The Thousand Year Old Garden

‘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 *

‘A unique insight into a special place, written with tenderness and passion by a gardener with a real eye for detail.’

* Countryside 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).’

‘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 *

‘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

‘To read this book is to see the world through the eyes of a gardener ... the tender wisdom and lyrical detail will entrance you.’

-- Claire Gilbert, Director of the Westminster Abbey Institute and author of Miles to Go Before I Sleep

‘A fascinating and intimate portrait of a garden over time. Nick's descriptions of the tasks and tribulations of life as Lambeth Palace's head gardener are lovingly described, and better yet, serve as a starting point for anecdotes, stories and speculation drawn from a millennium of green life on the banks of the Thames. Reading is like being given a rusty key to a beautiful secret garden.’

-- Ben Dark, author of The Grove