Skip to main content

The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing review – an Eden project of her own

While a cast of literary heavyweights grace Laing’s account of her garden restoration, the real joys lie in her detailed description of the pruning and the planting and the soothing effect on her state of mind

Olivia Laing’s new book, The Garden Against Time, is as fragrantly replete as a long border at its peak. The word that comes to mind is spumy: a blossomy, brimful excess that’s almost too much at times. Here are hundreds of plants, exquisitely described; here is colour, energy and expertise. In a way, it’s akin to a garden itself; a place, almost a park, in which the reader never quite knows what’s around the next corner. But while this is invigorating – my imagination whirred across the verdant expanses of its pages like some crazy, old-fashioned lawnmower – it’s also tiring. Dizzy on its pollen, I often had to put it down. I began to think of the chapter breaks as conveniently placed benches on which I might for a while sit quietly, temporarily unassailed by endless common names, ongoing worries about honey fungus, and long disquisitions on privilege and exclusion.

Laing does two things at once. First and foremost, this book is a memoir, in which she describes her restoration of the garden attached to the house in Suffolk to which she moved in 2020, as Covid-19 raged on and so many of us sought respite in our backyards, balconies and window boxes (in the course of 2020, more than 3 million people in Britain began to garden for the first time, nearly half of them under 45). All her life, she has longed for a garden to call her own – one she would never have to give up on the whim of some landlord – and now, at last, she has one, bought with her husband, a retired Cambridge don. The work originally of a designer called Mark Rumary who liked hedges and ponds, this third of an acre cannot be seen in its entirety all at once, appearing instead as a series of secretive rooms; a beguiling prospect for a woman who read Frances Hodgson Burnett’s marvellous novel The Secret Garden as a child.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/cglCo97
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Green Planet review – David Attenborough’s gobsmacking, awe-inspiring return

From glowing bioluminescent fungus to 7,000 different camera set-ups for ants, the veteran broadcaster’s miraculous profile of plant life will have you gasping in astonishment so often you’ll be breathless One of the televisual joys I most remember from childhood was when a programme – often a nature documentary, but sometimes a few seconds on Sesame Street or a Tomorrow’s World demonstration of new technology – would show a flower unfolding with time-lapse photography. It was always sudden, always fleeting, and of course there weren’t even any recording buttons – let alone live pausing and rewinding facilities – that you could quickly press in order to capture and relive the delight. It was ever ephemeral, and I could never get enough. Until now, with the latest gift from David Attenborough and his endlessly patient and dedicated team of camera operators (to whom a now traditional 10-minute coda is again devoted), The Green Planet (BBC One). The new five-part series presented by the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Wandsworth escape accused says it was ‘foolish’ to jail him with his ‘skill set’

Daniel Khalife, 23, says he absconded because he was ‘terrified’ of being locked up with dangerous offenders A former British soldier has told a jury he did not hand himself in after he escaped from prison because he was “finally demonstrating what a foolish idea it was” to imprison someone with his “skill set”. Daniel Khalife, 23, told the court he absconded from Wandsworth prison while on remand because he was “terrified” of being locked up with “serious sex offenders” and “terrorists” who wanted to kill him, and that he did not think his imprisonment would be in the public interest. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/vRZHkaw
Post a Comment
Read more

How Rico Lewis helped harden up Manchester City’s treble challenge | Jamie Jackson

Guardiola believes advent of the teenage talent sowed seeds of change that turned his side into champions again Mid-January, the Etihad Campus. Before Tottenham’s visit a discontented Pep Guardiola is addressing a Manchester City team meeting that includes Erling Haaland, Kevin De Bruyne, John Stones and Ederson. The champions are in second place, eight points behind Arsenal, each having played 18 games. Performances have dipped and so has the attitude of his players. The final match before the World Cup was a 2-1 home defeat by Brentford . Since the tournament, City have beaten Leeds and Chelsea, drawn with Everton and lost their previous outing , 2-1 at Manchester United. Seven points from 15 is not championship-defending form and, when being knocked out of the Carabao Cup by Southampton is factored in, Guardiola can see City’s campaign derailing. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/h8WjbMX
Post a Comment
Read more