Garden In The Clouds

‘Garden in the Clouds’ is the new book by Antony Woodward. The book is a warm, witty memoir of one man’s escape from the city in an unlikely quest to create out of a mountainous Welsh landscape a garden fit for inclusion in the prestigious Yellow Book – in just one year.

It was a derelict smallholding so high up in the Black Mountains of Wales it was routinely lost in cloud. But to Antony, 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 that could be included in The Yellow Book. 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.

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.

Read-on to see how you can buy a copy of ‘Garden in the Clouds’ and in doing with the generosity of Harper Press help the NGS raise money for the charities that it supports.    

This is what the critics have said of ‘Garden in the Clouds:

Told with a side-splitting brilliance that only a truly gifted writer can achieve.  There is not one dull page … up there with Proust as a shimmering example of classic remembrance of things past.’  Daily Mail.

‘Very few people are brave enough to live a realisable dream and then to write about it in such a way that readers feel deep laughter and admiration.  Antony Woodward has done just that … The energetic tale of an innocent abroad, told with the adman’s clarity and the cheerfulness of Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence.’ Rory Knight Bruce, Country Life.

‘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, The Spectator.

‘The funniest book I have read this year; and touchingly brave.  One might call it a ‘How-Not-To Book’.  How not to create a garden, or an orchard, at 1400 feet;  a pond; a stone wall; keep the Welsh Sheep out; and make honey.  The very best of self-deprecating British humour.’ Alistair Horne.

‘Woodward’s tongue-in-cheek account of finding, making and growing his own little patch of heaven is right on the button.’  The Times.
         
‘A tale for all gardeners battling seemingly insuperable odds, the lesson being: “The trick of garden making, as of life, is not to moan about what you haven’t got, but to make the most of what you have.”  Oxford Times.

NGS Book Offer

For every copy of ‘Garden in the Clouds’ you buy Harper Press will donate £5 to the National Gardens Scheme. To take advantage of this offer and to help raise money for the NGS simply call 0870 787 1724 and quote promotion code 501D when you place your order.

Each book is priced at £16.99. Postage and packing is free on all UK orders.

Please allow 21 days for delivery.