronze plaques with corresponding quotations from Shakespeare’s plays have been placed sporadically along the path.

Photos from around the web, dievca would like the chance to take her own.