The Garden Against Time: The Number 1 Sunday Times Bestseller

Laing and her husband moved into an old house once owned by a famous garden designer, Mark Rumary, but the garden had been neglected for years. The book is about her efforts to bring the garden, a third of an acre divided into different garden 'rooms', back to life, beginning during the pandemic in 2020 and ending sometime after the heatwave and drought in 2022. I loved reading about her struggles – and her joy as she worked. I identify so much with her, being just four months into garden restoration myself and seeing my garden very much as consisting of separate areas or rooms. While I am looking at a wildlife garden, Laing is more concerned with planting, but everything we are both doing seemed to be for much the same reasons. I would have loved the book for this alone. However, this is not a book about one garden. Laing has researched the history of her garden and brought into the book a multitude of different garden themes, from the garden of Eden, through Paradise Lost, via John Clare and enclosure, aristocratic houses built on slavery and oppression of the poor to Derek Jarman and exclusion, London bomb sites, the German invasion of Italy and drought and privilege. Laing is coping with anxiety, not only about the state of the world, but also about family events and I could understand how the garden work can be both soothing and healing. I rarely finish a book and want to go straight back to the beginning and start again, but that's what I wanted to do with this book. Loved it.

Buckle up, you're in for quite a journey in this fabulous book. The people, the places, the stories... I learnt so much and enjoyed every moment of it.

Beautifully written escapism

The new book from one of our greatest cultural commentators is a source of excitement (indeed, I counted down for months!). This book is not only from one of my favourite writers, but is based within my favourite place: the garden. Not that it keeps within the accidental boundaries of a garden wall: Laing welcomes everyone from the nineteenth century poet/plantsman John Clare, to the visionary Derek Jarman; thereby tackling topics from the enclosures to the beauty of a garden as a healing artwork, among others.People are, as ever, forefront in Laing's work. The personality and vision of those mentioned permeates the page as fertiliser for the gardens she concurrently explores and develops at her new home. Themes that coalesce in the garden she creates for her poet husband in a neglected area previously used for a wedding marquee when the house was in the care of the previous owner. The history of the house and garden are also explored, resulting in exciting passages of living botanic-archaeology as she rediscovers plants from old photographs that go on to miraculously thrive under Laing's loving - and increasingly green-fingered - hand.This is not some idyllic, saccharine, luvvy pouring, however; Laing never fails to address the difficult aspects of her subject, nor to challenge our assumptions. Those who have been kept out of the garden are acknowledged, just as the evils that helped to create the grand gardens of the past are addressed and the indelible stain on that formal planted shown.A brilliant achievement. We are fortunate to be alive in the time her books are released.

There is no doubt that Laing is an essential writer of non-fiction. Her approach, splicing the personal with her essayistic musings on subjects such as Virginia Woolf, loneliness, and alcoholism is not necessarily a new one, but there is certainly an argument to be made that she does it best. In The Garden Against Time , Laing turns her eye to the garden, a place connected with a certain privilege and the concept of paradise, bringing writers like Milton and Derek Jarman along for the ride. At times this can be deeply interesting, but this is, perhaps, her most niche book.After Everybody, a book that was expansive and formally daring, The Garden Against Time feels safer. Its subject is much less radical—though, at times, Laing is able to tease out interesting questions about class and access—and, overall, feels more straightforward. Though Laing’s books have always been peppered with autobiography, here we perhaps get the closest to a memoir proper. The act of buying and then building a garden is the book’s backbone off which she hangs broader discussions of eden and art. Her references, however, seem more rooted in an English literary history and, perhaps, due to the subject, they can, at times, feel slightly less interesting than her previous efforts. Though, this is more likely to do with where my own interests lie, which is to say that, growing up, I was made to help in the garden as a punishment for any wrongdoing.It is, however, a testament to Laing as a writer that, even through the subject did not call out to me, I was able to revel in how she writes.

This is a beautifully-written book. It is full of fascinating detail - both biographical and historical. - yet never loses its narrative energy. It casts fresh and unexpected light on a subject near to many people's hearts - including my own. I tried to pace my reading because I simply didn't want the book to end.

Great condition just as described, speedy service, thank you.

After reading a number of favourable reviews I bought this book for my Kindle and was extremely disappointed. I had expected so much more about her own garden; instead she rambled on about nothing in particular and certainly not related to the garden. Some of the ramblings were slightly tenuous but most were well away from the subject. If she managed a dozen lines a chapter about her own garden efforts, then it was quite an achievement. I would not bother to buy anything from this author.

The Garden Against Time carries the reader in unexpected directions as it flows steadily through raking, digging and pruning. First, it is not a how-to book on planting an English garden. The abundance of green shoots and blooming flowers turns out to be an exquisitely wrought frame for a panoramic painting. Olivia Laing’s yearning for harmony in human society looms in her quest to reach a new Garden of Eden for this era. She turns from recalling childhood prejudice to reading accounts of systematic injustices in the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Second, this book is definitely not for speed reading. I took it on vacation through airports from Kansas City to London and a train ride to Paris and home again. Having no control over planes or train, I had hours for leisurely reading, like watching a winter tree take on the green haze of early spring. The conclusion of Laing’s search resonated as honest, wise and satisfying. If I had jumped ahead to the last page, I would have missed the depth of its meaning. With the book left on a table, I stepped out for an errand. Between the doorway and the car, a pair of yellow butterflies flew in a circling dance just inches in front of my face. For that moment, I stood in Laing’s paradise.

Using her experience of moving into a house in Suffolk, UK - quite late, in her forties - from her previously itinerant existence the author uses hers and her partners resuscitation of the neglected but well designed walled garden to ruminate on a variety of plant and planting related themes. For example, the dark imperialist and slave origins of Britain’s country houses and estates; and the pernicious impact of waves of enclosure laws of formerly common land, its impact lamented by John Clare, Sebald and others. Ms Laing also writes movingly on the importance of beauty in the work and writing of the Marxist William Morris and artist and film maker Derek Jarman, and the critical role of gardens and plants in realising possible new Edens. I really enjoyed reading this heartfelt book, not least for reminding me that gardening and planting is hardly ever an innocent pursuit, but also, occasionally perhaps, home building and belonging in the best sense.

Wonderful histories of gardens, gardeners, social mores, with that quintessential English wit. I have now given it as a gift, and the gardener recipients loved it.

Describes both the author's and others' work ofbplanting, tending, or restoring gardens during times of human crisis. How gardens help tip the balance toward hopefulness. Blends universals and particulars.. But may require familiarity with England, it's history and culture, to be fully appreciated.