About the book: 2024 / During a pandemic, British writer and essayist Olivia Lang buys an old house with a garden in Suffolk. The work of restoring flowerbeds, repairing buildings and trimming trees is not only relaxing, but also thought-provoking, encouraging Olivia to explore the gardens' connections to history and culture. Shelters in difficult times, utopias and dreams of Eden, luxury goods - this is not a complete list of what a piece of land with plantings can be. By comparing the free and open gardens of Derek Jarman or John Clare with the strict, oppressive and violent parks of the British aristocracy, Lang tries to find an answer to the main question: what is it, a garden? A paradise for all or a testament to privilege and the result of unequal distribution of resources? Personal or public? There is no clear answer. But there are beautiful plants, restored and open to the public, the garden, once laid out by gardener Mark Rumary, and now serving as a habitat and source of inspiration for Lang herself, who discovers with the delight of a neophyte the joys and sorrows of seasonal and eternal cyclical gardening. PDF A4 format saved publishing layout of the book.