MODERN NATURE by Derek Jarman, reviewed by Linda Newbery

 

"The New York Times described his film The Garden as 'a peculiar blend of reflectiveness and fury', which could apply equally well to this journal."

Linda Newbery edits Writers Review.

"I have re-discovered my boredom here," Derek Jarman writes, finding at Prospect Cottage, his Dungeness home, an escape from the celebrity he earned through his films and his activism. "All around the traps were set. Traps of notoriety and expectation, of collaboration and commerce, of fame and fortune. At first a welcome trickle, something new. Then a raging flood of repetition, endless questions that eroded and submerged my work, and life itself. But now I have re-discovered boredom, where I can fight 'what next' with nothing."

Well, not exactly nothing. Beginning after Jarman's diagnosis as HIV positive (which gave, at that time, a grim outlook) his 1989-90 journal conveys a time filled with interviews, film projects and visits to London exhibitions and social events, interspersed with the making of his iconic Dungeness garden, constantly planting, propagating and making sculptures from objects found on the shore. The contrasts are stark, moving from the many demands on him in London to the quieter, reflective times at Dungeness. He writes of  "the separation of my two lives ...  work here (in London), sunsets and sunrises there." Always in the background is his sorrow at the death of friends from AIDS and the foreboding of his own, which by the end of the journal seems close, although he lived for another three and a half years, regaining enough health and energy to film Edward II, Wittgenstein and Blue.

Having visited Prospect Cottage and somewhat fallen under the strange spell of Dungeness, its flat horizons, big sky and sparse vegetation, I found that these sections appealed to me most, beautifully evoking that distinctive terrain with the nuclear power station looming in the background. "There are no walls or fences. My garden's boundaries are the horizon," he writes, and of the night sky: "So flat is the Ness that those stars that lie at the horizon touch your very feet and the moon tips the waves with silver ... The nuclear power station is an ocean liner moored in the firmament, ablaze with light: white, yellow, ruby." Both my visits have been in calm July sunshine; the place must be very different in harsh winter weather. Once in this memoir Jarman feared that the cottage roof would be torn off in a gale, while on another occasion a lightning strike at the power station sent him and other residents into a panic, rushing to pack for a hasty evacuation (which, fortunately, wasn't needed).

Derek Jarman is an engaging diarist, full of contradictions and charm. The boldly unconventional film-maker, rebellious activist and one of the first public figures to be open about his HIV diagnosis expresses a wistfulness for pre-decimal coinage and describes himself as too shy to try on clothes in shops; as a student at King's College in London he felt "frightened and confused," convinced that he was the only gay in the world. Almost every writer or artist will identify with the self-doubt he experiences: "All the way back on the train I was plagued with misgivings about The Garden. Looking at the rushes over the last six days, I discovered not one sequence that worked. Glaring faults everywhere ..." At the same time he feels a compulsion to write. "I find it difficult to write each day, but if I don't I'm swamped with guilt. Where does the compunction come from?" So strong was it that even when he temporarily lost his sight while being treated in hospital he dictated his journal entries to his devoted companion Keith Collins (referred to by his nickname HB in the book). 

Those us who were around in the 80s may remember how the AIDS epidemic was viewed by some who saw it as a punishment for homosexuals. "Last week a doctor in the mainstream of research with a leading drug company said that looking for drugs to combat the virus and to prolong the lives of those already infected posed an ethical problem, as keeping them (read me here) alive only exacerbated the situation. Better we should all die quickly. Every day, in many little ways, we are subjected to this terrorism. Our relationships unsanctioned, beyond the law." No wonder there is always anger simmering beneath the surface of Jarman's writing.

As it's a journal, events are understandably related without context, which can sometimes confuse the reader with a great many names, places, and visits whose purpose is unclear. Interspersed with these almost daily records are reminiscences from his childhood, spent in various countries with the RAF father with whom he had a difficult relationship. But it was early in childhood that his fascination with plants and gardening began: at four his parents gave him an illustrated Edwardian book, Beautiful Flowers and How to Grow Them, an unusual gift for so young a child but one which provided a lasting influence: "Flowers spring up and entwine themselves like bindweed along the footpaths of my childhood." The early part of Modern Nature refers constantly to plants in folklore, in herbalism, in classical literature. "If fate had turned out different," he writes, "I am sure I would have been a professional gardener, rather than an enthusiastic amateur."

In between making videos for the Pet Shop Boys, filming The Garden, beginning to research Edward II and frequently staying at his London flat, he spends his time at Prospect Cottage walking the shores of the Ness, collecting and arranging the driftwood, stones and found objects which give his garden its unique character. He reports constantly on the progress of his seedlings and cuttings. Even at his lowest, when friends' deaths are reported with horrible frequency, he finds solace in his plants. "I plant my herbal garden as a panacea, read up on all the aches and pains that plants will cure - and know they are not going to help. The garden as pharmacopeia has failed. Yet there is a thrill in watching the plants spring up that gives me hope."   

The New York Times described his film The Garden as 'a peculiar blend of reflectiveness and fury', which could apply just as well to this journal.

                                                           

Modern Nature is published by Vintage.

Derek Jarman photograph from Wiki Commons. Others by Linda Newbery.

For more of Linda's nature and garden writing choices, see:

Natural Selection: a year in the garden by Dan Pearson

Q&A with garden designer Cleve West on The Garden of Vegan

The Invention of Nature: the adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the lost hero of science by Andrea Wulf

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

The Flow by Amy-Jane Beer

SILENT EARTH by Dave Goulson, reviewed by Linda Newbery

 

"Natural scientists have a difficult balance to find: too much gloom is a deterrent to readers, while an over-rosy picture of hope doesn't reflect reality."

Dave Goulson is Professor of Biology at University of Sussex, specialising in bee ecology. He has published more than 300 scientific articles on the ecology and conservation of bumblebees and other insects. He is the author of Bumblebees: Their Behaviour, Ecology and Conservation; A Sting in the Tale, a popular science book about bumble bees; and other titles including The Garden Jungle and Gardening for Bumblebees. 

He founded the Bumblebee Conservation Trust and is a trustee of Pesticide Action Network and Ambassador for the UK Wildlife Trusts. In 2015 he was ranked at No.8 in BBC Wildlife Magazine’s list of the most influential people in conservation. (Pictured: Dave Goulson speaking at The Big One at Westminster, April 2023. Photograph by LN.)

Linda Newbery edits Writers Review. Her latest publication, This Book is Cruelty Free - Animals and Us, is a guide to compassionate living, looking at our daily choices and how they affect animals and the environment.

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds," wrote the American conservationist Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac. Not so much alone now as Leopold must have felt in 1949; 'climate grief'' and 'eco-anxiety' are now widely-used terms which have their own Wikipedia entry. 

Dave Goulson's book, subtitled Averting the Insect Apocalypse and referencing of course Rachel Carson's seminal 1962 book Silent Spring, won't exactly help sufferers to feel more confidence in the future of wildlife and biodiversity (how could it?) but is nonetheless appealing and informative. I both read and listened - the audio version is engagingly read by Goulson himself. I heard him speak at the Chipping Norton Literary Festival last year, where he related an anecdote that appears early in this book. Asked at short notice to be interviewed for Australian radio (from a men's loo - the quietest place he could find in the pub where he happened to be eating a meal) he was confronted with the opener: "So - insects are disappearing. That's a good thing, isn't it?" 

Unfortunately, that question reflects the view of a great many people who see insects only as bothersome pests, biters and stingers, unwelcome invaders of homes and gardens and spreaders of disease. But, as the biologist E O Wilson has written, "If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos." Even if we're incapable of valuing wild creatures for themselves and not merely for how they can serve us as pollinators, ecosystem managers or food, we're taking huge risks with our careless approach that creates such drastic losses. 

Goulson examines the complex relationships between insects and ecosystems and how drastically these can be affected by human interventions. The chapters on neonicotinoids and glyphosate are particularly shocking, revealing how university-based, peer-reviewed studies were challenged and in the end overpowered by the interests of Big Business.  I was dismayed, too, to learn that flea treatments readily available for dogs and cats (including Frontline, which I've been using for my cats) contain neonicotinoids.With dogs in particular, there's a risk that swimming in rivers can release neonicotinoids into the water, with dire effects on aquatic wildlife. Glyphosate is widely used by councils and elsewhere to suppress weeds (look for those telltale pale orange patches around benches, walls, playgrounds and along footpaths) so even though the World Health Organisation's International Agency for Research on Cancer stated in 2015 that it's 'probably carcinogenic to humans', most of us have it in our bodies. The WHO conclusion was countered by 'safety' evaluations commissioned by Monsanto, the manufacturers, which came to a different conclusion. Who would we rather believe, and who should we believe? "Allowing companies to evaluate the safety of their own chemicals remains standard practice around the world," Goulson writes, "despite the obvious conflict of interest that this creates." He also points out that chemicals are tested in isolation, it being impractical to run controlled experiments on the cocktail of pesticides to which insects and plants are regularly exposed, to investigate what cumulative harm is surely being caused.

I share Dave Goulson's frustration that toxic chemicals are displayed in garden centres and supermarkets everywhere, with names like Bug Clear encouraging consumers to see all insects as dirty, dangerous nuisances and to spray indiscriminately. The campaign group Pesticides Action Network, of which Goulson is a trustee, pressures retailers to stop stocking harmful toxins,  with some success: in the UK, Waitrose and the Co-Op have made recent commitments to remove these products from their shelves; this April, the Royal Horticultural Society has issued a statement that it will no longer refer to slugs, beetles etc as 'pests', and will stop selling insecticides in its shops. The RHS's top garden shows, including Malvern, Gardeners' World Live and the Chelsea Flower Show, have awarded gold medals to wildlife-friendly gardens aimed at promoting biodiversity, and this needs to be more than a passing trend.

Nonetheless, by the time you've read about the threats from neonicotinoids, glyphosates, excessive nitrates from fertiliser and the drastic effects of global warming, you might quite understandably feel that it's all over for the natural world. To offset this bleakness, chapters are interspersed with brief descriptions of particularly endearing or peculiar insects and their life-cycles: the pine processionary moth, the bombardier beetle, the suicide bomber termite. Briefly, Goulson almost takes to fiction as he describes the imagined future life of his son, ekeing out a living from the land and contemplating the folly of previous generations. The final chapters offer practical guidance on how we can do better: with farming, with government, with individual actions such as gardening for pollinators, joining campaigning groups and eating more plant-based food rather than intensively-farmed meat which uses unsustainable amounts of land and resources.

Natural scientists have a difficult balance to find: too much gloom is a deterrent to readers, while an over-rosy picture of hope doesn't reflect reality. Recently Goulson wrote critically in The Guardian about Saving Our Wild Isles, the final episode of  Sir David Attenborough's Wild Isles which, unlike the rest of the series, was available only on BBC i-player. Like me, he'd expected something harder-hitting, aimed at driving home the message that we really are on our last chance to save the natural world. "Environmentalists have been saying 'it is not yet too late' for a long time. In reality it is already too late to avoid much worse damage than we have already seen, and whatever we do now the climate crisis will continue to worsen ... Saving Our Wild Isles is charming, and perhaps it will inspire a few more people to do more for nature, but I was hoping for something different, something that might really wake us up to the dismal state of our country." 

We certainly need that. Silent Earth can't give any guarantee that things will change for the better, but at the very least it's reassuring to spend time in the company of a influential and articulate expert who's doing all he can to urge policymakers to wake up and take notice.

Silent Earth is published by Vintage.

More reviews of nature writing: 

Sightlines by Kathleen Jamie, reviewed by Sue Purkiss

Sixty Harvests Left by Philip Lymbery, reviewed by Linda Newbery

12 Birds to Save your Life: Nature's Lessons in Happiness by Charlie Corbett, reviewed by Linda Sargent

Special feature: Q&A with garden designer Cleve West on THE GARDEN OF VEGAN

"It’s not a subject you can really ignore any more, especially now mainstream media is making the connection between animal agriculture and climate change, not to mention the link with pandemics."

Photograph by Chaz Oldham

Cleve West is a highly-regarded garden designer, with six Chelsea gold medals and two Best Show Garden awards to his credit. Recent projects include his Horatio's Garden for Salisbury Hospital's Spinal Treatment Centre (the first of several, all by leading designers) and work with primary school children, bringing them to his own allotment and helping them to set up gardens at their schools. He is a passionate advocate for animals and a committed vegan, both of which inform his gardening practice. The Garden of Vegan covers a wide range of subjects: personal reflections, sustainable gardening and farming, ecosystems, animal abuse, the nutritional and environmental advantages of a plant-based diet, and even his own recipes. As well as photographic illustrations the book includes poignant portraits drawn by Cleve's wife, artist and printmaker Christine Eatwell, of animals photographed as they await slaughter.

Cleve West answers questions from Linda Newbery.

Find out more about Cleve's work and campaigns from his website, and on social media: Twitter @clevewest Facebook Cleve West and Instagram cleve_west

LN: You've been well known for years as a top garden designer. Now it seems from your social media activity that your animal advocacy and championing of the vegan lifestyle have become at least as important as your design career, if not more so. What triggered that change?

Cleve West: It was the shock of seeing the horrors of animal agriculture and the damage it’s doing to our health and the environment. Not speaking out about it felt like complicity. I spent a lot of time wondering whether I should use different social media platforms to keep my advocacy for animals separate from work, but that felt like an apologist approach. I may have lost followers/clients as a result but I’m only showing and speaking about the realities of animal agriculture and the threat it poses to life on earth. If people can’t handle the truth they can look away or keep scrolling until they find a photo of a pretty flower! What’s alarming is that, given the current circumstances, there is still reluctance to engage with these issues that are making the future increasingly uncertain for our children.

LN: In the introduction to your book you say that you'd begun to question the importance of your design work, in spite of (or because of?) having achieved such outstanding success. But you write movingly about the Horatio's Garden you designed at Salisbury, and since then you've brought school groups to your allotment and worked on gardens projects for their schools - in all of which plants and gardening contribute to the wellbeing of others. Does this mark a change in your work ethic?

Horatio's Garden

CW: Yes. Before I was vegan, while I understood the therapeutic value of gardens, I’d often consider my worth as a garden designer in terms of what I actually contribute to the world. Being vegan has accentuated that and made me question Thomas Church’s maxim that “gardens are for people”. I realise it’s impossible not to harm things unknowingly as we build our homes and gardens, but now that we understand more about the many other life-forms that share the garden with us (and that arguably they're more important in keeping things ticking over) it seems fair that they should be given consideration when planning our interventions. Horatio’s Garden and the Bee Kind Garden for Christ Church School have helped me understand how we can garden for both humans and non-human animals alike, but the emphasis is still from an anthropocentric point of view. Natural gardens or gardening for wildlife is still quite challenging as an aesthetic. I don’t have all the answers, so I suppose the short answer is that I’m still learning.

LN: Do you think the horticultural industry has been slow to embrace sustainability? What changes do you applaud, and what changes in attitude are still needed?

CW: Yes, I had a conversation about sustainability with Geoff Hamilton in 1994 when I built my first show garden. It’s disappointing in that almost twenty five years later people are still using herbicides, pesticides, slug pellets and peat products in their gardens. Revelations by Dave Goulson in his brilliant book The Garden Jungle about how chemicals in the plants we buy from nurseries can harm bees are really alarming.

As with transitioning to a plant-based lifestyle, convenience seems to play a major role in stopping consumers from making ethical choices. Profit is also a big factor for nurseries, so I hope that the current crisis will focus the industry on what they can do to create more sustainable products and practices.

LN: I love your book but need little persuading, as I'm already vegan and a veganic gardener (though I hadn't heard that term before!) Are you hoping to reach out more widely - to people who haven't considered veganism and in particular how it might relate to their gardening?

CW: Indeed, the intention is to inspire gardeners to adopt a plant-based lifestyle. When I first started speaking out for animals I used a lot of graphic footage to raise awareness about the cruelty involved in animal agriculture. Naturally, most people looked the other way, so it was a revelation to me when I realised that vegans and gardeners share the same USP… plants. As gardeners we all love plants. We love growing them and eating them, so if a plant-based diet can help us mitigate climate change, reduce the chances of future pandemics (I’m kicking myself for not including that in the book!), feed an ever growing population and relieve the pressure on the NHS by keeping us healthy, it’s a win-win situation on so many levels.

BUPA Garden, Chelsea Flower Show 2008: Gold Medal and BBC People's Choice Award

LN: It's clear on your website that you want your ethos to be evident in every garden you design. Have you ever had to curtail a project because the client wanted something you felt unable to deliver on principle, e.g. because it would destroy a habitat?

CW: To be honest I’m still finding my feet on that one. One or two current projects involve a fair amount of earth-moving which is something I’m feeling increasingly uncomfortable about these days. I’m encouraged by conversations I’ve had with prospective new clients about things like wildlife and biodiversity. People are beginning to acknowledge the importance of the environment and to be interested in enhancing the natural world in their own small way. What I keep reminding myself is that if I walk away from a job, then someone else is going to do it and that person may not be as sensitive to a site nor make any effort in mitigating disturbance to habitats, etc.

LN:  In a recent interview you said that the fire has gone out of you as regards making show gardens. But are you being offered chances either to create show gardens or to take on longer-lasting projects to demonstrate your principles? You're probably in a unique position to influence others by showing the way.

CW: There’s a vegan-inspired show garden on the back-burner (a collaboration with Darryl Moore and Heywood-Condie) but it needs a suitable sponsor. I’d prefer to concentrate on real gardens for now and will be happy to work with clients who appreciate the bigger picture, or indeed to encourage those who haven’t considered the wider environment before but are willing to learn. I’m sure there will be others joining the dots now - it’s going to be interesting to see how the Covid-19 experience will inspire the next generation of designers at future shows.

LN: Anyone involved in animal activism will inevitably come across harrowing evidence, much of it photographic, of gut-wrenching cruelty and abuse. How do you strike a balance between keeping yourself motivated on the one hand, and on the other, becoming so thoroughly sickened at the scale of brutality that campaigning seems hopeless?

CW: Yes, the reality and scale of the oppression, violence and exploitation is beyond anything we can imagine - if you dwell on it too much it can break you. I limit the amount I look at these days but use it to keep the fire stoked and help me remember that while using levers such as the environment and health to persuade people to go vegan, the main reason is to put an end to the unnecessary harm and suffering we cause to sentient beings.

LN: How is your campaigning zeal seen by your garden design peers? Are you seen as extremist / eccentric, or are they willing to listen to you and consider veganic principles in their own work?

CW: That’s a good question. To begin with, when the shock of watching films like Earthlings, Cowspiracy, Forks Over Knives made me try and turn the world vegan in a day, I think many of them thought I’d lost the plot and they were right, I had. A couple of people have called me an extremist but interestingly won’t watch films like Earthlings, Dominion or Land of Hope and Glory. If they did I’m sure they’d understand the true meaning of the word ‘extreme’. It’s difficult being patient when so many animals are slaughtered every second of each day, but over the years I’ve had enough encouraging messages from designers and gardeners (who have either gone vegan or are getting close to it) to feel encouraged, and have stood shoulder to shoulder with a couple at vigils and protests which is great. Of course, there are still quite a few who find the whole subject too challenging or inconvenient to take on board, but it’s not a subject you can really ignore any more, especially now mainstream media is making the connection between animal agriculture and climate change, not to mention the link with pandemics.

LN:  A question about the writing of your book. It's so wide-ranging, comprehensive and fully-referenced that I wonder how on earth you combined work on this with your design business. Did you set aside dedicated time to write, or were you fitting it around your other work?

CW: My assistant at the time, Ruth Lewis, did a great job keeping the design work on track so I could concentrate on writing. I tried to keep it personal to make it more digestible and to help readers relate to it. The fact-checking was a real pain and frustrating (my editor at Pimpernel Press, Nancy Martin, was brilliant at double-checking and keeping me on my toes) because I knew it would be out of date by the time the book was published with new studies and reports (not to mention pandemics!) coming to light. Some people might still look for loopholes or argue with the facts and figures, but even if they were only half-true they should still be more than enough to persuade anyone with an open mind to consider a vegan lifestyle.

LN: Finally, what gives you the most hope that attitudes towards animals will change?

CW: I’m not known for my optimism as far as the human race is concerned but I was buoyed by the heartening messages I received when the book was launched. That said, it’s a challenging read so it’s not going to fly off the shelves! I think economics, the threat of climate change and future (potentially far worse) pandemics will be the main drivers to a substantial shift to a plant-based world but, in the meantime, I’ll keep encouraging gardeners to join this important movement - plants might just be able to save us from ourselves.

LN: Thank you so much for this interview, Cleve. I hope your book will fly off the shelves, and give gardeners and others new insights and inspiration.

Killed at Newman's Abbatoir on 13 December 2017: drawing by Christine Eatwell

The Garden of Vegan is published by Pimpernel Press.

Also: find out more about Horatio's Gardens here, and see a short film about the Salisbury Hospital one (with Cleve talking about it) here:

NATURAL SELECTION: A YEAR IN THE GARDEN by Dan Pearson, reviewed by Linda Newbery

"Dan Pearson credits both Christopher Lloyd and Vita Sackville-West as writing mentors, and yes, his own writing gives the sensuous pleasure he admires in theirs. This is a book to relish for the eloquence of its description as much as for the information it imparts."

Speaking at the Oxford Literary Festival in March, Dan Pearson said that his love of writing developed alongside his passion for gardening from an early age, and he illustrated his talk with some of the lists and stories, journals and notebooks he has kept from childhood. Now one of the most influential garden designers working today – his Chatsworth garden at Chelsea in 2015 won both a gold medal and Best in Show, and his design studio has worked on prestigious projects in Japan and Italy and many others including Maggie’s Centre in London and Lowther Castle – he somehow still makes time for writing alongside the many other demands of a busy career.

Until 2015 he wrote weekly pieces for the Observer magazine (where his page was the first I’d turn to, and still miss …) and his new book, Natural Selection, brings many of those articles together as a year-book companion, following the seasons’ progress. But while progressing through the months we move back and forth in time and through many different settings – his own plots in Peckham and now Somerset; his childhood home; deserts, forests and coasts he has studied on his travels; a visit to George Harrison's extraordinary Friar Park garden - while other sections compare the merits of various roses or magnolias or planting combinations, or simply look at the joys of a particular season or day: “The garden is a sanctuary of sorts and one that allows me to combine mindfulness with the purely physical.” Although there's a fair bit of dirt-under-the-fingernails detail on semi-ripe cuttings, seed harvesting and growing salads for succession, this isn’t a how-to gardening book so much as an appreciation of plants, landscapes, seasons and the effects of light and shade.

Dan Pearson credits both Christopher Lloyd and Vita Sackville-West as his writing mentors, and yes, his own writing gives the sensuous pleasure he admires in theirs. This is a book to relish for the eloquence of its description as much as for the information it imparts. Here’s a camellia he saw in Japan: “… There it was in the gloom, a white, autumn-blooming Camellia sasanqua. Its delicate branches had formed a perfect dome four metres high and swept down to knee height to fan out as if it was doing a curtsy. Each leaf, a slim twist of the darkest, most lustrous green, reflected what light there was left in the afternoon, and along its branches was the peppering of flower. Pale and pure glistening white, the five-petalled blooms flared informally away from a golden boss of stamens.” Walking in Greece, he came across “a bowl-shaped valley giving way to oaks with juniper clinging to the cliff faces. The dark shadows at their base were lit by a surf of moon daisies, and a hush descended for a moment as my ears adjusted from the waves to a roar of bees feeding in a sea of Lavendula stoechas.” At home, on writing days, he brings a posy of flowers indoors, to notice “the way a flower is put together and how it sits on the stem … You can witness the passage of bud from opening to demise, see how the colour is infused and then diluted, or in some cases intensified by ageing. The seed and the berries and even the skeletons, come the winter, are of just as much interest.”

The hallmarks of Dan Pearson’s designs are the subtlety of his response to place and atmosphere and the inspiration he takes from wild landscapes. Beth Chatto was an early influence, from whom he began to learn the art of “achieving a delicate balance between steering nature and being part of it rather than trying to dominate,” and “gardening with wild plants rather than overworked cultivars”. He knows the importance of quiet moments of appreciation, whether in exotic locations or in his own garden. Of his planting for Maggie's Centre for cancer care and a friendship that developed with one of the patients, he writes: "I have always instinctively known that intimacy, sensuality and sanctuary in a garden are key to creating a sense of wellbeing, but it has been made so much more vivid seeing it through the eyes of someone who is seizing life with a new intensity."

Natural Selection is a beautiful object to hold, printed in dark green rather than black ink and with endpapers, cover design and an illustration for each month by Clare Melinsky. It’s a book to read twice at least: first to devour the lot in one go, as I’ve just done; then returning to each section in its own month. And I recommend keeping a plant encyclopaedia or i-phone handy as you read, as you’re sure to want to look up some of the plants and gardens mentioned and add to your wish-list.

To keep in touch with Dan Pearson’s journal, and the development of the garden at Hillside, his Somerset home, follow his regular blog and newsletter, Dig Delve. There's also an interview there with artist Clare Melinsky.

Natural Selection is published by Guardian Books / Faber.