Title: The Garden Against Time. In Search of a Common Paradise Author: Olivia Laing First published: 2024 Dates read: 30.05. – 09.06.2024 Category: first-time read, memoir, nature writing, non-fiction, own book, LGBTQ+ author Rating: 5/5 The book in five words or less: beautiful & inspiring, inside & out
My thoughts:
In early 2020, Olivia Laing fell in love with a house, or more specifically: with the old garden that came attached to it. The Garden Against Time is Laing’s account of restoring said garden, and of the thoughts, themes and tangents that emerged from this process, much like flower beds, old-growth trees and walkways emerged from the untamed greenery that had covered them for decades.
Starting from the history of her new home and garden, its planner and the landscape gardeners that inspired it, Laing goes on a journey through the history of gardens, utopian thought, and plant care. She covers such diverse topics as the Garden of Eden and Milton’s Paradise Lost, William Morris’ social utopia, realized in his home and garden at Red House, the connection between landscape gardening, early modern Caribbean history, and slavery, Derek Jarman’s seaside garden at Dungeness and gardening as a means of dealing with trauma, and the politics of garden access and the power relations that can be embedded in landscapes. The book is, as seems almost always the case with Laing’s works, broad in scope but held together by a personal outlook on the place or object that inspired Laing’s various tangents to begin with. As is so often the case with Laing’s works, it’s not necessarily what she writes about that I’m so enamoured by (though I certainly also share a couple of interests with the author), it’s how she manages to connect seemingly unconnected topics, places, and people. I also appreciate that the book, despite covering a couple of heavy topics like trauma, the pandemic, and war, stays ultimately hopeful in outlook.
I think that at this point I can no longer be entirely objective when reading and reviewing Laing’s books, mostly because her way of thinking, of moving almost seamlessly through art criticsm, landscape and nature writing, literary criticism and history, is so very similar to my own. I am bound to love almost anything the author touches, but I am happy to report that this book is also a great read because it flows naturaly from topic to topic, despite (or perhaps because?) its broad scope. And I will also say that ordering this book in hardcover was absolutely worth it: Not only does it come with a beautiful cover design and pleasing typography, it also features illustrations in the form of woodcuts (both historical and by Laing’s very talented neighbour John Craig).
Read if you like: old gardens, literary and cultural history, Paradise Lost, personal experiences expanded to a broader scope, plants, beautiful book design, William Morris and social utopias, Derek Jarman, Laing’s other works