From a hardscrabble childhood and vagrancy to the life‑enhancing rewards of nurturing both 12 acres and an unusual friendship
How does your garden grow? Meddling with the soil and what might sprout from it, we hope for a piece of paradise on Earth – in Xanadu, but also in Sidcup and Roath and Lossiemouth. It is necessary to cultivate your garden, Voltaire said, meaning pretty much whatever you’d like. All gardens are plots. They are projects for their gardeners and end up being projections of them too.
Can Marc Hamer’s cultivation of someone else’s garden enlighten us on how to live well today? Green thoughts, Andrew Marvell said, come from any green shade, but Hamer doesn’t stop there.