IN PERSON: The Garden Against Time

Please join us for The More-Than-Human Book Club’s monthly discussion group.

For July we will be reading The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing.

We will meet in person in the Barbican library from 2.15pm and the discussion will run from 2.30-3.30pm with an option of continuing more informal discussions over tea in the cafe afterwards.

On the day, after introductions, we will go around the group and each share our thoughts about the poems in turn before engaging in a gently-guided group discussion.

Please don’t feel any pressure to finish the book before attending, and please know you’re very welcome to attend however little you’ve had a chance to read.

We’re looking forward to seeing you there.

More about the book:

‘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 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.

https://www.olivialaing.com/the-garden-against-time

‘Could we make the world a better place? How exquisite to hold a book that makes me believe so.’ Financial Times

‘The Garden Against Time, despite its darker subtexts, feels like a recuperative work.’ Irish 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 beautiful book that explores the garden as a political site - of sancitified and at times selfish seclusion in an unequal world - but also as a place of healing, hope, creativity and renewal.’ Guardian

‘A vital read in the age of climate crisis.’ Elle

‘A broad-leafed prose-poem about 'the constant cycle of decay, regeneration and return in which we all play a part'. This is a beguiling book.’ Country Life

‘Gorgeous, enchantingly constructed non-fiction about the power and beauty of gardens.’ Harpers Bazaar

‘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

‘No one writes with more energy and ecstasy than Olivia Laing. This book is what we need right now: paradise, regained.’ Philip Hoare, RisingTideFallingStar

More about The Book Club:

The More-Than-Human Book Club is a group that meets monthly both at The Barbican Library and elsewhere to talk about more-than-human experiences, wildness and nature writing in its broadest sense. Each month we choose a different book, film, artwork, poem or essay to discuss, including a mix of classic and contemporary works. We hope the space will provide a place of sanctuary, exploration and discovery, and be a place where community and connections are forged and inspiration is found. If you are interested in nature, literature, wildness, ecology, science, art and/or ideas, please do join us.

Its co-founders, hosts and curators are:

Olivia “Lilly” Edward. Lilly is a writer who specialises in nature and the environment. For the last two years she has been running nature writing events and panel discussions at the Royal Geographical Society, and she continues to review and write regularly for their magazine. She volunteers as a ranger in Richmond Park and is endlessly enthralled by the natural world and its web of ecological relationships.

Rhona Eve Clews. Rhona is an Artist, Healer and Ecologist. Rhona has a background in Psychology and Photography, holds an MFA in Fine Art from Slade School of Fine Art and teaches independently and for Slade Summer School. Drawing upon her past of growing up a hippie she works across writing, photography, performance and filmmaking, aiming to expand them into somatic, eco-feminist practices and contribute to wider ecological ethics of care.

Any questions please email us at [email protected]

Host or Publisher Olivia Edward & Rhona Eve Clews