‘The Garden Against Time’ explores themes of art, social justice as much as gardening

Review by Amanda Baugus, Library Specialist

The Garden Against Time is a more complex and diverse book than I originally thought when I picked it up. My preconceived idea was that it would be a light-hearted tale of bringing a historical garden back to life with plants that fit the era.

While the author, Olivia Laing, includes a cornucopia of information about gardening and the historical aspect of many different species of plants, there is far more than that contained in its pages. I believe the book is much more of a memoir, an exploration of the meaning of art in all its forms and the persistence of social injustice. I enjoyed it much more than I would have if it was simply a book on historical gardening.

In the beginning of the book, we learn of the author’s childhood in England, which was filled with loneliness and dysfunction. It was from a very young age that Olivia began yearning for a garden and a safe place all her own. After renting small spaces with little to no garden areas most of her adult life, the author is finally going to have her own home and garden. She envisions parties and get-togethers, family and friends being present in her home and garden, when the world is overtaken by the Covid pandemic. She and her husband do find a home with a garden that takes up about one third of an acre.

The garden was designed by famous landscape designer Mark Rumary. Rumary was a master horticulturist, who served as the head gardener and landscape designer for the Notcutts Garden Centres in Suffolk for 31 years, as well as winning several gold medals at the Chelsea Flower Show. He passed away in 2010. By the time the author and her husband moved in, in the fall of 2020, the estate had fallen into a state of disrepair, and the author was transfixed with the idea of turning it into the garden of her dreams. The process of recreating it was much more complex and solitary than she had intended as a result of the pandemic.

This is the basis of the book but we also delve into the historical impact gardens have had. We explore the starkly regimented and extravagantly expensive gardens that relied on funding from the slave trade before that was abolished in England in 1833, to the abstract and intensely personal garden of artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman, who created a garden on the beach at Dungeness, after he was diagnosed with AIDS in the 1980s.The author was involved with the fundraising project that saved his home and garden in 2020.

Laing weaves together elements from many areas like art, politics, philosophy, social justice, history, and, of course, gardening. There are so many artists written about in the pages, from garden designers, to painters, poets and authors, that I spent nearly as much time looking up all the art and literature mentioned as I did all of the flower and tree varieties in the text. Delving into the lives of so many others throughout the book was interesting, but at times it felt a bit disjointed, yet half the fun of reading this book was all of the rabbit holes I fell down researching people, places and things that the author mentioned.

I think the ultimate point of this book is how we all yearn for a paradise all of our own, and for many an act of creating a garden is as close as we can come. While there were many quotes that had an impact, this is the one that resonated with me the most, “a garden is a time capsule, as well as a capsule out of time-a space that reminds us of the need for slower ecological rhythms.”