The Garden Against Time

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 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 * New York Times *
Buzzing and epic . . . like all Laing’s works, this one is a joyful expansion on the meaning of the subject it undertakes . . . The history of gardens and gardening is a fascinating subject, but The Garden Against Time asks for more. Laing seeks a communal space where we can cherish what is most beautiful about being alive. The possiblities are what matter * Washington Post *
What a wonderful book this is. I loved the enchanting and beautifully written story but also the fascinating and thoughtful excursions along the way -- Nigel Slater
A 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
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, author of The Well Gardened Mind
No one writes with more energy and ecstasy than Olivia Laing. This book is what we need right now: paradise, regained -- Philip Hoare
This book is as imaginatively structured and full of beauties and surprises as the garden whose creation it documents -- Lucy Hughes-Hallett, author of The Pike: Gabriele D'Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War
Every generation gets one perfect book about gardens and this is ours -- Julia Bell
Olivia Laing is a marvellous writer. So prepare yourself to be enchanted -- Jilly Cooper
The most magical writing, intimate, insightful, learned and brilliant -- Jeremy Lee, restaurateur and author of Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many
An extraordinary and important work. I felt doubly alive after reading it. The book is an inspiration. -- Celia Paul, author of Self-Portrait
It takes its rightful place in the constellation that includes Jamaica Kincaid, Russell Page, Derek Jarman, and Jenny Uglow -- Neel Mukherjee
A magisterial work, and the exacting sensuality of her garden writing is pure pleasure, delight, surprise. It is a triumph, from a writer at the height of her powers -- Francesca Segal
Quite literally unputdownable. It is astonishing, funny, beautiful, wise, charming and truthful -- Jinny Blom, author of What Makes a Garden
A sensational work, somehow encompassing so many diverse preoccupations with a confidence and control that kept me spellbound -- Isabel Bannerman
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
Powerful, reflective and captivating to read - I loved it. -- Fergus Garrett
A vital read in the age of climate crisis * Elle *
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 *
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 *
The Garden Against Time, despite its darker subtexts, feels like a recuperative work -- Patrick Freyne * Irish Times *
[Laing] excelled at looking at art in The Lonely City (2016) her meditation on urban isolation in the lives and works of American painters, and she brings the same quality of attention to her new book, writing about her garden with a vigour that should carry even the least green-fingered reader . . . a wise and enthralling book * Independent *
A beautiful book that explores the garden as a political site – of sanctified and at times selfish seclusion in an unequal world -- Katy Hessel * Guardian *
There is much to relish in this abundant book * Telegraph *
Gorgeous, enchantingly constructed non-fiction about the power and beauty of gardens * Harper's Bazaar *
Laing writes with joy and spirit. -- Kathleen Jamie * New Statesman *
In her soaring new memoir,The Garden Against Time, [Laing] wrestles with the political significance of the garden and asks fundamental questions about humans’ relationship to the land and to each other. The result is a book not only lyrical but informative and quietly profound . . . Laing loves the beauty of gardens, and the toil of working within them. Sharing her unashamed passion is a pleasure and a privilege. * The Tablet *
Enchanting . . . What makes this captivating book more than an elaborate journal of gardening and its fraught history is Laing’s insistence on Jarman’s idea that “paradise haunts gardens" * Boston Globe *