o follow the story of a fellow gardener’s dream is deeply satisfying – and it’s strangely pleasurable to witness the sheer hard work needed to bring that dream to life. When a writer shares with you what they are reading and thinking about as they wrench the ivy off a crumbling wall, the story becomes intimate and richer in ways that endure and Katherine Swift’s . At the end of Olivia Laing’s I felt the same tender longing both to read more and to make more of my own garden.
