My Life in a Garden - Carl Gorham

When TV comedy writer Carl Gorham moved out of London to the country with his wife and young daughter in 2005, he swopped a small, terraced cottage with a thirty-foot garden for a large, detached house in Norfolk with three acres. An extraordinary fifteen years followed, a roller coaster ride of extraordinary highs and lows – bereavement, recovery, prosperity, unemployment, illness, triumph, struggle and happiness.

My Life in a Garden describes that emotional, dramatic and comic period, a story told through the changing relationship between the author and his garden. How they were enemies, then friends. How he hated it, how he missed it. How he drew strength and support and understanding from it. How at times it seemed as if it was rebelling against him and trying to teach him something about his own stubbornness.

My Life in a Garden is a book for the average, frustrated but dogged gardener; a story about the thousand and one small frustrations that confront an individual trying to master his environment; a tale to be enjoyed by anyone who has ever failed to conquer bind weed, or despaired at the manic growth of bamboo or wondered why all animals seem to do is just poo everywhere.

It’s a book for our times, when we are seeking more than ever to understand our place in the natural world and by extension, our relationship with the rest of humanity.