The Garden in the Clouds by Antony Woodward

The Garden in the Clouds by Antony Woodward

For anyone who's wanted to live the dream but never had the nerve to try. It was a derelict smallholding so high up in the Black Mountains of Wales it was routinely lost in cloud. But to Antony Woodward, Tair-Ffynnon was the most beautiful place in the world. Equally ill-at-ease in town and country after too long in London's ad-land, Woodward bought Tair-Ffynnon because he yearned to reconnect with the countryside he never felt part of as a child. But what excuse could he invent to move there permanently? The solution, he decided, was a garden. In just a year he'd create a garden so special it would be selected for the prestigious Yellow Book - the famous National Gardens Scheme guide to gardens open to the public for charity. It's an unlikely ambition to entertain in this most unlikely of settings, and one that soon sees Woodward driven by odder and odder compulsions - from hauling a 20-tonne railway carriage up the mountain to making hay with hopelessly antiquated machinery. The path to Woodward's elusive sense of belonging turns out to be a rocky and winding one, taking in childhood haunts, children's books and Proustian nostalgia trips. As the family battles gales, mud and Welsh mountain sheep of marble-eyed cunning, not to mention the notoriously fastidious NGS County Organiser, it remains deeply uncertain whether the 'Not Garden' and the 'infinity vegetable patch' (that grows only stones) will ever make the grade...Warm, thought-provoking and brilliantly funny, this is a memoir of a hopeless romantic with a grandly ludicrous ambition - an ambition to which anyone who's ever dropped into a garden centre, or opened a packet of seeds, has already succumbed.

'Told with a side-splitting brilliance that only a truly gifted writer can achieveNot one dull page...up there with Proust as a shimmering example of classic remembrance of things past.' Val Hennessy, Daily Mail '"Carry On" up a mountainside...uplifting...hilarious...In this thoughtful departure from standard "flit-lit", Antony Woodward breaks new ground - literally. What gives this book an edge is the way the author interlaces gardening tales with his family story. Although [it] will appeal to Britain's millions of gardeners, "The Garden in the Clouds" is much more than a horticultural tale. It is testimony to what can be achieved with a dash of imagination and a very British refusal to admit defeat.' Sara Wheeler, Mail on Sunday 'I set out determined to dislike the book, and I completely failed to do so. There can be no higher praise than that ... I read [it] through in one sitting, at first from malice, then for enjoyment.' Byron Rogers, Spectator 'Woodward's tongue-in-cheek account of finding, making and growing his own little patch of heaven is right on the button.' The Times

Antony Woodward is the author of the bestselling "Propellerhead" and co-author of the 2007 Christmas book "The Wrong Kind of Snow". He has written columns for Country Life and Tatler, and before that won many awards as an advertising copywriter. For some reason all his books so far have had something to do with clouds.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780007216512
ISBN 10	0007216513
Title	The Garden in the Clouds
Author	Antony Woodward
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	HarperCollins Publishers
Year published	2010-04-29
Number of pages	304
Prizes	Joint winner of National Trust / Hay Festival Outdoors Books of the Year 2011
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable