The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise
A joyful expansion on the meaning of the subject it undertakes ... Laing is wonderfully free in her associations and does not cater to conventional expectations. Any of the stories in The Garden Against Time could inspire a full-length book, but it’s one of Laing’s talents to corral them in one place without alienating the reader.
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She gathers an abundant, unruly bouquet of floral nomenclature, either of her own making or gleaned from fellow writers who have wrung inspiration from the lives of plants ... This isn’t a historical survey of gardening, much less a practical guide, so much as an inquiry into the idea of the garden — its history and poetics, its relationship to sex, imagination and power.
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Extended discussions of war, disease, and climate crisis do nothing to dampen the tone of the book, which proceeds like a pleasant garden-party conversation. Laing is a welcoming but unobtrusive hostess, handling her dark materials with social grace ... She embeds others’ words in her own sentences as carefully as I imagine she transplants seedlings, adapting them to their new conditions without compromising their integrity ... There are sections that do, however, feel like a slog, waterlogged by dutiful moralizing.
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