Overview

A Fenland Garden is the story of the creation of a garden in a complex and fragile English landscape – the Fens of southern Lincolnshire – by a writer who has a very particular relationship with landscape and the soil, thanks to his distinguished career as an archaeologist and discoverer of some of England's earliest field systems. It describes the imagining, planning and building of a garden in an unfamiliar and sometimes hostile place, and the challenges, setbacks and joys these processes entail. This is a narrative of the making of a garden, but it is also about reclaiming a patch of ground for nature and wildlife – of repairing the damage done to a small slice of Fenland landscape by decades of intensive farming. A Fenland Garden will be informed by the empirical wisdom of a practising gardener (and archaeologist) and by his deep understanding of the soil, landscape and weather of the region; Francis's account of the development of the garden will be counterpointed by fascinating nuggets of Fenland lore and history, as well as by vignettes of the plantsman's trials and tribulations as he works an exceptionally demanding plot of land. Above all, A Fenland Garden is the story of bringing something beautiful into being; of embedding a garden in the local landscape; and thereby of deepening and broadening the idea of home. And it will be told in Francis's friendly, engaging and always informative and authoritative voice.

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9781801101608

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Reviews

PRAISE FOR SCENES FROM PREHISTORIC LIFE: 'Decades worth of communicating archaeology on TV and screen and a recent foray into crime fiction writing help make this a highly compelling read' Spectator. 'An evocative foray into the prehistoric past... Pryor recreates [the prehistoric world] with an effortless narrative style' BBC Countryfile Magazine. 'Brings almost impossibly distant times into brilliant focus' Eastern Daily Press Norfolk. 'Pryor's colourful book makes life in Britain BC often sound rather more appealing than the frenetic and anxious 21st century!' Daily Mail. 'Vividly relating what life was like in pre-Roman Britain' * Choice Magazine *

PRAISE FOR SCENES FROM PREHISTORIC LIFE: 'Highly compelling' Spectator, Books of the Year. 'An evocative foray into the prehistoric past' BBC Countryfile Magazine. 'Vividly relating what life was like in pre-Roman Britain' Choice Magazine. 'Makes life in Britain BC often sound rather more appealing than the frenetic and anxious 21st century!' * Daily Mail *

Author Information

Francis Pryor is one of Britain's most distinguished living archaeologists, the excavator of Flag Fen and a sheep farmer. He is the author of seventeen books including The Fens (a Radio 4 Book of the Week), Stonehenge, Flag Fen, Britain BC, Britain AD, The Making of the British Landscape and Scenes from Prehistoric Life.

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