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Inside the Secret Garden at Lambeth Palace
“A fascinating and intimate portrait of a garden over time … Reading is like being given a rusty key to a beautiful secret garden." - Ben Dark, Author of The Grove
Hidden away behind high stone walls in the centre of London is Lambeth Palace Garden, a 10-acre site that has been continuously cultivated for more than a thousand years.
Join Head Gardener Nick Stewart Smith as he unlocks the gates and invites us to wander through a secret garden where nature is at the heart of everything and where a thoughtful approach to gardening creates a haven for all sorts of native wildlife, allowing nature to flourish in the midst of one of the world’s busiest cities.
The Thousand Year Old Garden is a comforting meditation through the seasons on the act of renewal, hope, gardening, and our place in nature.
“A unique insight into a special place, written with tenderness and passion by a gardener with a real eye for detail”
Countryside magazine,
Steward Smith professes not to be a writer but his easy, conversational style married with an extraordinary eye for horticultural, historical and even personal detail belies this.
The Field magazine,
Readers will have their interest piqued by this captivating work, and can visit the garden to see for themselves (though Lambeth Palace itself is closed for refurbishment)
The Field magazine,
His book is like the contented conversation between two people sharing a bench: ruminative, tangential, full of wisdom.
Church Times,
A most charming and original story of a gardener and his garden
Roy Lancaster,
A wonderful grasp of the natural world, and the delicate balance between the cultivated and the wildlings, and the gardener's role in bringing out the best of both
Roy Lancaster,
“It is a fascinating read and best of all, with appetite whetted, the reader can arrange to visit the garden which opens to the public through the National Garden Scheme.”
Country Life magazine,
5th June, 2023 in Local & Family History, Natural World
Nick Stewart Smith author of The Thousand Year Old Garden unlocks the gates and invites us to wander through a beautiful park‚ situated between the urban bustle of Peckham and the busy streets of Camberwell in London. Early every Saturday morning, there is organised run…
26th July, 2019 in History, Natural World, Society & Culture
Although it is often assumed that lawns came into being in medieval times, their origins are actually far earlier, although whether the ‘flowery medes’ apparently favoured by the Persians and Mughals really constituted a grass lawn is most doubtful. What is certain is that the fi…
