The Garden Against Time
In Search of a Common Paradise
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The Garden Against Time
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Narrated by:
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Olivia Laing
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By:
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Olivia Laing
About this listen
Read by the author, Olivia Laing.
Shortlisted for the 2024 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing
'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
‘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.
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Critic reviews
No one writes with more energy and ecstasy than Olivia Laing. This book is what we need right now: paradise, regained (Philip Hoare)
'This book is as imaginatively structured and full of beauties and surprises as the garden whose creation it documents.' (Lucy Hughes-Hallett, author of The Pike: Gabriele D'Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War)
'An extraordinary and important work. I felt doubly alive after reading it. The book is an inspiration.' (Celia Paul, author of Self-Portrait)
'Olivia Laing is my favourite non-fiction writer, and it is a joy to encounter her brilliant mind again in The Garden Against Time. It is a magisterial work, and the exacting sensuality of her garden writing is pure pleasure, delight, surprise. It is a triumph, from a writer at the height of her powers' (Francesca Segal)
'Olivia Laing has written a book about making her garden, which is by turns lyrical, consoling, disturbing and inspiring. It’s a book for thinking gardeners everywhere' (Mary Keen)
What listeners say about The Garden Against Time
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 23-07-24
Olivia Laing; cultural weaver
I loved this book for the range & scope of subjects it covers, as with much of Olivia Laing's writing. Garden diary, gardening history, the use of. open land, it's about people's sense of place in & on the land & how that sense of place is expressed: through the creation of a garden, through art, poetry, activism to protect land...it's a wonderful read.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- MMog
- 23-06-24
absorbing subject matter
fascinating intermingling of garden memoir and historic literary and cultural musings. would definitely recommend. f c
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- ReviewingGreene
- 17-07-24
Captivating
Very enjoyable. Slightly too political and incorrect, but, once ignoring those small parts it returned to enjoyment
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Michelle
- 09-05-24
Gardens and so much more.
I’m not sure you have to be a garden fan to enjoy this book. I learned so much. She draws so many ideas together. A life affirming exploration of making and restoring gardens, of paradise and of our obsession with time and control. I like that it is read by the author, what she lacks in professional smoothness, she makes up for with emotional connection and a delicacy of expression that resists turning exploration or conviction into sermon or soapbox. I was well companioned in my hours spent with this book. Entertained, distracted, provoked and transported in equal measure. Highly recommended. I stayed up to the wee hours listening.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- eileen
- 25-05-24
A book that felt like time in a garden
One of Olivia Laing’s previous books - To the River - has stayed with me so I wanted to read more of her work and I’m very pleased I listened to this. Her writing is beautiful. The details of re establishing a lost garden whilst making it to work for her have suggested plants that I might want to try myself - but more than this - the different directions, subjects, history, books, people and stories that sprang from this felt as if the book itself was a garden I was wandering / being led through and as I went it generated different curiosities, moods and ideas - as all good gardens do.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 12-10-24
A deep dive into a seed catalogue.
The book was such a disappointment. I felt I was listening to a seed catalogue or the stock list from a garden centre. It’s deeply researched and beautifully written, but it’s not very interesting.
I also found it incredibly depressing, maybe that is because I live in a flat with no outside space, which, to be fair is not the books fault.
It all felt apocalyptic too, and I have no idea where that feeling came from. I didn’t make it to the end of the book, so I can’t say if this feeing was justified.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 23-08-24
Good book, terrible performance
I knew the book would be a tad pretentious and smug, but that there would be moments of clarity and interest however, the author reading this only highlights the affectation and smug tone. Ruined this for me. Should’ve bought the book and read it myself!
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