Welcome to my first book review of 2025! The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing is actually the second book I finished in the new year; the first one left me feeling so “meh” that I decided not to count it for any challenges so I wouldn’t have to write a review.
I actually started The Garden Against Time back on Christmas, but I was listening to the audio with my spouse so we made our way through it as a leisurely pace as we both had projects to work on in the same room at the same time. I don’t think we listened to any audio together for the entire rest of 2024 up to that point, so it was nice to reintroduce into our rotation of things to do, especially as we’re currently in the midst of The Big Dark, when it’s cold and gloomy and going out is a slog.
So let’s talk about the book itself. This book is partially a memoir, and partially a history book, and partially about philosophy, I guess. The inciting incident is that the author and her husband move into an old English house with a neglected garden; as a gardener with a background in herbal medicine, she decides to restore the garden. This inspires her to research the past owner who established the most recent iteration of the garden, and then also muse on gardens in art and literature, the role of gardens in British culture, and the capitalist, classist underpinnings of the grand manors and their vast gardens. Among other things.
The thing about this book is that it meanders and you never really know quite where a chapter is going to go when it starts. Each feels like a sort of individual essay, while still being connected to the central narration of her restoration of the garden and efforts to connect with people who knew the previous gardener, a man who someone close to him described as having been “gay when it wasn’t good to be gay.” Since Laing’s family was basically run out of town when her mother was outed as a lesbian in the 80s, this is something she’s familiar with.
The book moves semi-chronologically through time as the author examines things like Milton’s Paradise Lost and a lot of other books and artworks that I won’t reference here because the problem with reading audiobooks is you don’t necessarily catch names (was that Clare? Clair? Claire? Clere?). I’ll admit here that I was not familiar with a lot of the works Laing mentions, but that didn’t hamper my enjoyment of the book.
There’s a utopian thread throughout the book, gardens as utopias dreamt of, attempted, and lost. For the most part, this book is about gardens as a place of beauty, not as a source of food — flower gardens, not vegetable patches, although her own garden does include fruit trees (I shared her excitement about a medlar tree in her garden, because I love me some weird, rare fruit). There’s a sort of contrast between gardens as a place of exclusion — when they’re part of a vast private estate, perhaps even having displaced farms and villages in their creation — and gardens as a place of refuge for the marginalized.
Because the book covers a large period of time (although it’s mostly limited to England with a jaunt to Italy), it doesn’t really dive deep into any of the subjects discussed. Like a garden, its beauty is in its variety, and probably different things will stand out to different readers.
TWs and CWs: This book discusses homophobia, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, illness, death, and war.
Source and Format: I borrowed the audiobook from the Seattle Public Library.
Reading Challenge Prompts
Brick and Mortar: Read With Friend or Group. As mentioned previously, I listened to this with my spouse, who is also my best friend. I really recommend listening to an audiobook with your partner or family as a nice shared experience! Because you’re listening at the same time, rather than reading asynchronously, it’s really easy to discuss the book.
Reading Challenge Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 0 of 25, no bingos.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 0 of 25, no bingos.
Book Riot: 0 of 25.
Physical TBR: 0 of 12.
Brick & Mortar: 2 of 25, 0 bingos.