THE GARDEN IN
THE CLOUDS
From Derelict Smallholding to Mountain Paradise
ANTONY WOODWARD
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperPress in 2010
Copyright © Antony Woodward 2010
Antony Woodward asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007216512
Ebook Edition © MAY 2010 ISBN: 9780007351930 Version: 2016-02-19
sine qua non
It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are…than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The link between imagination and place is no trivial matter.
The existential question, ‘Where do I belong?’ is addressed to the imagination. To inhabit a place physically, but to remain unaware of what it means or how it feels, is a deprivation more profound than deafness at a concert or blindness in an art gallery. Humans in this condition belong no where.
EUGENE WALTER, Placeways, 1988
Contents
4 A short detour about wood-chopping
9 The important matter of gates
16 Return of the County Organiser
17 Life, death and hedge-cutting
Hell is all right. The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish.
EVELYN WAUGH, Put Out More Flags, 1942
My first involvement with gardening was aged seven. I am sitting in the back of my mother’s car (Austin 1300 Countryman, cream, wood-effect trim). She’s at the wheel; my father’s in the passenger seat, my older brother Jonathan is in the back with me. We’ve pulled off a country road alongside some iron railings. Through the railings a garden can be seen leading back, via a wide lawn, to a handsome stone-built