{"id":6598,"date":"2024-07-07T12:05:41","date_gmt":"2024-07-07T02:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=6598"},"modified":"2024-07-07T12:05:41","modified_gmt":"2024-07-07T02:05:41","slug":"the-garden-against-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=6598","title":{"rendered":"THE GARDEN AGAINST TIME"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I was hanging out for the release of this book. I love Olivia Laing’s writing, I love gardens and gardening, I’d read the reviews (poetry and literature and history and digging holes and watching the green spikes of unexpected bulbs, right up my garden path) and I fully expected to love The Garden Against Time<\/em>.
\nWell, I liked it.<\/p>\n

It’s not that it fell flat, or was not up to Laing’s usual standard. Olivia Laing is a master of the art of intertwining. In the books I’ve read (To the River, The Trip to Echo Springs, The Lonely City, Everybody<\/em>) she weaves memoir, literature, history, biography, sociology and politics with acute and often poetic observations of her environment. Rebecca Solnit is another writer who does this beautifully, but I especially enjoy Laing’s Englishness.<\/p>\n

In this case – and it could just be that the broken-ness of the world is pressing down more than usual on my heart – it was all too much. I know that the slave trade funded many of the great country estates and their lavish gardens. I know about whole villages being demolished so His Lordship could have an uninterrupted view. I know that having a garden is an unimaginable privilege for millions. Or billions.<\/p>\n

There was also lot I didn’t know – about John Milton and John Clare and many of the other writers and topics she introduced, and I read with interest. I agree with Laing that in a perfect world, a garden – a plot of earth, a green space, somewhere beautiful, somewhere productive –\u00a0 would be a right, not the preserve of wealth or inherited privilege. But when I garden, I seek the moment, not time past. The sun on my face, the sound of a bird, the sensation of roots letting go – or not – as I pull a weed. Laing, when she actually concentrates on her own garden-making – the hands in the dirt, the dreaming and planning and watching – writes like an angel and I’m there with her. With her time, labour, love and, it has to be said, pots of money, we read along as a neglected but once lovely garden comes to life. It’s a bit The Secret Garden<\/em>, and it’s what I was there for, not the other stuff, Philistine that I am.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen photographs of Laing in among the greenery in a glossy British gardening magazine, and it’s a gorgeous bit of Paradise. My own is scruffy and weedy, a perpetual work in progress, a tussle with time and lack of it, with my ageing body and the changing climate. At the beginning of year, I had the thought that I would enjoy my garden more if I could only get on top of it. And it hit me that I was never going to get on top of it, ever.<\/p>\n

So I should just enjoy it. And I do.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was hanging out for the release of this book. I love Olivia Laing’s writing, I love gardens and gardening, I’d read the reviews (poetry and literature and history and digging holes and watching the green spikes of unexpected bulbs, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6598"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6601,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6598\/revisions\/6601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}