The Garden Against Time

Publishes 10th Sept 2024.

Gabi's Review

Olivia Laing - writer, critic, activist and qualified herbalist - has now turned her attention to the aesthetics and ethics of the garden as a cultural site. After purchasing Mark Rumary’s famous walled garden in Suffolk, Laing crafted not only a beautiful place of refuge but also a space in which to reflect on nature’s regenerative cycles and the right to ownership of the land. Her book The Garden Against Time describes the first two years of a four-year restoration project: a process she sees as akin to writing, since both involve creating and then editing a structure. In the process, she brings together her reflections on an impressive array of subjects in an entertaining, artful and politically astute way.

As Laing embarks on an arduous restoration process to achieve her personal Eden, she reads Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost for the first time, ruminating on the elite nature of walled, gated enclosures. She is critical of the social and economic inequality that has historically underpinned land ownership, from the post-medieval land-grab movements of Emparkment and Enclosure, and the stately homes and gardens of the National Trust, to the estates funded by the labour of slaves. Laing points out that such inequities continue in the present day, in which a significant portion of the world’s land is owned by the tiniest elite, in direct opposition to the common good. In her own personal project of garden restoration, she is only too aware that almost every footprint costs the earth: she confronts her garden’s water needs during a drought with a sense of existential guilt. 

But counterpointing her ethical criticisms is her praise for gardeners, including the designer William Morris, the romantic peasant poet John Clare and filmmaker Derek Jarman, for their more progressive ideas about the use of common land. You will also be rewarded by the gorgeous production of the book as artefact, as well as by the richness of its historical information and Laing’s reflections on poetry and art.

We are also invited to the garden’s opening: a total buzz! One of 2024’s best books of the year.

Publisher’s Review 

‘A garden contains secrets, we all know that: buried elements that might put on strange growth or germinate in unexpected places. The garden that I chose had walls, but like every garden it was interconnected, wide open to the world . . .’ 

In 2020, Olivia Laing began to restore a walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants. The work drew her into an exhilarating investigation of paradise and its long association with gardens. Moving between real and imagined gardens, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to John Clare’s enclosure elegies, from a wartime sanctuary in Italy to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Laing interrogates the sometimes shocking cost of making paradise on earth. But the story of the garden doesn’t always enact larger patterns of privilege and exclusion. It’s also a place of rebel outposts and communal dreams. From the improbable queer utopia conjured by Derek Jarman on the beach at Dungeness to the fertile vision of a common Eden propagated by William Morris, new modes of living can and have been attempted amidst the flower beds, experiments that could prove vital in the coming era of climate change. The result is a beautiful and exacting account of the abundant pleasures and possibilities of gardens: not as a place to hide from the world but as a site of encounter and discovery, bee-loud and pollen-laden.

'What a wonderful book this is. I loved the enchanting and beautifully written story but also the fascinating and thoughtful excursions along the way.' – Nigel Slater