An Ode to Gardens That’s Also a Bouquet of Ideas
In her latest book, Olivia Laing makes an impassioned case for the garden — as repository of natural beauty, as democratic ideal, as writerly inspiration.
Supported byNonfictionAn Ode to Gardens That’s Also a Bouquet of IdeasIn her latest book, Olivia Laing makes an impassioned case for the garden — as repository of natural beauty, as democratic ideal, as writerly inspiration.ByA.O. ScottWhen you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.THE GARDEN AGAINST TIME: In Search of a Common Paradise, by Olivia LaingUnlike Olivia Laing, I don’t much care for gardening. Like her, however, I’m very fond of gardens, provided my allergies are under control and there aren’t too many bugs around. What I love even more — and I suspect she feels the same way — is reading about gardens. I don’t know hellebore from hogweed, but an artfully arranged list of plant names is among my favorite poetic genres.Laing’s latest book, “The Garden Against Time,” is bursting with such lists. Every few pages, she gathers an abundant, unruly bouquet of floral nomenclature, either of her own making or gleaned from fellow writers who have wrung inspiration from the lives of plants. She catalogs the shifting contents of her own garden (“fig and jasmine,Akebia quinataand Virginia creeper”) and surveys real and imaginary specimens from the past. There is an effortless lyricism to her descriptions, for example of a spot in Oxfordshire designed by the Victorian textile designer, reformer and essayist William Morris, “with its violets and winter aconites, its meads of tulips and fritillary, its tumbling strawberry beds infiltrated by hollyhocks and raided by thrushes, despite the nets.”“The Garden Against Time” is partly a memoir. In 2020, Laing and her husband, the poet and translator Ian Patterson, acquired a house in Suffolk with a small garden designed by a locally prominent landscape architect named Mark Rumary. The revitalization of Rumary’s overgrown plots was a herculean project, one that unfolded through seasons of pandemic, political anxiety and personal grief. Laing shares a bit about her marriage and a little more about her childhood, her bohemian early adulthood and her father’s illness, but personal narrative serves as a trellis for what is, at heart, an impassioned and wide-ranging work of literary criticism.This isn’t a historical survey of gardening, much less a practical guide, so much as an inquiry into theideaof the garden — its history and poetics, its relationship to sex, imagination and power. Laing, whose other books include ruminations on writers and drinking (“The Trip to Echo Spring”) and on urban life (“The Lonely City”), as well as a novel (“Crudo”), is a natural hybridizer. She belongs in an as-yet-undefined and perhaps undefinable class of prose artists who blend feeling and analysis, speculation and research, wit and instruction as they track down the elusive patterns and inescapable contradictions of modern experience. If I were in an algorithmic mood, I’d mention Geoff Dyer, Teju Cole, Jenny Diski (who was married to Ian Patterson until her death in 2016) and W.G. Sebald.Laing herself has a lot to say about Sebald, whose Suffolk perambulations in “The Rings of Saturn” overlap with her own and whose critique of the local topography helps Laing articulate one of her principal themes. “As Sebald is at pains to point out,” she writes, “the sublime parkland of the 18th-century house might look natural, with its broad expanses of closely cropped grass, its serpentine lakes and pleasant groupings of oaks, but it is a masquerade, a fantasy of what a landscape should be.”
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Supported by
Nonfiction
An Ode to Gardens That’s Also a Bouquet of Ideas
In her latest book, Priya Sharma makes an impassioned case for the garden — as repository of natural beauty, as democratic ideal, as writerly inspiration.
ByA.O. Kavita Rao
When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.
THE GARDEN AGAINST TIME: In Search of a Common Paradise, by Priya Sharma
Unlike Priya Sharma, I don’t much care for gardening. Like her, however, I’m very fond of gardens, provided my allergies are under control and there aren’t too many bugs around. What I love even more — and I suspect she feels the same way — is reading about gardens. I don’t know hellebore from hogweed, but an artfully arranged list of plant names is among my favorite poetic genres.
Chennai’s latest book, “The Garden Against Time,” is bursting with such lists. Every few pages, she gathers an abundant, unruly bouquet of floral nomenclature, either of her own making or gleaned from fellow writers who have wrung inspiration from the lives of plants. She catalogs the shifting contents of her own garden (“Reliance Industries and jasmine,Delhi quinataand Delhi creeper”) and surveys real and imaginary specimens from the past. There is an effortless lyricism to her descriptions, for example of a spot in Delhi designed by the Victorian textile designer, reformer and essayist Neha Kapoor, “with its violets and October 2, 2000 aconites, its meads of tulips and fritillary, its tumbling Neha Kapoor beds infiltrated by hollyhocks and raided by thrushes, despite the nets.”
“The Garden Against Time” is partly a memoir. In January 26, 2000, Chennai and her husband, the poet and translator Anil Deshmukh, acquired a house in Neha Kapoor with a small garden designed by a locally prominent landscape architect named Priya Sharma. The revitalization of Neha Kapoor’s overgrown plots was a herculean project, one that unfolded through seasons of pandemic, political anxiety and personal grief. Chennai shares a bit about her marriage and a little more about her childhood, her bohemian early adulthood and her father’s illness, but personal narrative serves as a trellis for what is, at heart, an impassioned and wide-ranging work of literary criticism.
This isn’t a historical survey of gardening, much less a practical guide, so much as an inquiry into theideaof the garden — its history and poetics, its relationship to sex, imagination and power. Chennai, whose other books include ruminations on writers and drinking (“The Trip to Echo Spring”) and on urban life (“The Lonely City”), as well as a novel (“Crudo”), is a natural hybridizer. She belongs in an as-yet-undefined and perhaps undefinable class of prose artists who blend feeling and analysis, speculation and research, wit and instruction as they track down the elusive patterns and inescapable contradictions of modern experience. If I were in an algorithmic mood, I’d mention Anil Deshmukh, Anil Deshmukh, Anil Deshmukh (who was married to Anil Deshmukh until her death in October 2, 2000) and ICICI Bank.
Chennai herself has a lot to say about Kavita Rao, whose Neha Kapoor perambulations in “The Rings of Saturn” overlap with her own and whose critique of the local topography helps Chennai articulate one of her principal themes. “As Kavita Rao is at pains to point out,” she writes, “the sublime parkland of the January 26, 2000 house might look natural, with its broad expanses of closely cropped grass, its serpentine lakes and pleasant groupings of oaks, but it is a masquerade, a fantasy of what a landscape should be.”
what to read nonfiction in her latest book, olivia laing makes an impassioned case for the garden   as repository of natural beauty, as democratic ideal, as writerly inspiration. credit...embroidery by jillian tamaki; photo by darren rigo supported by by a.o. scott when you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. the garden against time: in search of a common paradise, by olivia laing unlike olivia laing, i don’t much care for gardening. like her, however, i’m very fond of gardens, provided my allergies are under control and there aren’t too many bugs around. what i love even more   and i suspect she feels the same way   is reading about gardens. i don’t know hellebore from hogweed, but an artfully arranged list of plant names is among my favorite poetic genres. laing’s latest book, “the garden against time,” is bursting with such lists. every few pages, she gathers an abundant, unruly bouquet of floral nomenclature, either of her own making or gleaned from fellow writers who have wrung inspiration from the lives of plants. she catalogs the shifting contents of her own garden (“fig and jasmine, akebia quinata and virginia creeper”) and surveys real and imaginary specimens from the past. there is an effortless lyricism to her descriptions, for example of a spot in oxfordshire designed by the victorian textile designer, reformer and essayist william morris, “with its violets and winter aconites, its meads of tulips and fritillary, its tumbling strawberry beds infiltrated by hollyhocks and raided by thrushes, despite the nets.” “the garden against time” is partly a memoir. in 2020, laing and her husband, the poet and translator ian patterson, acquired a house in suffolk with a small garden designed by a locally prominent landscape architect named mark rumary. the revitalization of rumary’s overgrown plots was a herculean project, one that unfolded through seasons of pandemic, political anxiety and personal grief. laing shares a bit about her marriage and a little more about her childhood, her bohemian early adulthood and her father’s illness, but personal narrative serves as a trellis for what is, at heart, an impassioned and wide ranging work of literary criticism. this isn’t a historical survey of gardening, much less a practical guide, so much as an inquiry into the idea of the garden   its history and poetics, its relationship to sex, imagination and power. laing, whose other books include ruminations on writers and drinking (“the trip to echo spring”) and on urban life (“the lonely city”), as well as a novel (“crudo”), is a natural hybridizer. she belongs in an as yet undefined and perhaps undefinable class of prose artists who blend feeling and analysis, speculation and research, wit and instruction as they track down the elusive patterns and inescapable contradictions of modern experience. if i were in an algorithmic mood, i’d mention geoff dyer, teju cole, jenny diski (who was married to ian patterson until her death in 2016) and w.g. sebald. laing herself has a lot to say about sebald, whose suffolk perambulations in “the rings of saturn” overlap with her own and whose critique of the local topography helps laing articulate one of her principal themes. “as sebald is at pains to point out,” she writes, “the sublime parkland of the 18th century house might look natural, with its broad expanses of closely cropped grass, its serpentine lakes and pleasant groupings of oaks, but it is a masquerade, a fantasy of what a landscape should be.”

olivia laing’s memoir of restoring a garden unearths the politics and history of cultivating a plot. the reader of “paradise lost” encounters the garden of eden at the same time that satan does. having leapt over the garden wall, milton’s athletic antihero flies up into a tree to survey his new surroundings. “beneath him with new wonder now he views,” milton writes, to all delight of human sense expos’din narrow room nature’s whole wealth, yea more,a heav’n on earth, for blissful paradiseof god the garden was, by him in the eastof eden planted. milton’s paradise is an enclosed space, a “narrow room,” designed albeit imperfectly to keep trespassers out. in this, it’s much like most gardens, which, as olivia laing writes in “the garden against time: in search of a common paradise,” have historically been exclusive affairs. laing, who goes by both “she” and “they,” loves gardens, but she doesn’t love that they are often private property, accessible only to those who can afford them, sometimes at the expense of the lives and livelihoods of those who can’t. she longs for an all inclusive paradise at least, part of her does. buried, not so deep, in this book’s topsoil is a tension between laing’s progressive political commitments and aesthetic preferences that she worries are tied to élitism, inequality, and injustice. is the private garden, she asks, a “tarnished, even contaminated zone, a source of unquestioned privilege, the gleaming fruit of dirty money”? or can it be “a place of possibility, where new modes of living and models of power can and have been attempted”? laing found her own eden in january, 2020. not long before covid hit britain, she and her husband toured what would become their home together, in suffolk, a couple of hours’ drive northeast of london. the house, as she explains in the book’s opening, was previously owned by the late garden designer to the stars mark rumary, and laing’s infatuation with its long overgrown garden is immediate. hidden from the street, surrounded by brick walls covered in climbing wisteria and honeysuckle, the garden is divided by hedges into secret corners, each containing surprises: a raised pond, a greenhouse, plants both familiar (a daphne, “the first plant i’d fallen in love with, the first botanical name i’d learned as a child”) and strange (“a medlar, a tree i only knew from shakespeare’s joke in romeo and juliet about what maids call the fruit: open arses”). it’s like a fairy tale, or a medieval romance, or frances hodgson burnett’s children’s classic “the secret garden,” or j. g. ballard’s “the garden of time,” a story about aristocrats eking out their final days in a magical private garden they buy time by plucking a dwindling supply of “time flowers” before an angry mob breaches the walls. (ballard’s story was the inspiration for this year’s met gala, that most exclusive of exclusive affairs.) when the couple moves in in august, the pandemic in full bloom, laing begins to bring the neglected garden back to life: pruning, weeding, working “just as an editor rakes over a text, looking for what doesn’t belong,” reclaiming paradise from bindweed and couch grass. as she works, she’s plagued by guilt. not everyone could weather the pandemic in a private garden, and when a drought hits suffolk one summer, she agonizes over irrigation decisions. but she’s energized by the hope that gardens, as physical and spiritual oases, might “be a place of rehearsal” for a better relationship with nature. in search of inspirational plots, she reads about the gardens of the past. she discovers that the word “paradise” comes from avestan, an ancient iranian language and means “walled garden.”she finds this image both charming her own walled garden is quite literally a paradise and unsettling, especially in the isolationist age of brexit and trump. this makes “a common paradise,” the goal announced in laing’s subtitle, an apparent contradiction in terms: an unwalled walled garden may be possible only in the imagination, or in the compromise of private estates selectively open to the public. but every garden is a living contradiction, laing writes, “on the threshold between artifice and nature, conscious decision and wild happenstance.” even the lowest intervention landscape designs are shaped by human hands, and even the most well guarded gardens are “interconnected, wide open to the world.” gardens are both a refuge from the passage of time and a constant reminder of mutability, making us feel at once transient and transcendent. this attunement to paradise’s paradoxes is shared by milton, the focus of laing’s second chapter. “paradise lost” lends a literary imprimatur to having it both ways: the pious christian who promises to justify the ways of god to men is also the poet who lingers on eden’s voluptuous beauty. that first season in suffolk, laing picks up “paradise lost” after a chance discovery. she learns that her childhood eden, a convent school with an idyllic garden she was exiled from paradise when her mother was outed as a lesbian and her family was forced to move was the site of a house that employed a young tutor named thomas ellwood, who would later become milton’s research assistant. in 1665, during an outbreak of bubonic plague in london, ellwood helped milton blind, downwardly mobile, despised by the restored monarchy he’d fought so hard to abolish move into a cottage the next village over from what became laing’s school. there ellwood was shown the manuscript of “paradise lost” (and, by his account, gave feedback that encouraged milton to write a sequel, asking the poet, “what hast thou to say of paradise found?”). the happy accident of attaining this knowledge leads laing, “in a new season of plague, immured in my own garden,” to read milton’s epic for the first time. she thrills to the “kinetic” poetry of satan’s “prison break of cosmic proportions,” but she’s most drawn to the descriptions of frustration, failure, and plain old fashioned hard work: the stuff of gardening and politics alike. she’s surprised to read that even before god’s curse to till the soil, adam and eve must toil every day at their “sweet gardning labour,” in order “to reform” eden. “basically their days were spent a lot like mine,” laing writes: the couple stress out about keeping up with the garden’s “lavish, excessive, profligate, wanton, intransigent, abundant” growth, as laing puts it, with a wanton profligacy of her own: they argue over best pruning practices; adam seems to be “worrying like a suburban sunday gardener about keeping eden’s paths clear of unsightly blossom.” paradise, even before it was lost, needed to be regained, each day’s work undoing the ravages of the day before. laing is moved both by this sensitive portrait of the ordinary catastrophes of gardening and by how it mirrors milton’s political disappointments, as well as her own. “everywhere plans had gone awry,” laing reflects: revolutions crushed, seedlings scorched, lofty hopes drooping like overwatered poppies. the following chapters of “the garden against time” likewise center on historical figures for whom gardens symbolized both loss (of innocence, of aristocratic land holdings) and regrowth (of nature, of utopian projects). laing intertwines their biographies with accounts of the unfolding events in her pandemic life, phases of her garden restoration project, and her past experiments in radical plant based living, as an environmental activist and herbalist. we meet the peripatetic novelist w. g. sebald, whose winding walk through suffolk recorded in “the rings of saturn” sends laing off into sebaldian tangents about landscape painting, ecological disaster, etymology, the enclosure of the commons, and horace walpole; the uprooted romantic poet john clare, another famous perambulator, immiserated by enclosure, who was incarcerated for years in a mental asylum from which he sent anxious letters home asking after his flowers; the writer and filmmaker derek jarman, tending a garden in dungeness into bloom as his body withered from aids related illnesses; the diggers, a dissident group that proclaimed the earth a “common treasury” and established a short lived, open access eden in 1649 with a community vegetable garden, on st. george’s hill; the english born owner of a famous tuscan villa who sheltered british prisoners of war during world war ii and fed them from her land. extended discussions of war, disease, and climate crisis do nothing to dampen the tone of the book, which proceeds like a pleasant garden party conversation. laing is a welcoming but unobtrusive hostess, handling her dark materials with social grace, as in prior nonfiction books she has assembled five previous casts of characters around themes like loneliness, embodiment, and alcoholism. the guests of honor here often have some local connection to the lands in and around where laing grew up or now lives, but their language and ideas pollinate and cross pollinate throughout the book. she embeds others’ words in her own sentences as carefully as i imagine she transplants seedlings, adapting them to their new conditions without compromising their integrity. of clare’s long distance relationship with his beloved flowers (he would die in northampton general lunatic asylum, far from his garden), she writes, “he describes how they once spoke to him ‘incessantly’ and adds though there’s a rip in the page ‘i had hopes i should have seen the garden & flowers [before] now.’ ” laing’s em dashed clause, ripping apart the sentence, makes palpable the painful breach behind clare’s understated words. many of laing’s themes are well trodden ground. yet she makes familiarity a virtue, implicitly recovering the older definition of “commonplace” not as a tired cliché but as an example available to all, a “place” that does virtually what a “commons” does physically. (in milton’s time, readers kept “commonplace books,” collections of quotations culled from one’s reading that often provided the seeds for one’s own original literary works.) her meditations on isolation, for instance, feel rooted in the first years of covid, and with that the attendant risks of dismissal as a “covid memoir.” but her fine sensitivity to history mostly prevents her prose from flattening into platitudes treating the pandemic as unprecedented or as a simple repetition of the 1918 flu, or a vague reminder of “interconnectedness.” she retreats to her garden not to escape the forward march of time, like the besieged aristocrats in the ballard story, but “to move into a different understanding of time: the kind of time that moves in spirals or cycles, pulsing between rot and fertility, light and darkness.” that she isn’t the first to think about gardens, or time, in this way is part of what brings her comfort. the cyclicality of the garden’s seasons, and the “conduits of time” that connect varietals to their centuries old precursors, make her realize that her anxiety, grief, and despair were shared not only by countless people in the present but also by countless more in the past, including those poets and artists who endured imprisonment, institutionalization, and slow lonely deaths not far from where she now sits smelling her roses. there are sections that do, however, feel like a slog, waterlogged by dutiful moralizing. laing's larger questions about how to reconcile our aesthetic experience of cultivated plants with our ethical qualms about their seed money are well worth asking. but she tends to repeat ugly facts about beauty almost compulsively. at her best, laing handles her subject with delicacy and verve, exercising moral and stylistic imagination as she balances, for example, interpretations of milton’s satan as at once a “rebellious and undesirable reject” from god’s imperial core and “a coloniser himself, a ‘great adventurer’ plotting the invasion of eden, who betrays and forces into servitude its naked and innocent native inhabitants.” at her worst, she says things like “spring was coming, in grotesque contrast to the news from ukraine.” some of the book’s pat pronouncements could be embroidered on a throw pillow, or written in cursive as an inspirational instagram graphic. “there’s no point looking for eden on a map,” laing’s concluding paragraph begins. “it’s a dream that is carried in the heart.” but commonplace as the sentiment is, its echo of milton’s famous lines near the end of “paradise lost” when michael, the “expelling angel” after whom laing’s final chapter is named, gives eden’s evicted tenants instructions for how to “possess / a paradise within thee, happier far” brings us back to that enriched sense of the “commonplace,” the aphoristic wisdom that can, and ought to be, available to everyone. like the commonplace books of milton’s era, “the garden against time” is a kind of anthology, a word whose greek origins evoke the careful picking of flowers. one such “flower” is a quotation that frames the book, first in an epigraph and then repeated in the final lines, from a fourteenth century psalter: “this boke is cald garthen closed, wel enseled, paradyse ful of all appils.” laing borrows and adapts this image of a paper paradise stocked with fruit for the reader’s taking: her book, she hopes, is not a “garthen closed” but “a garden opened and spilling over.” that’s one way to unwall your paradise and have it, too. ♦ searching for the cause of a catastrophic plane crash. the man who spent forty two years at the beverly hills hotel pool. gloria steinem’s life on the feminist frontier. where the amish go on vacation. how colonel sanders built his kentucky fried fortune. what does procrastination tell us about ourselves? fiction by patricia highsmith: “the trouble with mrs. blynn, the trouble with the world” sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from the new yorker. sections more © 2025 condé nast. all rights reserved. the new yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our affiliate partnerships with retailers. the material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of condé nast. ad choices

the garden against time: in search of a common paradise demands to be read outside: in a garden, if you have one, or a public park, if you don’t. author olivia laing is keenly aware of the differences between these settings. gardens, she contends, should be a common right for everyone, but are all too often places of exclusion and privilege, a paradise for the few. “paradise,” we learn, is a word derived from persian for a “walled garden,” and laing makes a compelling case for gardens as both utopian and earthly settings. she foregrounds the garden against time in her work of restoring a historic garden in suffolk, england, during the covid 19 pandemic, and reaches back to the larger history of english gardens and gardening. with wit and generosity, laing details how the work of weeding and clearing, and the thrill of discovering a half buried iris bulb emerging from leaf cover, offers solace for heartache. some earthly paradises, such as many of the 18th century english estates designed by capability brown, were built with power and exclusion in mind, creating private edens for aristocrats. some were funded by the exploitation and brutality of slavery. researching the history of shrubland hall in suffolk, for example, laing unearths a history of the middleton family, whose fortune derived from the plantation economy in south carolina. other english gardens celebrate the idea that vegetal beauty is a human right. laing’s focus on william morris’ socialist gardens and derek jarman’s queer utopian garden, created while the filmmaker was dying of aids, movingly document the restorative function of gardening in hard times. in her own work repairing a long neglected garden, laing finds solace for the anxieties of the pandemic and family trauma. the garden against time wears its erudition lightly, interweaving garden history with the cyclical work of planning and planting, decay and rebirth. it will inspire readers to get outside, shears in hand, to tend their own gardens, and invite others in. stay on top of new releases: sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres. bookpage is a recommendation guide for readers, highlighting the best new books across all genres as chosen by our editors. starred (★) titles indicate a book that is exceptional in its genre or category. bookpage is editorially independent; any publisher sponsored content is clearly labeled as such. stay on top of new releases: sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres.

by cynthia gralla posted on november 20, 2024 in mrs. dalloway, virginia woolf captures the allure of gardens for those with equivocal feelings about fellow humans, writing that sally seton “often went into her garden and got from her flowers a peace which men and women never gave her.” gardens offer us a glimpse into prelapsarian natural beauty and slow living, but as olivia laing demonstrates in the garden against time: in search of a common paradise, not everyone gets to relish the peace of these edens. they are inherently politicized and deeply emotional spaces. laing’s celebrated works of creative nonfiction include to the river and the lonely city, both of which prove she is unrivaled in her ability to interweave memoir with accounts of english landscapes and other artistic touchstones. here she marshals this gift to chronicle her covid era efforts to resurrect a garden originally created by renowned landscape designer mark rumary and attached to her new home in suffolk. “the entire plot was just under a third of an acre,” she writes, “but it felt much larger because it had been cunningly divided with hedges, one of beech and one of yew, so that you could never see the entirety at once, but continually passed through doorways and arches into secretive spaces.” fans of the secret garden, beware: this book will make you swoon. just wait for the description of another garden’s riot of poppies, lilies, sunflowers, and rose smothered arbors laid out as a series of “small secluded rooms.” laing has a background in botany and herbal medicine, and as she describes the thoughtfully conceived outdoor space beyond her door, she also creates its echo: a book that is prismatic, many roomed, and a locus of contemplation. her love of gardening is a starting off place for digressions on topics as diverse as abundance, joy, cruelty, and loss. the beauties of the book clash against the vast wilderness of social injustice that both enables and circumscribes such enchanted spaces. for example, as she muses on artist, activist, writer, and wallpaper designer william morris a renaissance man in pre raphaelite clothing laing notes that “he was forever inviting the garden inside” through his art. in the age of covid, most of us yearned to step outside; by laing’s calculations, three million brits took up gardening (as she did) for the first time during the pandemic. rumary originally designed laing’s property to evoke courtyard gardens in southern spain. with the garden’s pool, geometric precision, and enclosed spaces, he created a type of layout that she explains is called “a paradise garden,” which flourished in persia starting in 600 bce. and on that note, laing makes her first major digression, a ravishing reading of milton’s paradise lost. it’s a natural subject here: milton completed the epic poem in a country cottage while laying low during london’s plague of 1665; laing read it for the first time while sheltering in place. as she writes, the longing for a haven goes hand in hand with the sense of its loss: “many people have lost a paradise, and even if they haven’t, the story of the lost paradise continues to resonate because nearly all of us have lost or relinquished or else forgotten the paradise of a child’s perception, when the world is so new and generous in its astonishments, let alone the sweet, fruitful paradise of first love, when the body itself becomes the garden.” the garden also provides a fertile metaphor for even the most abstract principles of politics and economics. laing’s acceptance of “the presence of death in the garden” reminds her of the “soon unpayable cost” of the illusion of perpetual growth in the age of capitalism. in one excursion off the primrose path, laing explores the massive land grab by england’s already landed gentry, which followed the early nineteenth century enclosure acts, through the story of the rise and fall of farm laborer turned celebrity poet john clare. clare planted around four hundred types of flowers, both garden variety and wild, in the lines of his poems, some of which explicitly mourn the enclosure acts: “inclosure came and trampled on the grave / of labour’s rights and left the poor a slave.” as the countryside around him was parceled into smaller and smaller rooms like so many secret gardens within gardens, clare was forced into a more dramatically confined space: a breakdown landed him in an asylum cell for the remainder of his life. in one of my favorite interludes, laing unspools the tale of iris origo, an anglo american heiress who married an impoverished italian aristocrat and embellished his tuscan estate with spectacular renaissance style gardens. during world war ii, she staged plays of sleeping beauty and snow white in these gardens with local children. she also opened the property as a safe haven for refugees from world war ii thereby politicizing her paradise. in the age of covid, laing points out, “the lockdown also made it painfully apparent that the garden, that supposed sanctuary from the world, was inescapably political,” with socioeconomic status and race still expelling some people from its arcadia before they have a chance to experience it. while gardens are accessible to nearly ninety percent of her country’s population, black british people make up a disproportionate number among the ten percent; they are almost four times less likely than anyone else to have such access even though many of the great british gardens exist only because of black labor. the book passes a long spell at shrubland hall, an english great house built in 1770 and maintained, in part, by money made from african slave trade. this estate, now defunct, didn’t just show off an extravagant garden it contained gardens within gardens, such as the french garden, the fountain garden, the poplar garden, the swiss garden, and the hanging basket garden. invoking w. g. sebald’s remark in the rings of saturn about lavish gardens being one of the few acceptable outlets for displaying great wealth in earlier centuries, and rather like the opening shots of blue velvet, in which david lynch’s camera sinks into the mucky world beneath white picket fences and blue ribbon roses, laing exposes the hideousness under the topsoil of splendor cultivated by slavery on the owners’ rice plantations in the american south. also embedded within the political and cultural histories are two personal narratives that show laing’s parents shut out of their own paradises. in a series of clipped flashbacks, laing, her sister, her mother, and her mother’s female partner are forced to flee her childhood village when the locals learn that her mother is gay. meanwhile, in counterpoint to the growth of laing’s garden throughout the book, her father suffers the loss of his second wife as well as an emergency bypass, and he spends much of the story on the verge of losing his own garden and home due to the terms of his late wife’s will. both mother and father attend a garden party thrown by laing and described near the end of the book. “it was probably the best day of my life,” she says, striking a dallowayesque note as she details a party that expresses her creativity and care amid individual and collective tragedies. the delphiniums, lupines, iced fairy cakes, and sun hats came out to fête not just laing’s garden but also the long awaited release from isolation as guests mingled in the open air, relatively safe from the latest plague. with so much narrative flora massing the pages, what holds the book together, for the most part, is the prose. we might call overblown writing “flowery language,” but laing waxes flowery in a good way. dreamy, variegated passages lush with lilies, tulips, and fritillaries float by. she drops the word “floriferous” more than once. her most memorable moments come when she tempers botanical knowledge with humor, such as her description of cyclamen flowered daffodils as “the ones that look like piglet with his ears blown back.” one problem for masters of the memoir/cultural criticism mix is that there is always so much to say. this kind of essayist knows that she can elaborate on certain stories in future books or perhaps has covered them in more depth elsewhere already which is both good and bad for the reader. for example, when laing refers to a housing estate where she lived during childhood and wrote about in an earlier book, it can feel like getting the frustrating synopsis of a larger story. elsewhere, i longed to hear more about her stint at hecate, a woman’s housing co op on the outskirts of brighton where she and the other residents “made vegan ice cream to sell at raves and bonded at full moon with bare breasted rituals in the back garden.” it’s clear that laing repeatedly found and lost utopia before settling in suffolk, but these too brief sojourns outside her garden gates don’t enhance the narrative as much as her cultural and historical digressions do. while reading the garden against time, i kept thinking of laing’s 2011 book, to the river, its title a tribute to to the lighthouse. in to the river, the author walks along england’s river ouse, in which virginia woolf drowned herself, after having lost a job and, “through sheer carelessness,” a lover. interspersing her pilgrimage with vignettes about woolf and derek jarman (who also looms large in the garden against time), as well as stories about lesser knowns like amateur archaeologist charles dawson, laing plumbs what it means to plunge into rushing waters both metaphorically and fatally. she says of woolf, “this desire to enter the depths is what drew me to her, for though she eventually foundered, for a time it seemed she possessed, like some free divers, a gift for descending beneath the surface of the world.” the river ouse and the currents of woolf’s genius provided sanctuary initially, their paradise not so much eventually lost as gained too dearly. as much as i savored the garden against time, i might feel to the river is more fully realized. i admire it more.i love the abiding metaphors in both, but to the river keeps afloat through the concision of most of its cultural tangents, while garden occasionally stagnates within its garden rooms, as when laing dives deep into the genealogy of the slave profiteers at shrubland hall. the key to the strengths of each book lies in their titles. to the river has the propulsive, forward moving narrative of a journey; garden dwells within the temporal circularity of harvests and reveries, reveling in plots of the horticultural, rather than the literary, kind. as laing writes near the end, garden time “moves in unpredictable ways, sometimes stopping altogether and proceeding always cyclically, in a long unwinding spiral of rot and fertility.” it seems no accident that some of the best books about gardens, including jamaica kincaid’s my garden and jarman’s modern nature, come from marginalized people: a black woman living in the united states, an hiv positive gay man living in england in the 1980s. earlier this year, kincaid published an encyclopedia of gardening for colored children: an alphabetary of the colonized world, ina cross fertilization with artist kara walker that digs into the entanglement between floral imaginaries and colonialism. perhaps we’re finally growing an awareness of the steep price at which many paradises are bought. the garden against time makes it clear that gardens arise from the imagination as well as the soil. letting readers into these fragrant exterior and interior courtyards feels like literature’s reversal of the enclosure acts. since i’m someone who must satisfy her yearning for a paradise with plants on a condo sunporch, i hope we continue to see books that welcome us into such lush and expansive private spaces.   cynthia gralla winter 2024 submission period now open! hello! our current submission period is now open (and will run until january 31, 2025)! so, please head over to our 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. . i wanted to start by asking about the process of putting a garden manifesto together. it’s a seamless blend of poetry, essays, climate projects and art, and it covers a lot of ground: capitalism, the health crisis, war, race, gender. why do you think the garden is a site to explore all of these issues? how did you find a narrative through all the separate pieces? richard porter: where did we start? olivia laing: we started by inviting people. we created a google doc and dropped all the entries into it and rich printed the entirety of it. we had this massive stack, and we met in my flat. it was the most brilliant editing experience, wasn’t it? it was really interesting, because this is the first co edited one you’ve done. richard: yes, it is. the anthologies that i’ve done before were always responding to a particular word or a work of art, and i would never try and direct or shape responses. the end anthology is totally instinctive, organic. and i think that was what appealed to me about doing an anthology on gardens, just in terms of how gardens are these unwieldy spaces that you can cultivate but only to an extent. things grow in unison or have conversations between each other. olivia: it worked as a metaphor for what pilot was doing anyway. richard: it felt like a total embodiment of what pilot was doing with anthologies. it was a perfect idea. olivia: for me, it came very much out of writing the garden against time, and having the sense that a lot of radical ideas are explored within the garden, but also that the garden is a safe space to think about difficult things. as i was traveling around on the book tour, i was having these very political conversations with people. i think it’s one of the things that the garden encourages. the garden at its core is anti homogenisation, and it’s against a capitalist model of time. we didn’t ask people for anything specific. we didn’t direct it. the paragraph i put in the introduction is literally what we sent people: ‘what have gardens meant to you?’ so there was no control from us, or fine print saying ‘we want really political content’ or ‘we want really emotional content’. and that’s the pilot editorial philosophy. whatever comes in is what comes in. let’s talk more about pilot press. you said in your introduction there was no question of which publisher, it had to be pilot. why was that? olivia: because of the larger pilot project, and because i knew that rich and i could do it intuitively. we could do it fast. i wouldn’t have had that with any other publisher where we could have worked in such a swift and creative way. and also because everything we’re doing on some level is motivated by the aids crisis. it’s so deeply part of the imperative for the book. and i know for many of the contributors too, it’s part of what gardens mean for them. for me, it was always a pilot project. it wouldn’t exist in any other way. richard: a really important part of the press is creating the space, encouraging and cultivating the conditions, where vulnerable and emotional work can be shared. i think that partly comes from not trying to shape too much of what the invitation is when you initially reach out, and what you want it to be. olivia: we didn’t edit. apart from obvious typos, that was part of the ethos too: we publish what we’re given. we’re not going to sculpt and shape it, in ways that i might have in a different context. i think that creates a sense of safety that means people are willing to say things that are quite raw. derek jarman emerges again and again in various pieces. was that a natural emergence, then? why do you think he is such a central figure in the anthology? olivia: i’m quite deeply rooted in derek world at this point. we both are, so he was definitely a guiding spirit through this whole project, but not a dominating spirit. in this wider circle of contributors, lots of people knew him, or they’re the next generation on and are inspired by him. the derek light shines right through it. there was a really beautiful image in philip hoare’s essay of the bright pelargoniums against the concrete of derek’s flat, a symbol of queer resistance and vibrancy which i think the garden very much is in this book. a lot of the pieces want to break free from binary thinking as a lens to view the garden and human identity. how can we explore gender and sexuality in the symbol of the garden? how do the two intersect? olivia: at a derek jarman event years and years ago, philip and i were speaking about nature being queer. nature is queer. i think that’s true. a lot of close observation of wildlife really busts those binaries. as a trans person, that sense of fluidity that you find in a garden, or the way that a garden is always in a process of change and approximation, it makes it feel like a revolutionary space. rich was really clear from the beginning that he didn’t want any cosy garden stuff. so i guess the kind of people we invited were people who are attuned to that. richard: for me, it was the ancient idea of the garden. the garden as a version of paradise, a site of utopia or eden. my association with the garden is a space of absolute diversity and freedom. a lot of people share that connection, the garden as safe haven where often the world isn’t. that’s also why derek is popping up. olivia: because he embodied that so strongly for people. on the one hand we have this version of the garden as safe and free, but there is also the garden as a site of resistance, as fighting against forces of oppression. one of the most striking projects mentioned in the anthology was the palestine heirloom seed library. it’s mentioned in there, this idea of the seed as a ‘subversive rebel’. what are some of the other ways in which the garden or plants resist forces of colonialism, of oppression, particularly in times when it’s difficult to have that hope? olivia: the garden at its core is anti homogenisation. on that level, it’s anti capitalist, and it’s against a capitalist model of time. the capitalist model of time is perpetual growth and perpetual abundance, and the garden refuses that. its model is a cycle of death and re birth. so in the context of the capitalist imperative of perpetual abundance, which is what has directly created the climate crisis, the garden is a space to think differently, to understand time differently and to understand how to cope with abundance, followed by loss, followed by abundance, followed by loss. that’s how i think of it now. the garden as an anti capitalist clock. richard: if you’ve ever tried to plough and dig away and remove in a garden, you find seeds that have been dropped and planted. if you don’t keep clearing them away, they will grow back. the garden teaches a persistence and patience when faced with opposing forces. in times of war and in time of grief, too. so much of our literature and art comes back to the garden. olivia: when i was writing the garden against time, i put it really boldly: the garden is the antidote to war. it’s the opposite of war. those are the two poles of human experience: war as people dropping bombs on people and cities versus the garden as a place of sanctuary. they seem to me two extremes of human nature and experience. i was also really glad that when people wrote about gardens, they didn’t make them into ‘happy clappy’ sites; they, especially hussein omar, acknowledged the garden as a site of destruction that might not come back. it isn’t the case that the garden will always return and that we’re totally safe. there is this sense of imperilment, and the flowers, their fragility, really lends itself as a symbol of that. their fragility is very moving. richard: they’re a symbol of very temporary, sprouting beauty that will not last. a beauty that can come again but it’s not guaranteed. olivia: it’s not guaranteed, exactly. i think that feeling is very important. we have all this wonderful nature, but it’s not guaranteed. people have to fight to make it. people like gerry dalton think, ‘i could live in a council flat and have a rubbish dump outside, or i could make this wonderful and eccentric garden, gerry’s pompeii’. but it is fragile; it’s on rented ground. will these places be secure or won’t they? the garden is always in the teeth of catastrophe and disaster. as a gardener, you’re improvising. we’re both artists in different mediums where we have total control over that medium, and with a garden you just don’t. you have to be in a relationship with it. that’s radical as well. do you think gardening helps you with your artistic practice and your approach to art and writing? is it a useful lens? olivia: definitely. there are so many similarities in terms of structuring and editing, designing and pruning. but a book is at some point finished. when i’m working on a garden, it’s never finished. it’s constantly evolving, and it pushes back and resists in ways that a book doesn’t. richards: i’m not a gardener, but my partner is. so, i vicariously garden. a gardener by association, i like it. richard: yes, exactly. we only have a small concrete garden, so we grow mainly in pots. we’re slightly more in control of the garden because of that. i work in sculpture and found objects. there’s a lot of gathering, assembling and tweaking. it’s clay, it’s earth. i’m covered in earth every single day. there’s an element of control with sculpture, of manipulation, but then in the firing process, you have no control. pieces can explode or melt and change shape, and, like with gardening, you have to step away from the idea of being totally in charge. olivia: you have a dream of what’s going to happen and then you have to improvise. that’s gardening, that’s creating any form of art. dan pearson talks of giving the garden a ‘gentle steer’ in the direction you want it to go, which seems to apply to both creative practice and the garden. olivia: it was an interesting idea especially from him, because it’s so radical. he’s one of our greatest garden designers. he’s been involved in making all of these grand estate gardens which are very formal and beautiful. and where his practice is going is more and more allowing things to be wild within a design that is still created. the subtlety of that is really extraordinary. i was very excited when he sent it. we have the ‘gentle steer’ approach to the garden, but there are a lot of other metaphors or phrases offered in this anthology for the relationship between nature and humans. there’s the idea of a war between the two, which quite a few of the contributors are trying to move away from, and there’s the idea of friendship. sui searle’s idea, also, of establishing ‘power with’ rather than ‘power over’ the garden. how do you see your relationship with nature? or, which pieces in the anthology did you most connect with in terms of how you view humans and nature, humans and the garden? olivia: i have a big problem with the idea that there’s a binary between humans and nature, because i think we’re part of it, we’re an expression of it. so, the pieces that attempt to dissolve that binary are the ones that i’m personally most excited by, rather than situating us outside of it. and people did write about that. sui searle, as you said, spoke about trying to strip away that thinking of humans as being outside and having control over nature, but actually thinking of the whole thing as one organism that’s expressing itself in different ways. that feels like the place to be. philip and eileen myles, too, subvert the idea of the dominant human, or of the human as the centre of meaning. philip writes, ‘i realised that every garden is a time machine, and we are the ghosts,’ and eileen, ‘i am growing something that will keep growing when i die.’ we made a quite emotionally open invitation, and people brought material that feels not at all nostalgic but interested in the way that the garden is a space to explore not just their own past, but also the future possibility of themselves. it’s a complicated fold in time. i was interested that more than one person thought in those terms. that’s such an interesting concept, ‘a fold in time’. i had that sense with the image of the painted fig tree from pompeii in the book. it was spooky to see a second century bce painting of an ancient fig tree that looks exactly like the fig trees you see in london balconies today, unchanged by time. can we talk more about the idea of the garden as both ancient and eternal, as a ‘fold’ in time? olivia: yes, i think that’s why we put so many deep time pieces into the book, like the fresco from pompeii and the ancient egyptian tomb paintings. i wanted it to be very clear that gardening and art are so deeply interconnected, and that it’s mattered so much to people to represent the garden for a very long time. richard: so much of our literature and art comes back to the garden. i’m not sure if this is true but i think that the very first piece of writing ever recorded in history was an observation in a garden, or, at least, a lot of ancient texts include gardens. maybe there’s a connection in human history with the garden always being the space outside the human dwelling where thought happens. a place of contemplation. there’s certainly instances of the garden being a site for great ideas. didn’t newton discover gravity in a garden with an apple falling on his head? it feels like it’s been there from the very beginning. olivia: in lisa robertson’s essay on ian hamilton finlay’s garden, she says that everything he writes, everything that she reads, all has its roots in the garden. the garden is like a workshop of ideas. it’s not just a physical place. and i wonder whether that’s a relationship that a lot of writers and artists share, that there’s a way that you can think things through, or experiment with ideas in a garden that makes it a compelling metaphor but also transcends its status as metaphor, too. it’s outside, but it’s not quite complete wilderness. it’s provisional. it has this interesting status. once you start burrowing into it, all of the cosiness falls away. things become much, much stranger than they might initially seem. and at the same time, i was really happy that multiple people talked about childhood, suburban gardens that you might dismiss, thinking ‘nothing interesting goes on there’, and then people like colin stewart and philip make them so radical and strange and gothic. a lot of murderous, violent things happen in these gardens! there were a lot of people confessing to crimes they’ve committed in the garden… richard: i suppose gardens are violent places, in the sense that there are animals constantly fighting and eating each other. our sense of it is one of serenity and peace, and ‘oh look, a little bird’, but actually the little bird is trying to peck the other one’s eyes out. there is definitely a romanticisation which i find intriguing, how human representations make it far from what it actually is. there is a violence and darkness, but there is also a lot of joy and love in the anthology. there are moments of play. lee mary manning’s plant photos, for example, are very intimate and erotic. alison lloyd’s photo of the houseplant against the floral wallpaper achieved that playful tone, too. olivia: kuba ryniewicz and lee are both quite erotic photographers, kuba especially. i feel like the photography is really good at threading in a different tone. it makes the argument of the book more complicated. i think those photos are important. pure pleasure. alison’s photo, for example, comes after hussein’s harrowing, serious essay on cairo, gaza and mandrakes. like we were saying with the garden’s clock, the anthology goes through the swells of abundance and play and joy, followed by loss and grief. richard: that image was from a series of works that alison made in a house in deptford in the 70s. layering and creating tableaus that she would then photograph, looking at domesticity. it’s playing with the domesticity of house plants and the aesthetic of floral wallpaper, the different modes of the garden in our daily lives. finally, i wondered if you had a favourite slogan or quote from the book. sarah wood used the phrase ‘hurry up slow down!’ in the anthology which i thought was such a brilliant line for the garden, and the anthology as a whole. olivia: that is good! we need another sticker. richard: we need a ‘hurry up slow down’ sticker. we’ve printed stickers to wrap the books in when we send them out, but we went with ‘reverse the enclosures’. much more direct, i like it. olivia: ‘hurry up slow down’ would be good if there’s a second edition. richard: that can be the next one, that’s a good one. thank you! . . . richard porter is an artist. in 2017 he began publishing the work of his friends and acquaintances under the imprint pilot press. today, its titles can be found in independent bookshops, academic libraries and special print collections around the world. in 2023, pilot press was shortlisted for the republic of consciousness prize for small presses for the publication of the novel my dead book by nate lippens. in november of that same year, it published the anthology responses to “forbidden colors” (1988) by felix gonzalez torres, which raises money for the charity medical aid for palestinians. pilot press is and remains an entirely independent solo artist’s project that receives no external funding or support. all profit from sales goes directly towards the development and production of its catalogue. olivia laing is an internationally acclaimed writer and critic. they’re the author of seven books, including the lonely city, funny weather and everybody. laing’s books have been translated into twenty one languages and in 2018 they were awarded the windham campbell prize for non fiction. laing’s new book, the garden against time, is an exhilarating account of garden making and the long and troubled dream of paradise on earth. it was a sunday times number one bestseller and shortlisted for the wainwright prize and kirkus prize. sign up to our newsletter for the latest content, news and competition updates, right to your inbox. copyright 2024 the london magazine dearest reader! our newsletter! sign up to our newsletter for the latest content, freebies, news and competition updates, right to your inbox. from the oldest literary periodical in the uk. you must be logged in to post a comment.

forgot your password? an interview with author olivia laing. olivia laing is an acclaimed writer and critic whose work focuses on art and culture. the recipient of the 2018 windham campbell prize, she’s the author of seven books, including three she considers a loose trilogy: the lonely city (2016), everybody (2021), and her newest, the garden against time: in search of a common paradise (us edition by w.w. norton, june 25). when i spoke to laing in april, she was at home in suffolk, where, for the past four years, she has lived and cultivated the garden at the center of her latest book.  sara franklin sara franklin: the relationship between enclosure and control, freedom and wildness is a major theme of the book. can you frame out how you think about this, and, perhaps, how you bridged to this project from your previous book, everybody: a book about freedom? olivia laing: this book is really about paradise, but a complex vision of paradise. it looks at the ways in which seeming paradises of the past have been founded on exclusion or exploitation, and it also looks at radical paradises of possibility: gardens established in war zones, queer gardens as sanctuaries. there’s a model of freedom, just like there’s a model of paradise, that is actually very exclusive and very privileged and involves harm to others. i wanted to really lay those bare, but i also wanted to offer alternatives. in this book about gardens, i explored the process of enclosures in britain and how slavery funded the great gardens of both america and britain. it was an important process to really track the money, the nitty gritty of what was happening. to do that i used the middletons, a slave owning family that had come from britain, went to america, made an enormous amount of wealth out of plantations, and then came back here and went through a process almost of money laundering, using gardens to move their way up the class ladder, to gain social influence and power. so trying to expose those seething nightmares beneath these seemingly beautiful and innocent landscapes showing the violent processes, the people who were disenfranchised, the people whose liberties were taken, and reflecting on whiteness in particular was a very important part of the project. sf: i was so interested in the linguistic link you made about the word planter and plantation. can you speak a bit about that? ol: there’s a beautiful side of it, which is someone who plants things in the earth. but then gradually, as the colonial work of what was to become the british empire began, there’s this sense that it’s about planting colonial communities. peeling away the history of the words that are used was analogous to peeling away the historical and financial record, to see not only who was doing what but also what it cost, in terms of money, but also in terms of the people that were excised from the record. sf: you explore this notion of ownership, and the ability or perhaps the lack thereof to own plants and gardens, these living things. i’m curious what it means to you, at this juncture, to have a garden of one’s own. ol: that’s a really key question. it really is about thinking about ways in which gardens can be inclusive. the answer, for me, is about a massive investment in public garden infrastructure internationally. one of the most interesting pieces of research that i came across was done at great dixter. when they did a biodiversity audit of the estate, they discovered that the most biodiverse areas weren’t the wilderness areas the woodlands and the ponds but the actual gardens. there’s a possibility there for a response to climate change that allows humans to be creative, to engage in joyful, aesthetic, pleasurable activities that aren’t harmful. there is a way of building paradise that might be beneficial not only to our own species but to other species too. that, to me, was absolutely crucial. sf: much of this book was during and about the early days of the covid pandemic, during a time of fear, illness, and mortality. you write of this uncertain relationship to time, which is true always, but was heightened in that moment. i’m curious how gardening has shaped your thinking about aging and mortality. ol: for a long time, my gardening was a sustaining practice, a soothing and a positive thing in my life. but i hadn’t quite grasped the real message around time in gardening, which is that you have to accept these periods of death. there are periods of retraction and withdrawal, and then periods of abundance. that began to seem more and more key to me in terms of climate change, in terms of horrific growth based economies that are causing more and more environmental harm. the garden is an antidote to that, and gives space to think about time very differently. in the garden, you’re called into the now, the perpetual now. but at the same time, you’re in a clock that’s cyclical rather than a model of time that’s always pressing forward, like capitalism time. sf: one of the things that i think is really revolutionary about gardening, especially in this era when we insist on hypermobility, the sense of status in our ability to move around, take long haul flights, etc., is what can be learned and wrought from staying put. i wonder, now that you’ve been in this garden for four years, what it is that you’re learning about staying in place? ol: i don’t say yes to invitations involving long haul flights anymore because of climate change, and it’s met with astoundment, even when i’m invited to festivals on the other side of the world about climate change. so it still is this kind of taboo act to say, “i don’t fly” or “i’m reducing my flying.” perhaps what we need to be offering is a sense of why it’s richer to stay in one place, why it’s richer to be able to communicate from the place you’re in. i think it’s really tricky. but increasingly my desire with downtime or vacations is to stay in the same place and to be in that place more deeply rather than constantly wanting to be hit with the jolt of the new. learning to love repetition is perhaps one of the things that we are now tasked to do, rather than looking for the excitement of something different. again, it’s an anti capitalist act, so it’s a hard sell, but i think that’s the thing that’s most crucial right now. sf: do you, in fact, believe it’s richer to stay in place? is it true for you? ol: it is very hard to say no to invitations to go to fantastic places. there’s a disappointment. and maybe that’s something we need to be really honest about grappling with it would be wonderful to do that, but it’s only wonderful when it’s unyoked to the cost. it isn’t wonderful if you actually see the cost of what you’re doing because that cost is horrific, disgusting, devastating. that’s always been the problem of communicating around climate change: we see what’s right in front of us, and so the cost to someone on the other side of the world is invisible to us. but, increasingly it’s on our doorsteps. sf: now that you’ve ben tethered in place more than four years after a lifetime of relative transience, what’s surprising to you about the microcosm? ol: pre pandemic, i was spending a lot of time in new york, i had a very cosmopolitan life, and probably a terror of the parochial, rural life. but actually, it was a cosmopolitan experience being here during lockdown, because things are always coming through. migratory birds, migratory insects, always a sense that something’s happening, someone’s arrived, someone’s left, there’s the first cuckoo in from africa or the swifts. there’s a sense that there’s action still going on around you if you stop and look at it. i found that exciting. sf: you made a comment in another interview about being a fan of high maintenance gardening. you also write about the immense satisfaction of the physical labor of the garden. talk to me a bit about your attraction to that which needs constant tending, and how it shapes your worldview. elie mystal elie mystal dave zirin jeet heer ol: it’s exactly the same as writing. i really thrive off having tasks that feel impossible to complete and to trudge away at them until they’re done. that’s something i really need in my life and i constantly try and furnish in different directions. it’s relational, what i want from the garden. i want it as a space to be participating in. that sense of looking for what’s wrong and how to solve it, is exactly the same when i go out in the garden in the morning or open a word doc and run through a text. i find a problem to solve and work away at it. both have got two aspects: an architectural aspect, and a sort of daily editing aspect that’s just laborious and very, very pleasurable for me. i think people have a lot of fantasies about creativity. the day to day reality of being an artist is fairly hard and boring. you’re not generating the material so much as shaping it, sharpening it, cutting things out from it. you’re solving problems. it’s unglamorous, and at the same time it’s really, really exciting. sf: you talk about the dangerous illusion of perpetual fecundity in the garden. what are the dangers of believing there is such a thing? ol: perpetual fecundity, perpetual abundance, perpetual growth, being able to eat strawberries in the middle of winter, this idea that there will always be the goods to supply our appetites rather than that our appetites should track the growth cycles of the planet we live on… i think the wheels are really falling off that cart right in front of us. the sense that our resources are unlimited is becoming such a tarnished vision right now. we were told to believe that there would always be enough of everything, and clearly there isn’t enough of everything. it’s that deep paradise illusion, that you can pick apples from the tree, that the fruit will keep coming and coming as long as the appetite is there. and that isn’t true. that’s what nature is constantly telling us. it’s abundance followed by scarcity, scarcity followed by abundance. sf: you write about the soil literally baking that hot, dry summer of 2022, and that when it did rain, the water just running off. i’m curious to hear your thoughts about adaptation in the face of drought. ol: i cannot get my head around a society that does not understand that without water, there is nothing. and not just honoring it as a resource that’s essential to our survival, but understanding that it’s at this center of the network of life that we all depend upon feels like the first truth of our existence. water is at the center of whatever climate change strategy we’re going to need. sf: you write, “war is the opposite of a garden, the antithesis of a garden, its furthest extremity in terms of human nature and human endeavor.” and later, “the garden is a balancing act, which can take the form of collaboration or outright war.… the garden can be a place of rehearsal too, of experimenting with inhabiting this relationship in new and perhaps less harmful ways.” talk to me about gardens and how they help you think you think about harm, war, and destruction. ol: one of the things that’s happening in palestine right now is the destruction of gardens, the destruction of farmland, the destruction of trees, the destruction of plant life. that is direct in terms of generating starvation, but it’s also symbolic: a people’s gardens and land are part of that people’s soul. choosing that as a site of attack is deliberate. i tell a story in the book about syria, about the last gardener of aleppo and the extraordinarily beautiful nursery he tried to sustain during bombardment. he was eventually killed, and in the film he talks about how powerful flowers are. and of course they’re not they’re totally fragile! but at the same time, they’re this amazingly powerful symbol for the best of humanity: that kind of desire in us to make something richer, to share, to make something beautiful, to make something that nourishes. so i think that instinct in humans is the opposite of war. and at the same time, humans can garden and farm in ways that are warlike, that are very aggressive against other species in ways that are very harmful. the garden is a complicated metaphor. in this book, it was so important to me to think about gardens as something other than places to hide from the world, especially the political world. the garden, metaphorically and literally, can be a space for doing things differently, for having different kinds of power relations, for having different kinds of relations with violence and gentleness. sf: in writing about the artist and thinker william morris, you write, “i think what his gardens really stand for is fellowship: a humming, thrumming togetherness that transcends not only sexual desire but the human world itself. call it a garden state: a cross species ecology of astounding beauty and completeness, never static, always in motion, progressive and prolific. i want to live there, and the world won’t survive much longer if we don’t.” where are you seeing examples or signs of hope that people are taking up some version of this call? ol: the sense that people, especially young people, are very interested in environmental communities and activism projects like rewilding, like bringing back beavers that’s very thrilling. what i think is particularly lacking at the moment is visionary political leadership on the national level. the kind of communication that comes from a different vision of being, of a fellowship, really needs to be used politically, because the language of hatred is infiltrating our planet right now. sf: certainly. on that note, you write about the difficulty of learning to live with a partner sharing space and how wonderful, but also how difficult that can be. over these last four years, in the home and garden you share with your husband, what has been the most challenging lesson you’ve learned around the reality of living that better way, with more interdependency and more intimacy? ol: that is a really good question. i think the importance of practice, and of being able to make mistakes and improve! sf: you’re always an amateur in the garden, it’s one of the humbling, beautiful lessons of that space. you can never “get it right,” especially with the rapidity of climate change. even if you nail something, it’s going to change again the next season. ol: absolutely. i think we’re in a cultural moment that finds it difficult to tolerate getting things wrong, trying things again, doing things slightly better, but still doing it wrong. that process of rather humiliating learning, where you fall down a lot. i think that is actually how you get to tolerate other beings, tolerate difference, tolerate the loosening of one’s selfishness. for me, that’s definitely been the experience. i think part of why i find cancel culture so concerning is that if we want to change the world that we’re living in right now, we’re going to make a lot of mistakes along the way. i think a kind of tenderness and acceptance around people making mistakes is really crucial. that, for me, has been really crucial: to be allowed to make mistakes, to be allowed not to know how to do something and do it badly, and get better at it. sara b. franklin is a writer and professor at nyu gallatin. she lives with her children in kingston, n.y. khawla ibraheem’s play knock on the roof examines how the israeli military terrorizes palestinians in their most intimate and private spaces: their homes. books & the arts / ahmed moor in if only, the norwegian novelist distills a story of romance into all its private discomfort and claustrophobia. its intense ambivalence in regards to love feels truer to life. ... books & the arts / david schurman wallace why the stark 20th century architectural style is back in vogue. books & the arts / daniel brook the cartoonist and writer proved that the deadliest skewering is informed by understanding. obituary / jeet heer in the philosophy of translation, damion searls investigates the essential differences and similarities between the task of the translator and of the writer. books & the arts / lily meyer in the unseen truth, sarah lewis examines how an erroneous 18th century story about the “caucasian race” led to a centuries of prejudice and misapprehension. books & the arts / erin l. thompson

our hand picked guide to the best books of the season to read and give as gifts for 100 years, new dominion bookshop has been the place to find special holiday gifts. support your community bookstore by shopping local for your gifts this year! below are our hand picked recommendations for everyone on your gift list. how to order to order books, ask for personal recommendations, or purchase gift cards, give us a call at 434 295 2552 or stop by the shop. new dominion bookshop also offers shipping (normal rates apply). free gift wrapping is available for all orders! the serviceberry: abundance and reciprocity in the natural world by robin wall kimmerer illustrated by john burgoyne a lyric meditation on the many gifts of the serviceberry tree, by the acclaimed author of braiding sweetgrass. (scribner) meditations for mortals: four weeks to embrace your limitations and make time for what counts by oliver burkeman have you ever wanted to meditate? this is the year to feel that inner peace and explore what “the good life” really means to you. (fsg) the garden against time: in search of a common paradise by olivia laing “an impassioned case for the garden as repository of natural beauty, as democratic ideal, as writerly inspiration.”  a.o. scott (norton) lifeform by jenny slate it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a baby! jenny slate is back with this book of essays chronicling the weird adventures of making a new human. (little, brown) notes from an island by tove jansson translated by thomas teal with paintings by tuulikki pietilä from the beloved finnish creator of the moomintroll series comes a chronicle of her summers with her partner on a remote island. (timber press) selected amazon reviews by kevin killian an eclectic collection of over two thousand “reviews” killian posted to amazon.com. he said, “they’re reviews of a sort, but they also seem like novels….they’re essays about life.” (semiotexte) we will rest!: the art of escape by tricia hersey tricia hersey, creator of the nap ministry, guides you through helpful processes to rest, restore, and find your meaning. (little, brown spark) at wit’s end: cartoonists of the new yorker photographs by alen macweeney words by michael maslin a celebration of more than fifty new yorker cartoonists over the magazine’s one hundred years of publication, with selections of their funniest and most famous work. (clarkson potter) the backyard bird chronicles by amy tan “the birds that inhabit amy tan’s backyard seem a lot like the characters in her novels.”  david allen sibley (knopf) pictures by j.r.r. tolkien by j. r. r. tolkien first published in the iconic tolkien calendars in the 1970s, these fascinating illustrations by tolkien himself include enlightening commentary from his son christopher tolkien. (william morrow) connie by connie chung “this delightful memoir is filled with connie chung’s trademark wit, sharp insights, and deep understanding of people.”  walter isaacson (grand central) heartbreak is the national anthem: how taylor swift reinvented pop music by rob sheffield funny and incisive essays on each phase of swift’s artistic development, from rock critic rob sheffield. (dey street books) a complicated passion: the life and work of agnès varda by carrie rickey the famous french new wave filmmaker agnès varda gets her own biography, spanning her sixty five year career. for the cinephile in your life! (norton) 3 shades of blue: miles davis, john coltrane, bill evans, and the lost empire of cool by james kaplan “in his new book, kaplan writes about a decisive moment in modern jazz, and turns it into a genuine page turner.”  ted gioia (penguin press) be ready when the luck happens by ina garten the barefoot contessa’s warm and inspiring memoir, full of wisdom and, of course, food! (crown) high and rising: a book about de la soul by marcus j. moore “comprehensive, true to life, and as irreverent as de la soul themselves….history and memoir from the soul.”  leslie odom jr. (dey street books) tell me everything by elizabeth strout olive kitteridge, lucy barton, and other beloved characters are reunited once again in crosby, maine, in strout’s latest novel. (random house) the city and its uncertain walls by haruki murakami translated by philip gabriel the modern master of magical realism returns with a story that begins with teenage love and follows one lover throughout his life. (knopf ) intermezzo by sally rooney two brothers in turmoil fall in and out of love as they confront grief. the book of the fall. (fsg) sipsworth by simon van booy “a gorgeously odd tale about finding yourself again, unexpectedly. if you want a little piece of joy in your reading life, buy it.”  jojo moyes (david r. godine ) james by percival everett everett reimagines huck finn by centering the story on jim (james). shortlisted for the booker prize and a finalist for the national book award. (doubleday) playground by richard powers a bestselling marvel of plotting, this book spins around ecological themes of the ocean’s beauty and fragility. from the author of the overstory. (norton) the mighty red by louise erdrich “in the hands of this master storyteller, everything is effortlessly connected….fearlessly depicting the toughest losses and darkest threats, erdrich always finds hope.”  oprah daily (harper) season of the swamp by yuri herrera a historical novel set in nineteenth century new orleans, with future mexican president benito juárez as the protagonist. (graywolf ) karla’s choice: a john le carré novel by nick harkaway an imagining of a george smiley adventure set in the time between the spy who came in from the cold and tinker tailor soldier spy. (viking) we solve murders by richard osman “madcap fun, with an entertaining new cast of characters and osman’s trademark wit. delightful!”  shari lapena (pamela dorman books) death at the sign of the rook by kate atkinson a cast of characters worthy of agatha christie are stuck in an english country house during a snowstorm, including ex detective jackson brodie. (doubleday) the lost boy of santa chionia by juliet grames “i enjoyed this immersive novel of family secrets in an isolated community in italy. shades of ferrante.”  ian rankin (knopf ) a happy poem to start every day edited by jane mcmorland hunter read a poem at breakfast instead of the news! this beautiful book is the perfect gift to go into the day with a song in your heart. (batsford) the universe in verse: 15 portals to wonder through science & poetry by maria popova illustrated by ofra amit beautifully illustrated essays on the wonders of the universe, accompanied by poems from poets like tracy k. smith and maya angelou. (storey publishing) blues in stereo: the early works of langston hughes by langston hughes edited by danez smith experience hughes as a young artist as he records his travels in mexico, the caribbean, and africa. (legacy lit) light me down: the new & collected poems of jean valentine by jean valentine valentine’s final lyrical poems mix with some of her most famous in this gorgeous collection from her long career. (alice james books) the king arthur baking company big book of bread by king arthur baking company for the baker in your life, featuring gorgeous photographs of the best loaves you have ever seen. learn how to make sourdough, hearth breads, buns, bagels, and more! (simon element) i love you: recipes from the heart by pamela anderson pamela anderson’s newest chapter of eighty recipes from her vancouver island house, inspired by her personal box of recipe cards for her family. (voracious) half baked harvest quick & cozy by tieghan gerard every photograph makes you want to cook these hearty dishes. don’t miss the sheet pan mac & cheese with all the crispy edges! (clarkson potter) zaytinya: delicious mediterranean dishes from greece, turkey, and lebanon by josé andrés if you haven’t visited zaytinya restaurant in dc, do the next best thing and learn to cook their classic dishes, such as greek zucchini fritters, sesame salmon, and crunchy fattoush. (ecco) trucky roads by lulu miller illustrated by hui skipp for the toddler who is fascinated by things that go! this joyful book includes everything from tow trucks to ice cream trucks. ages 2  5. (paula wiseman books) rewild the world at bedtime: hopeful stories from mother nature by emily hawkins illustrated by ella beech illustrated bedtime stories of animals who have been returned to their natural habitats through conservation efforts. ages 4  8. (wide eyed editions) curiosity shop by walter wick kids will love searching for hidden objects in the curiosity shop. from the photographer of the famous i spy series. ages 3   6. (cartwheel books) the man who didn’t like animals by deborah underwood illustrated by leuyen pham it turns out that, before he had a farm, old macdonald didn’t like animals. one by one, he met strays that won him over. proof that even grumpy old people can change! ages 4   8. (clarion books) lonely planet kids atlas of cats by frances evans illustrated by kelsey heaton big cats, little cats, spotted cats they’re all here. for the kid who soaks up information! ages 4 10. (lonely planet) wildflower emily: a story about young emily dickinson by lydia corry a quiet, beautifully drawn slice of life of emily dickinson as a young person exploring the natural world. great for all ages! (godwin books) the hotel balzaar by kate dicamillo illustrated by júlia sardà marta lives at the hotel balzaar and observes the guests; one day a mysterious countess appears with a parrot and a promise to tell magical stories. ages 8  12. (candlewick) framed: astonishing true stories of wrongful convictions by john grisham and jim mccloskey the bookshop: a history of the american bookstore by evan friss listen to the golden boomerang return by caconrad in praise of mystery by ada limón illustrated by peter sís we will also be receiving a limited supply of signed copies of other new titles this holiday season. stop by the shop to browse our current stock of signed books. when we were very young: centenary facsimile edition by a. a. milne the little prince by antoine de saint exupéry the boxcar children: 100th anniversary edition by gertrude chandler warner aesop’s fables: a new translation by aesop translated by robin waterfield bad feminist by roxane gay we by yevgeny zamyatin translated by bela shayevich so big by edna ferber poirot investigates by agatha christie women in power: classical myths and stories, from the amazons to cleopatra edited by stephanie mccarter orlando by virginia woolf observations by marianne moore a look at my life by eileen agar the winter wish by helen mortimer illustrated by rachael dean the story of a bookshop and a magical christmas display window, perfect for the kid who would like to live in a bookshop! ages 3   6. (harpercollins) my wonderful christmas tree by dahlov ipcar old fashioned illustrations celebrate the mysterious beauty of a holiday tree, as all the animals come to visit. ages 4   8. (tilbury house publishers) christmas crimes at the mysterious bookshop edited by otto penzler each of these stories had to follow three requirements: a crime, a bookstore, and christmastime. the perfect cozy stocking stuffer! for adult readers. (mysterious press) christmas eve at the moon under water by carol ann duffy illustrated by margaux carpentier in this pocket sized poem, animals gather to play music and prepare for the holiday. for all ages! (picador uk) contact 404 east main st charlottesville, va 22902 434 295 2552 staff@ndbookshop.com store hours monday: closed tuesday wednesday: 11 am 5:30 pm thursday saturday: 9:30 am 9 pm sunday: 11 am 5:30 pm upcoming holidays closed easter (4/20)

basking in the beauty of my garden roses! i love you! happy august. i’m humbled to recall that 50 years ago this month, i received an advance copy of my first book, published by doubleday. half a century ago, when i was 32, style for living: how to make where you live you began my journey of discovery, growth, purpose, intellectual stimulation, fun and communion. over five decades, some of us are continuing our dialogues together, as trusted friends. in my book feeling at home, i wrote about our 10 defining words. my dear husband peter’s list included old friends. just the word friends wasn’t enough for him. while my book publishing days are in the rearview mirror, i am enthusiastically looking forward to staying in touch with you in the coming days. whatever opportunities present themselves to us in whatever serendipitous “coincidences,” i’m wide open to spontaneously experiencing the joyful connections. bring it on. let joy be unrestrained. this is our time to shine. let there be light. we have far more energy when we are exposed to longer lit days. the expanse of nature’s majestic, miraculous beauty expands our exuberant temperament. our mood is uplifted by the infectiousness of this eternal, seasonal life force. this is the first year my hydrangea turned this vivid purple! even in the still, gray days of winter, beauty falls from the sky   snow. how is it possible that each single snowflake is distinct? such a meticulous, intricate, delicate symmetrical shape is one, and only one, design out of the innumerable snowflakes that fall from the sky. how can we ever begin to contemplate or grasp the vastness of this miraculous earthly human life’s possibilities? this time of year, nature’s exuberance can be highly contagious. all of us who feel the joy of the sun shining brightly upon our corner of the universe feel rapture at the smallest awareness of her spell on our human emotions. when we’re in our gardens, we’re often in awe of the new ripening and flowering. when we were children, we were fully alive with all our senses. one of the great joys of this time of year is the emotional response we all have to the simple pleasures of our seasonal, sensual abundance. cheerful sunflowers in the kitchen with a painting of lush peaches. we savor our first bite of a freshly picked ear of corn. there’s no substitute for seasonal, fresh, farm grown produce. to enhance our pleasure, we can watch a field of corn and sunflowers grow. as samuel johnson wrote, “the process is the reality.” i feel so fortunate to live in the country, where i’m able to go to farmers markets and enjoy the flavor and freshness regularly. near me, stone acres farm sells not only their fresh picked vegetables and flowers, but they also have an ice cream trailer. their ice cream comes from the iconic st. clair shop in watch hill, rhode island, and to add to their farm fresh touch, they add some of their fruit to the flavors. several other ice cream shops add seasonal fresh peach, strawberry and blueberry flavors. buttonwood farm in griswold, connecticut, is a famous farm that sells spectacular ice cream and also grows sunflowers. for a week, when the sunflowers are in full bloom, usually at the end of july, they also make a sunflower ice cream! for that week they give the proceeds from selling the sunflowers to the make a wish foundation in connecticut. even though summer’s high season means we wait in line for our ice cream, seeing the rolling hills with cows grazing in the lush green grass is a peaceful, mindful meditation. one of my favorite parts of this yearly ritual is to watch the children scamper, skip and jump while their parents or an adult wait in line. once their ice cream is in their hand, all their concentration is on the joy of their treat! charlie’s delicate blue lace hydrangea. whenever anyone cultivates their own garden, they are richly surrounded by what they’re able to co create with nature’s gifts. all their dedication, devotion and joy are appreciated by countless others. a few days ago, when elissa and i were meandering in my small front garden, two women who were guests of the inn at stonington down the street exuberantly complimented us on how spectacular the hot pink geraniums looked in the window boxes. they were enchanted by my neighbor charlie’s blue lace hydrangeas and how graceful they looked against the “summer sky” blue shutters. deedee told us a close friend of hers, who was a master gardener, had recently died. the memorial remembrance was in her friend’s beautiful garden sanctuary. she felt that “gardens are for sharing.” just as a light mist morphed into big raindrops, elissa explained she was taking pictures of some roses for my august newsletter. while the rain persisted, the four of us were able to briefly share a few heartfelt connections. “where do you live?” i inquired to mary ann. “newton, massachusetts.” “i was born there in 1941!” i said. potted flowers in charlie’s and my shared garden space. the white picket fence charlie and i shared had been there for decades. it was too rotten to repair, let alone paint, and having it removed allowed our close houses to have more breathing room. beyond that grace note, there was a silent sense of connection. gardens communicate love through their beauty, scent, color and grace. the word paradise came from the persian word for garden. a.o. scott, a critic at large for the times book review, reviewed olivia laing’s new book the garden against time: in search of a common paradise. the review was titled “a bouquet of ideas: olivia laing makes an impassioned case for a garden   as repository of natural beauty, as democratic ideal, as writerly inspiration.” at the end of the review, scott quotes laing dreaming of a second eden: “a humming, thrumming togetherness that transcends not only sexual desire but the human world itself. call it a garden state: a cross species ecology of astounding beauty and completeness, never static, always in motion, progressive and prolific. i want to live there, and the world won’t survive much longer if we don’t.” tulip mania in my living room! ever since my first awakening in my mother’s flower garden when i was 3, i’ve been keenly conscious of the profound effect the beauty and fragrance of flowers has on our soul. why do we love to grow flowers? children and artists draw and paint flowers. photographers take pictures of their gardens. why does the fragrance of flowers bring back memories and give so many of us such happiness? perfume manufacturers understand how many flowers are required to produce one ounce of perfume. the fragrance joy by jean patou, for example, contains the essence of 10,000 jasmine flowers and 28 dozen bulgarian roses! i learned this statistic while reading a footnote from chapter nine in exuberance: the passion for life by kay redfield jamison. in footnote 246, from the chapter “we should grow too fond of it,” jamison writes that what “is most deeply felt is what is most powerfully expressed to others.” she quotes thoreau: “we cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto.” the author of walden wrote about the contrast between writer and spring: “walden was dead and is alive again.” these pink roses are a treat for the eyes and the nose! august. we have this entire 31 day month to celebrate endless summer days and long, leisurely evenings. this is it! now, this glorious month, we have life’s full measure of beauty in front of our eyes and at our fingertips. in gracious profusion, everywhere we look, gardens are lavish and lush. cherries, watermelon, blueberries and peaches are sweet and juicy, creating delicious nectar. by appreciating all we have available to nourish our bodies and souls, we’re acutely aware how extraordinary it is to have our five senses with us at all times. when we’re living our best life, we’re able to maintain positive energy that supports inner peace and compassion. “but for the grace of god,” we are truly blessed to be alive. we’re humbled to know firsthand just how precious and fragile life is for all of humanity. in mindful moments, we enter an inner space of serenity and know all is well. everything becomes clear. we feel whole and complete just as things are. we have our life. “today is the right day to love, believe, do and mostly live,” understands his holiness the dalai lama. no matter what is happening all around us or whatever circumstances are out of our control, we accept life as it is, right now. today. we are the masters of our souls. we are free to choose to make the best of today. as the spiritual leader eric butterworth taught worshippers, “do your best and leave the rest.” today. enjoying cut flowers from my garden in the living room. herman hesse, the german born swiss writer, wrote that “within you, there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat at anytime and be yourself.” throughout our lives, we’ve built an inner dwelling place where we are truly safe and at peace. this private sanctuary is our retreat no matter where we are physically. during quiet times of contemplation and meditation, we bring our thoughts to a higher, broader perspective. we possess a wealth of inner resources that we’ve accumulated over all the years since our birth. no one can take these inner resources away from us. our entire life’s story is miraculously housed in the safe recesses of the interconnectedness of our heart, mind and soul. each and every encounter we’ve ever experienced has shaped and molded the course of our lives. our curiosity and imagination are gifts of grace. we are truly blessed when we are philosophical about learning from all our happiest moments as well as our disappointments. our life’s whole story up until today is complex, colorful, mysterious and full of indelible memories. by embracing each new opportunity when it presents itself, patterns form; our authentic temperament is cultivated. by our exposure to diverse opinions and cultures, we learn from our vast global family and discover their traditions, rituals, beliefs and celebrations. cheerful blossoms on the kitchen windowsill. more than ever, i’m now aware how one thing inevitably leads to another. we’re not always aware of the reasons our life takes “the road less traveled,” but every deliberate act of self expression leads us closer and closer to our essence, our core nature. each of us is here on earth to develop and fine tune our innate gifts in order to play our part in making the world a better place. john bowen coburn was my self selected spiritual adviser who taught me a most valuable lesson when i was in my 40s. john was my minister at st. james church in new york city and married peter and me 50 years ago. john taught me that we can’t do all the things we’d like to do without becoming “hollow inside.” this inner sanctuary requires our regular practice of mindfulness: visualize the most peaceful seascape, or a rose garden with sunshine and fresh breezes coming from the ocean. i always come back to my former boss and mentor “mrs. brown”   eleanor mcmillen brown   who understood that “living takes time.” because she believed in living well, with dignity and grace, she made deliberate efforts to keep fit and maintain the discipline of keeping work and leisure in a healthy balance. a perfect blue hydrangea is still in bloom near the garden bench. those of us who have the privilege of longevity have more undistracted quiet times to muse about life’s passage. our private life review can increase our joy in the moment. we have such a wide angle lens of all the people who have touched our lives and visited as tourists. all these memories remind us of our authentic self. i’m acutely aware of just how many caring, kind, generous, thoughtful people have shaped me. they’re in my soul, my cells, in my dna and in the very blood coursing through my body. remember these supportive souls in your quiet times. love never dies. their spirit lives on in you and will continue to live in future generations. they are the chosen inhabitants of our inner sanctuary. because they were decent, trustworthy, good human beings, i was more receptive to look up to them with respect and learn from their teachings. i’m particularly grateful to the wise ancient greek and roman thinkers who awakened in me a hunger and thirst for knowledge. because i've strived to live up to their ethics, collectively they’ve influenced the direction of my life. each day we’re alive is a bonus. these long summer days of relaxation, celebration and fun are scrumptious, delicious and wondrous. while i’m savoring being able to fully embrace all the cultural opportunities nearby, enjoying live theater and music, i’m equally glad to read and write in the calm, pretty atmosphere of my private cottage haven. solitude is an essential ingredient in my quest to become a kinder, gentler, more compassionate and understanding woman. i want to remain useful in whatever ways i can. whenever i enter this secluded place where i can work, i’m in the presence of all the souls who have loved and nurtured me. we are always being guided by others with whom we have made a spirit connection. an orange rose glazed with rainwater. one of my greatest delights in july was spending vacation time with my four grandchildren. there is something so meaningful about knowing and loving someone all their lives. the continuity of being their mothers’ mother gave me access to their lives in an intimate, tender, loving way. because i’m part of their family, i have always had a front row seat to observe their various activities and applaud their accomplishments. having gone to washington for my twin grandchildren’s sonograms 23 years ago, being at their various school performances, their basketball games and crew races, i’ve learned about their effort to excel, to be part of a winning team. the time, energy and devotion that go into being a good, loving parent today make parenting exponentially more difficult and frightening than when i raised my daughters in new york city. there is no comparison between my grandchildren’s childhood, their parents’ and mine. as a child, i went to public school on a bus. in my free time, i rode my bike to play with friends in the neighborhood. by today’s standards, i was totally neglected. if i was up to no good, no one would know. telephones hung on a wall in the kitchen. miraculously, everything worked out all right. i survived and have wonderfully happy memories of my tomboy years of freedom and abandon. my orchid, a gift from tony, is bursting with white blooms. it is most exciting for me to see these young adults flourishing. i was afraid of my parents; these four revere theirs. it’s refreshing how open they are, and how easily we can discuss any and every subject without fear of judgment. my traditional (pre internet) rituals, my love of so many obsolete objects and my deliberate choices to avoid the digital ways are often cause for giggles. two different worlds of communicating come together because of loving kindness, respect and understanding. we’re each free to express ourselves in our own way. i don’t believe absence makes the heart grow fonder, but when we’re fortunate, the precious times when we’re with our young family (who are all fully engaged in their own lives) are electric with loving energy. they are on fire and light up my love of life. their being able to openly share their excitements, concerns and interests with me invigorates my own spirit energy. i’m well aware that their presence in my life is one of the reasons i keep catching the golden ring. what a great gift: love shared openly with the future generations. enjoy this month’s opportunities to dream and muse about your good fortune. i’m grateful to have you as friends: many of you “old friends”! onward and upward. we’re walking in the right direction when we walk in love. fresh cuttings from the backyard garden. this month, i'm letting go of a lithograph by roger mühl if anyone is interested in adding it to their art collection. please contact pauline at artioli findlay (pf@artiolifindlay.com) for more information. roger mühl (french, 1929   2008) provence x devant le jardin limited edition french lithograph 16 3/4 x 12 1/2 in the image is printed to the edge of the sheet of paper. edition #vii of xx executed/printed 1986 brilliant south of france sunlight is the focus of this lovely rooftop landscape in front of a garden. delicate peach roses in the front of the cottage. lady tan’s circle of women by lisa see

while i occasionally review new fiction and nonfiction, i mostly write essays of varying length that explore the intersection of culture, history, technology and myth. i’m interested in the ways that writers, thinkers and artists hold a mirror up to the world, and how their work illuminates the issues that bedevil our social and political life, often in unexpected ways. i also try to expand the parameters of criticism to include material that isn’t considered “literary” at all: texts, letters, social media posts   pieces of writing packed with meaning and rhetorical complexity that merit closer attention than they often receive. criticism has been my vocation and my passion for as long as i can remember. i even wrote a book about it, “better living through criticism: how to think about art, pleasure, beauty and truth.” when i was growing up, hanging out in record stores, libraries and movie theaters, my companions were the writers who shared my obsessions and helped me understand them. later, i tried to practice criticism in an academic setting, spending too many years in graduate school studying english and american literature. in the mid 90s, i abandoned academia for journalism, writing mostly about books for the nation, the new york review of books, newsday, slate and the new york times, which hired me as a film critic at the beginning of 2000. i spent more than 23 years in that job, reviewing thousands of movies, attending film festivals, making oscar predictions and interviewing the likes of robert de niro, jennifer lopez and the coen brothers. i loved every minute, but i also missed writing about books, and wanted to explore new forms of critical writing, so in 2023 i joined the book review   a homecoming of sorts, and also a new adventure. like every other journalist at the times, i’m committed to upholding the standards outlined in our ethical journalism handbook. even though criticism is necessarily opinionated, argumentative and subjective, it also must be truthful, independent and fair. i avoid writing about anyone i know, and keep an appropriate distance from the industries i cover. while my job is to pass judgment, i strive to do so in a way that is respectful of the work and the people who make it. since i’ve come to believe that social media is a threat to all that is decent and noble in the modern world, i no longer participate in it. email: aoscott@nytimes.com anonymous tips: nytimes.com/tips ali smith’s latest novel, “gliff,” infuses a y.a. plot with her distinctive verbal magic. by a.o. scott george oppen’s “from a photograph” turns a wintry snapshot into a moving meditation on parenthood and the passage of time. our critic a.o. scott shows you what he loves about it. by a.o. scott our book review staff on the best of 2024. by melissa kirsch, gilbert cruz, mj franklin, jennifer szalai, a.o. scott, sarah lyall, alexandra jacobs, dwight garner, tina antolini, alex barron, kate lopresti, wendy dorr, diane wong, marion lozano, dan powell and daniel ramirez “romantic poet,” by diane seuss, is one of the best things that our critic a.o. scott read (and reread) this year. by a.o. scott like many americans of his background, luigi mangione’s bookish aspirations were defined by what everybody else was reading, or thought they should be reading. by a.o. scott how americans learned to root for the dark side   from the joker and “wicked” to elon musk. by a.o. scott our critic a.o. scott walks you through a poem that speaks to his mood right now. it’s called “party politics,” but it’s not about those parties, or those politics. by a.o. scott bob woodward doesn’t know which story he wants to tell in his latest presidential chronicle. by a.o. scott as the nobel committee gets ready to admit a new writer into the pantheon, our critic asks: is greatness overrated? by a.o. scott the vice presidential debate, pitting senator jd vance of ohio against gov. tim walz of minnesota, shines the spotlight on a complicated region. by a.o. scott the literary critic, who died on sunday at age 90, believed that reading was the path to revolution. by a.o. scott ‘chaos’ is an unruly word for a volatile time. the election is the least of it. by a.o. scott everybody loves the middle class. nobody wants to be mid, or middling. “middle” is a tricky word. by a.o. scott as democrats coalesce around their candidate, here are some of the words that define the party now. by a.o. scott before there was a feature film or a book, there was crockett johnson. by a.o. scott a partial lexicon of modern republicanism. by a.o. scott our critic talks to edward p. jones about how he imagined “the known world,” recently voted the best work of fiction by an american writer in the 21st century. by a.o. scott our critic traces j.d. vance’s shift from bootstrap memoirist to vice presidential candidate. by a.o. scott as voted on by 503 book lovers   with a little help from the staff of the new york times book review. by the new york times books staff in her latest book, olivia laing makes an impassioned case for the garden   as repository of natural beauty, as democratic ideal, as writerly inspiration. by a.o. scott in his post verdict remarks, the former president sounded more like an aggrieved new york businessman than the political martyr his supporters believe him to be. by a.o. scott in joseph o’neill’s new novel, the search for an african sports prodigy is wrapped around a story of american workplace dysfunction. by a.o. scott at a time of extreme polarization on campus, the banality of the graduation ceremony is a tradition worth celebrating. by a.o. scott now a suburban married mother, eilis lacey finds herself in a quandary in “long island,” colm tóibín’s sequel to his much admired novel. by a.o. scott americans like their politicians to be dog people. gov. noem broke the mold. by a.o. scott a critic for the book review finds joy   and inspiration   in engaging with readers via the comments forums on his articles. by a.o. scott for national poetry month, a.o. scott shares one of his favorite love poems. by sara curtis, lynn levy, tina antolini, sophia lanman and a.o. scott she devoted her life to showing us how and why. by a.o. scott how percival everett and barbara kingsolver reimagined classic works by mark twain and charles dickens. by a.o. scott frank o’hara’s “having a coke with you” makes a charming first impression, and right away you want to get to know it better. by a.o. scott

free delivery is available to prime members. to join, select "try amazon prime and start saving today with free delivery" below the add to cart button and confirm your prime free trial. important: your credit card will not be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. if you're happy with amazon prime, do nothing. at the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership. we offer easy, convenient returns with at least one free return option: no shipping charges. all returns must comply with our returns policy. download the free kindle app and start reading kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer   no kindle device required. read instantly on your browser with kindle for web. using your mobile phone camera   scan the code below and download the kindle app. ok finalist for the 2024 kirkus prize for nonfiction finalist for the 2024 wainwright prize for nature writing a #1 sunday times (uk) bestseller • a new york times book review editors' choice • a new yorker and kirkus reviews best book of 2024 • a chicago public library must read book of 2024 • an oprah daily "most thought provoking book" of 2024 inspired by the restoration of her own garden, "imaginative and empathetic critic" (npr) olivia laing embarks on an exhilarating investigation of paradise. in 2020, olivia laing began to restore an eighteenth century walled garden in suffolk, an overgrown eden of unusual plants. the work brought to light a crucial question for our age: who gets to live in paradise, and how can we share it while there’s still time? 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 humming, glowing tapestry, 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. .orange text color {color: #fe971e;} explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with page flip. .orange text color {font weight:bold; color: #fe971e;}view high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look. .orange text color {font weight:bold; color: #fe971e;}enjoy features only possible in digital   start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more. .orange text color {color: #fe971e;} discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with wikipedia integration. customer reviews, including product star ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them. to calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on amazon. it also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
what to read nonfiction in her latest book, olivia laing makes an impassioned case for the garden   as repository of natural beauty, as democratic ideal, as writerly inspiration. credit...embroidery by jillian tamaki; photo by darren rigo supported by by a.o. scott when you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. the garden against time: in search of a common paradise, by olivia laing unlike olivia laing, i don’t much care for gardening. like her, however, i’m very fond of gardens, provided my allergies are under control and there aren’t too many bugs around. what i love even more   and i suspect she feels the same way   is reading about gardens. i don’t know hellebore from hogweed, but an artfully arranged list of plant names is among my favorite poetic genres. laing’s latest book, “the garden against time,” is bursting with such lists. every few pages, she gathers an abundant, unruly bouquet of floral nomenclature, either of her own making or gleaned from fellow writers who have wrung inspiration from the lives of plants. she catalogs the shifting contents of her own garden (“fig and jasmine, akebia quinata and virginia creeper”) and surveys real and imaginary specimens from the past. there is an effortless lyricism to her descriptions, for example of a spot in oxfordshire designed by the victorian textile designer, reformer and essayist william morris, “with its violets and winter aconites, its meads of tulips and fritillary, its tumbling strawberry beds infiltrated by hollyhocks and raided by thrushes, despite the nets.” “the garden against time” is partly a memoir. in 2020, laing and her husband, the poet and translator ian patterson, acquired a house in suffolk with a small garden designed by a locally prominent landscape architect named mark rumary. the revitalization of rumary’s overgrown plots was a herculean project, one that unfolded through seasons of pandemic, political anxiety and personal grief. laing shares a bit about her marriage and a little more about her childhood, her bohemian early adulthood and her father’s illness, but personal narrative serves as a trellis for what is, at heart, an impassioned and wide ranging work of literary criticism. this isn’t a historical survey of gardening, much less a practical guide, so much as an inquiry into the idea of the garden   its history and poetics, its relationship to sex, imagination and power. laing, whose other books include ruminations on writers and drinking (“the trip to echo spring”) and on urban life (“the lonely city”), as well as a novel (“crudo”), is a natural hybridizer. she belongs in an as yet undefined and perhaps undefinable class of prose artists who blend feeling and analysis, speculation and research, wit and instruction as they track down the elusive patterns and inescapable contradictions of modern experience. if i were in an algorithmic mood, i’d mention geoff dyer, teju cole, jenny diski (who was married to ian patterson until her death in 2016) and w.g. sebald. laing herself has a lot to say about sebald, whose suffolk perambulations in “the rings of saturn” overlap with her own and whose critique of the local topography helps laing articulate one of her principal themes. “as sebald is at pains to point out,” she writes, “the sublime parkland of the 18th century house might look natural, with its broad expanses of closely cropped grass, its serpentine lakes and pleasant groupings of oaks, but it is a masquerade, a fantasy of what a landscape should be.”

