The instant Sunday Times bestseller
Order in the UK: Amazon, Blackwell’s, Bookshop.org, Donlon, Foyles, London Review Bookshop, Waterstones (signed), WH Smith, Wordery
Pre-order in the US (6/25): Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Bookshop
‘A garden contains secrets, we all know that: buried elements that might put on strange growth or germinate in unexpected places. The garden that I chose had walls, but like every garden it was interconnected, wide open to the world…’
In 2020, Olivia Laing began to restore a walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants. The work drew her into an exhilarating investigation of paradise and its long association with gardens. Moving between real and imagined gardens, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to John Clare’s enclosure elegies, from a wartime sanctuary in Italy to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Laing interrogates the sometimes shocking cost of making paradise on earth.
But the story of the garden doesn’t always enact larger patterns of privilege and exclusion. It’s also a place of rebel outposts and communal dreams. From the improbable queer utopia conjured by Derek Jarman on the beach at Dungeness to the fertile vision of a common Eden propagated by William Morris, new modes of living can and have been attempted amidst the flower beds, experiments that could prove vital in the coming era of climate change.
The result is a 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.
Read: FT essay, Guardian extract, New York Times essay
Tour: here
Publicity: sam@sam-talbot.com
UK press/events: emma.bravo@macmillan.com
US press/events: ELovett@wwnorton.com
Coming soon: Italian, German, Korean, Ukrainian, Polish, Russian
Images of the garden: here
‘Could I live this way: thoughtfully, keeping in mind the fortunes of others? Twee as it sounds, if we all did, could we make the world a better place? How exquisite to hold a book that makes me believe so.’ Financial Times
‘I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that captures so well not only the deep pleasures and satisfactions of gardening, but its near-hypnotic effect on the human body and mind.’ Observer
‘‘A broad-leafed prose-poem…This is a beguiling book.’ Country Life
A vital read in the age of climate crisis.’ Elle
‘An intellectually verdant and emotionally rich narrative journey.’ Kirkus Reviews
‘A sharp and enthralling memoir of the garden’s contradiction: dream and reality, life and death, the fascination of cultivation and the political horrors that it can disguise.’ Neil Tennant
‘What a wonderful book this is. I loved the enchanting and beautifully written story but also the fascinating and thoughtful excursions along the way.’ Nigel Slater, The Kitchen Diaries
‘No one writes with more energy and ecstasy than Olivia Laing. This book is what we need right now: paradise, regained.’ Philip Hoare, RisingTideFallingStar
‘Laing probes important questions about land ownership and exclusion and the human drive to create paradise on earth. All the while, her elegant prose bewitches and beguiles. A truly wonderful read.’ Sue Stuart-Smith, The Well-Gardened Mind
‘Every generation gets one perfect book about gardens and this is ours.’ Julie Bell, Radical Attention
‘Olivia Laing is a marvellous writer. So prepare yourself to be enchanted.’ Jilly Cooper
‘An extraordinary and important work. I felt doubly alive after reading it. The book is an inspiration.’ Celia Paul, Self-Portrait
‘The most magical writing, intimate, insightful, learned and brilliant.’ Jeremy Lee, Cooking
‘This book is as imaginatively structured and full of beauties and surprises as the garden whose creation it documents.’ Lucy Hughes-Hallett, The Pike
‘A book that begins as beguiling and beautiful then flicks into the revelatory… It takes its rightful place in the constellation that includes Jamaica Kincaid, Russell Page, Derek Jarman, and Jenny Uglow.’ Neel Muhkerjee, The Lives of Others
‘An inspiring and deeply thoughtful book – I loved it!’ Alison Light, Mrs Woolf and the Servants
‘A cumulative intellectual with a golden pen, Laing's ability to relate to human desire across eras, reveals - in gorgeous and personal prose - the links to beauty that unite and also exclude… She connects collectivity with dirt, hand-building both private and generous new worlds as safe refuge and risky experiments.’ Sarah Schulman, Let the Record Show
‘An enthralling book about creation, world-making, and communion. We desperately need stories like this today.’ Fritz Haeg, Edible Estates
'Quite literally unputdownable. It is astonishing, funny, beautiful, wise, charming and truthful.’ Jinny Blom, What Makes a Garden
‘A sensational work, somehow encompassing so many diverse preoccupations with a confidence and control that kept me spellbound.’ Isabel Bannerman, Husbandry
‘Powerful, reflective and captivating to read - I loved it.’ Fergus Garrett, Great Dixter
‘Olivia Laing has written a book about making her garden, which is by turns lyrical, consoling, disturbing and inspiring. It’s a book for thinking gardeners everywhere.’ Mary Keen