Spring Rain: A wise and life-affirming memoir about how gardens can help us heal

Description

A life-affirming memoir about gardens and what they mean to us from childhood to old age, the joy we can find in ordinary things and our place in nature. In Tales of Spring Rain- A Memoir through Family Gardens, writer and professional gardener, Marc Hamer, considers age and contentment and how we reconcile our sense of ourselves as children with where we have ended up as adults. Alternate chapters follow him as a child and his current life as a 65 year old and what home gardens have meant to both. He weaves practical gardening knowledge through these two meditative memoir strands as he describes the planning and planting of his new small garden near Cardiff.

Marc Hamer was born in the North of England and moved to Wales over thirty years ago. After spending a period homeless, then working on the railway, he returned to education and studied fine art in Manchester and Stoke-on-Trent. He has worked in art galleries, marketing, graphic design and taught creative writing in a prison before becoming a gardener. Both his books, A Life in Nature; or How to Catch a Mole and Seed to Dust have been longlisted for the Wainwright Prize.

A memoir infused with wisdom and a deep love of nature, as well as a how-to book for finding peace of mind * Saga * Marc Hamer knows how to live - simply, sparely, reverently, abundantly. Spring Rain is a tonic for the soul. * Sy Montgomery, author of How to Be A Good Creature * A wonderful book about our relationship with the earth, with other animals and with our own troubled humanity. It has taught me a lot. I feel great love for it -- Max Porter, on How to Catch a Mole: A Life in Nature From a hardscrabble childhood and vagrancy to the life-enhancing rewards of nurturing both 12 acres and an unusual friendship... Hamer meditations take similar forms, starting down to earth, if not actually in it, and ending taking off for the skies one way or another. His prose mimics this, beginning earthy and becoming airy. -- Tim Dee * Guardian, on Seed to Dust * A wholly original, semi-autobiographical book on how to live, how to be calm and content with only a little, in a quietly humming garden * Daily Mail, on Seed to Dust *