The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise

PRE-ORDER PAPERBACK EDITION FOR MAY 6, 2025

The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing

A Finalist for the 2024 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction & Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing
A #1 Sunday Times Bestseller and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice

From acclaimed author and critic Olivia Laing comes The Garden Against Time, a spellbinding blend of memoir, cultural history, and environmental reflection, inspired by the restoration of her own overgrown garden in the English countryside.

As Laing breathes life into an 18th-century walled garden in Suffolk, she embarks on a deeper exploration: Who gets to live in paradise? And what are the costs—social, ecological, and historical—of creating it?

🌱 Combines nature writing with literary criticism and political insight
🌱 Explores themes of environmental justice, privilege, climate change, and collective imagination
🌱 Draws from John Milton, William Morris, Derek Jarman, and other visionaries

From aristocratic estates built on exploitation to radical communal utopias and wartime sanctuaries, Laing uncovers how gardens have mirrored society's deepest struggles—and its brightest hopes. With exquisite prose and penetrating insight, The Garden Against Time reimagines the garden not as escape, but as a vital site of resistance, creativity, and connection.

Format: Paperback
Genre: Nonfiction, Nature Writing, Cultural Criticism
Audience: Readers of Rebecca Solnit, Robert Macfarlane, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and anyone passionate about gardens, justice, and the environment

✨ The Garden Against Time is a profound meditation on paradise, power, and the future, offering a deeply personal and beautifully written account of what it means to cultivate hope in an age of ecological crisis.