Description
Book Synopsis“A fascinating and intimate portrait of a garden over time … Reading is like being given a rusty key to a beautiful secret garden." - Ben Dark, Author of The Grove
Hidden away behind high stone walls in the centre of London is Lambeth Palace Garden, a 10-acre site that has been continuously cultivated for more than a thousand years.
Join Head Gardener Nick Stewart Smith as he unlocks the gates and invites us to wander through a secret garden where nature is at the heart of everything and where a thoughtful approach to gardening creates a haven for all sorts of native wildlife, allowing nature to flourish in the midst of one of the world’s busiest cities.
The Thousand Year Old Garden is a comforting meditation through the seasons on the act of renewal, hope, gardening, and our place in nature.
Trade Review“It is a fascinating read and best of all, with appetite whetted, the reader can arrange to visit the garden which opens to the public through the National Garden Scheme.”
* Country Life magazine *
“A unique insight into a special place, written with tenderness and passion by a gardener with a real eye for detail”
* Countryside magazine *
Steward Smith professes not to be a writer but his easy, conversational style married with an extraordinary eye for horticultural, historical and even personal detail belies this.
* The Field magazine *
Readers will have their interest piqued by this captivating work, and can visit the garden to see for themselves (though Lambeth Palace itself is closed for refurbishment)
* The Field magazine *
His book is like the contented conversation between two people sharing a bench: ruminative, tangential, full of wisdom.
* Church Times *
A most charming and original story of a gardener and his garden
-- Roy Lancaster
A wonderful grasp of the natural world, and the delicate balance between the cultivated and the wildlings, and the gardener's role in bringing out the best of both
-- Roy Lancaster
