The Garden Against Time

'A garden contains secrets, we all know, 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 . . .'

Winding as a garden path (and similar to how you find this review) and touching upon her own natural experiences, including those from Milton's Paradise Lost, utopian communities such as The Diggers, who had more inclusive aspirations, and of particular interest for those familiar with Charleston, the Middleton family. Although only one chapter, I really got hooked when we looked at the family's reliance on slave labor to create many pleasure gardens from Shrubland Hall in Suffolk to Crowfield and Middleton Place in South Carolina, the latter being, as anyone who has visited knows, a feat in engineering that creates a crown jewel of beauty, luxury, and mastery encircled by a rice plantation. It is estimated it took over one hundred enslaved people a decade to complete. I was so happy to read that the volunteer historians at Middleton have recovered hundreds of names that helped sculpt Middleton Place into the miracle that it is.

Laing's profound musings on the cyclical nature of garden time and her transformative views on death among plants and trees, not as a failure but as an integral part of life, are truly enlightening. Her writing is a rabbit hole I would gladly go down, especially if it leads to a garden.

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