The Garden in the Clouds: From Derelict Smallholding to Mountain Paradise. Antony Woodward

      THE GARDEN IN

      THE CLOUDS

       From Derelict Smallholding to Mountain Paradise

      ANTONY WOODWARD

       Copyright

      William Collins

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      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

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

      Source ISBN: 9780007216512

      Ebook Edition © MAY 2010 ISBN: 9780007351930 Version: 2016-02-19

       To Vez

       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

       Cover Page

       Title Page

Copyright

To Vez

Prologue

1 Walking country

2 Tair-Ffynnon

3 The Yellow Book

4 A short detour about wood-chopping

5 Winter on the hill

6 The Not Garden

       7 The perfect country room

       8 The County Organiser

       9 The important matter of gates

       10 The orchard

       11 Bees

       12 How not to mow a meadow

       13 The Accident

       14 The pond

       15 Stoning

       16 Return of the County Organiser

       17 Life, death and hedge-cutting

       18 The house

       19 ‘Garden Open Today’

       Epilogue

       Keep Reading

       Acknowledgements

       The National Gardens Scheme

       About the Author

       About the Publisher

       Prologue

      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