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I finished this some time ago but haven't found a way to write meaningfully about its impact on me. I studied John Milton in graduate school and at one time hoped to become a Milton scholar, and Laing's interpretation of Milton's paradise struck such a chord with this gardener. She visits other gardens in Britain, talks about their history and that of those who cared for them, and notes the ways in which gardens aren't always welcoming spaces. Finally, her descriptions of the British garden that she restored in Suffolk, with love, respect, and serendipity, resonated with me as someone who dislikes the uniformity and neat edges of many American gardens. A garden should be a space that is carefully and lovingly tended yet which remains wild and never completely knowable.

This description, from the section on Paradise Lost, sums it up beautifully:
"The garden serves as a kind of lodestar, an experience of nurture and richness that cannot be dismantled and might in future be recreated" (56).

I also loved her descriptions of the "revenants" of the previous gardener/owner, Mark, which might make sudden appearances even when she didn't know the plants existed in the space - beautiful flowers that she hadn't planted or purchased, but which seemingly revived from a previous life.

Above all, I loved the lesson she taught me near the end, when she's talking about the human desire for perfection: "I still wanted to tidy it up, to manage my worries by way of exerting order wherever I could. I'd probably always be a bit like that. But I'd finally understood that a little untidiness was far more fertile than perfect borders. I could see that the skin of dead leaves and sticks under the hazel had its own loveliness, protecting the soil from drying out, nourishing microbial activity, feeding the new green snouts of the day lilies. Death generating life, evidence of our fallen state. Maybe that was better than paradise" (287).

If you love gardens and the history and philosophy behind them, there is so much here that is wise and true. I covered the library copy with post-it notes, then decided I had to buy my own copy and transferred my notes into it. This is a book I will treasure and re-read.