The Garden in the Clouds: Confessions of a Hopeless Romantic

by Antony Woodward (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2011

  $3.47

  Winner of the National Trust Outdoor Book of the Year 2011 The story of one man's unlikely quest to create out of a mountainous Welsh landscape a garden fit for inclusion in the prestigious Yellow Book - the 'Gardens of England and Wales Open for Charity' guide - in just one year. The son of two passionate gardeners, Antony Woodward was born with chlorophyll running through his veins. Unfortunately, growing up with Latin plant names took its toll, and he was ingrained early on with a profound loathing of both gardens and gardening. Buying Tair-ffynnon, a derelict smallholding 1,300 feet up in the Black Mountains of Wales, changed everything. Hooked by its beauty - when not buried in cloud - Woodward battles to meet the strict requirements of the famous 'Yellow Book' in this unlikely terrain. He finds himself driven by apparently inexplicable compulsions: wood chopping, hauling a 20-tonne railway carriage up a mountain, even beekeeping. Soon, his voyage along the rocky path to his own patch of paradise takes on a more personal tenor as he unearths the deep roots linking gardening and his childhood in this warm, funny and unlikely memoir. Beautifully written and effortlessly engaging, 'The Garden in the Clouds' is a compelling read for anyone who has ever gardened - or ever dreamt of doing so.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2010

  $3.25

  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.

• New

  Paperback
  2011

  $12.30

  Winner of the National Trust Outdoor Book of the Year 2011 The story of one man's unlikely quest to create out of a mountainous Welsh landscape a garden fit for inclusion in the prestigious Yellow Book - the 'Gardens of England and Wales Open for Charity' guide - in just one year. The son of two passionate gardeners, Antony Woodward was born with chlorophyll running through his veins. Unfortunately, growing up with Latin plant names took its toll, and he was ingrained early on with a profound loathing of both gardens and gardening. Buying Tair-ffynnon, a derelict smallholding 1,300 feet up in the Black Mountains of Wales, changed everything. Hooked by its beauty - when not buried in cloud - Woodward battles to meet the strict requirements of the famous 'Yellow Book' in this unlikely terrain. He finds himself driven by apparently inexplicable compulsions: wood chopping, hauling a 20-tonne railway carriage up a mountain, even beekeeping. Soon, his voyage along the rocky path to his own patch of paradise takes on a more personal tenor as he unearths the deep roots linking gardening and his childhood in this warm, funny and unlikely memoir. Beautifully written and effortlessly engaging, 'The Garden in the Clouds' is a compelling read for anyone who has ever gardened - or ever dreamt of doing so.