Whimsical, light hearted memoir, that isn’t really that much about gardening... ⭐️⭐️⭐️
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.
I probably need to prelude this review by explaining that I'm not much of a gardener. We recently bought a house with a fairly sizeable garden and so have got into it a bit more, in an effort to turn our blank canvas into something interesting to look at. So I'm a trier, rather than a gardener! The point being that this is not a book I would naturally have picked for myself.
However my good friend and fellow Book club member (who is extremely passionate about gardening) chose this for our Book group and I was really interested to read what I hoped was an accessible gardening book!
Woodward's writing style is intentionally light-hearted and often tongue in cheek. He regularly points fun at his own 'towny' ways in contrast with the 'roughy toughy' proper farmers, contractors etc. around him that help him to make his 'garden' a reality. There were a couple of descriptions of his utter buffoonary that made me snort out loud. He's sort of like a 'Bill Bryson - light' in his observational humour. Not quite as acerbic and witty but in that type of vein.
There were several moments throughout the book where I found myself asking, "but why would ANYONE do that?!" Suffice to say that Woodward is not looking to create your typical garden here. I had never heard of the 'Yellow book' before and actually to me it sounds like a bit of a snooty way to make gardening even more unfathomable and elitist than it already is. I think Woodward's aim was to demistify this and demonstrate that modern day 'gardening' no longer means tidy box hedges, sculpted lawns and precision planted flowerbeds, but means encompassing the landscape and embracing its history, which I can get on board with.
Tair-ffynnon - the fruits of Woodward's labours.
Two things annoyed me about this book. One was that he never explained how he managed to afford to do all the madcap things that he kept doing. It seemed like he must be sitting on a bottomless pit of money somehow? It detracted from the reality of the situation somehow... just made me think of rich London folk who can afford to buy up rural idylls and do weird things with them.
I was going through some other Goodreads review, and this reviewer, Jules, summed it up perfectly for me (and made me laugh to boot)...
Every chapter seemed to follow the formula "I wanted a (tractor/orchard/beehive/wildflower meadow) even though I know nothing about (tractors/orchards/beehives/wildflower meadows) so I spent a ridiculous amount of money on equipment and set about trying to operate/own one in the most impractical way possible, not because of any commitment to sustainablity or for the sake of experimentation but because I WANTED TO DO IT THAT WAY. Unsurprisingly it all turned into a massive clusterfuck, so I paid someone ridiculous amounts of money to fix it."
Jules has got it spot on - almost all the chapters were exactly like that! And that level of consistent ignorant arrogance did grate on me after a while. The other annoyance is that he never really builds on his wife's character. Considering she isn't a 'character' but very much a real person! She's always in the shadows in this book, despite it being obvious that she must have been instrumental in making the whole thing a reality and it sounds like she must be the most long-suffering wife out there.
However, after a slow start I did start to enjoy the whimsical tales of tom foolery and the gentle way that Woodward mocked himself. There were some incredibly touching moments (especially the flashbacks to his childhood memories of moments with his mother) that took me by surprise and I loved the colourful descriptions of the various local characters that helped with the garden. I imagine if I was more of a passionate gardener, or knew more about the trials and tribulations of preparing a garden for the yellow book, I might have liked this even more.