Olivia Laing on the Pleasures and Possibilities of Gardens

For the British writer and cultural critic Olivia Laing, restoring and tending to their backyard garden has prompted complex questions of power, community, and mystery, concepts that they beautifully excavate in their latest book, the fascinating and mind-expanding The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise. Whether in their nonfiction works, including the critically acclaimed The Lonely City (2016), their art and culture writing and criticism (2020’s Funny Weather: ​​Art in an Emergency), or their novels (2018’s Crudo and the forthcoming The Silver Book, out this November), Laing turns an incisive eye to examining what it will take for people—our “temporal selves,” as they put it—to forgo loneliness and isolation, reconnect with nature and one another, and flourish on a planet in crisis.

On this episode, recorded in their apartment at the Barbican in London, Laing explores gardening and writing’s symbiotic relationship; the act of rebelling against a reactive culture by embracing slowness; and the importance of imagining, in vivid detail, the kinds of utopias we could one day very well live in.

Special thanks to our Season 12 presenting sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.

Show notes:

Olivia Laing

[4:35] The Barbican

[7:39] “The Garden Against Time” (2024)

[7:53] Mark Rumary

[9:08] Notcutts

[14:08] “The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone” (2016)

[16:07] Jhumpa Lahiri

[18:41] Piet Oudolf

[19:21] Middleton Place

[19:21] The Sackler family

[22:54] “Modern Nature” (1991)

[24:07] “Paradise Lost” (1667)

[25:40] “The Secret Garden” (1911)

[25:40] “Tom’s Midnight Garden” (1958)

[29:29] “The Garden” (1681)

[30:29] “Everybody: A Book About Freedom” (2021) 

[35:07] “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma” (2014)

[39:57] David Wojnarowicz’s "Magic Box"

[39:57] Ana Mendieta

[40:51] Agnes Martin

[43:08] “Funny Weather: ​​Art in an Emergency” (2020) 

[45:29] “Crudo” (2018) 

[48:20] “A Dance to the Music of Time” (1951–1975) 

[50:29] “The Silver Book” (2025)

[52:48] Federico Fellini

[52:48] Pier Paolo Pasolini

[55:17] “News from Nowhere” (1890)