**A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week 2017**
'Rich and unusual, this is a book to treasure' Alex Preston, Observer
Penelope Lively has always been a keen gardener. This book is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens: the large garden at home in Cairo where she spent most of her childhood, her grandmother's garden in a sloping Somerset field, then two successive Oxfordshire gardens of her own, and the smaller urban garden in the North London home she lives in today.
It is also a wise, engaging and far-ranging exploration of gardens in literature, from Paradise Lost to Alice in Wonderland, and of writers and their gardens, from Virginia Woolf to Philip Larkin.
'Rich and unusual, a book to treasure. Few recent gardening books come anywhere close to its style, intelligence and depth. Moves between Lively's own horticultural life and a broad history of gardening' Observer
'Wonderful. A manifesto of horticultural delight' Literary Review
'Beautiful. Perfect for literary garden lovers' Good Housekeeping
'Exquisite and original' Daily Telegraph
'Enchanting. Reading this book is like walking with a wise, humorous guide through a series of garden rooms . . . and finding that vistas suddenly open out, on to history, fashion, politics, reflections on time and the taming of nature' Tablet
'A perfect bedside book. In part it's a memoir of the gardens in Lively's life, starting with the exotic Egyptian garden of her childhood and continuing up to her small present-day garden in a north London square' Sunday Express
'A gentle survey of the garden's place in Western culture, which morphs into a personal meditation on time, memory and a life well lived' i
'Scholarly bedtime reading' The Times, Books of the Year
