The Garden in the Clouds

Antony Woodward (Harper Press, £16.99)

Woodward’s garden is in the clouds because it’s more than 1,000ft up in the Black Mountains (more about that altitude later). Based on childhood memories of his grandmother’s Cotswolds garden, the author neglected his job as an advertising copywriter in London to restore a derelict smallholding so high up that it was routinely lost in cloud.

His excuse for moving his pregnant wife to Tair-Ffynnon was the challenge of creating a garden good enough for the Yellow Book — the National Gardens Scheme guide to gardens open to the public.

Part of his unlikely ambition was that it should be the highest garden in the Welsh section, so the exact altitude began to assume great importance. It’s a tale of disaster, from the first discovery of E-coli in the spring water to the disappearance of the prize vegetable garden after an invasion of Welsh mountain sheep of marble-eyed cunning. He tells the story lyrically and with great humour, even managing to placate his neighbouring farmers and the National Trust after damaging stone walls and a grass common by hauling a 20-tonne railway carriage up the mountain as a ‘garden room’.

The family explain to the intimidating NGS County Organiser their plan for a ‘Not Garden’, developed after visiting other mountain gardens which Woodward felt were fighting their surroundings rather than embracing them: “No different to Middle Eastern gardens which defy the desert.”

But despite the muddy pond and the ‘infinity vegetable patch’ (that grows only stones), we never doubt that the project will be a success in the end. 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.”