Description

‘Infused with wisdom and a deep love of nature… a how-to book for finding peace of mind’ Saga

This is a story about the rain, a boy, an angry dog and a gardener, and how some of them find peace and freedom…

In Spring Rain, writer and gardener Marc Hamer shares his path from difficult beginnings to contentment, by way of family gardens.

As a young boy in a violent home, Marc found refuge in his small back garden. Here he kindled a lifelong love of nature and learning by observing the plants and insects in his private kingdom and reading the old encyclopaedias he found in the shed.

Marc has always found the answers to life’s questions in the natural world, whether as a child watching ants, as a young man living rough in the countryside, or as a professional gardener creating places of calm and restoration for others. Now in his sixties, he is finally creating a garden for himself, at his home in Cardiff. In this beautiful and moving memoir, he considers what he has learned, from the spring of youth to his autumn years, and reflects on how we reconcile our childhoods with where we end up.

With line drawings by the author, Spring Rain encourages us back in tune with the natural world and offers both consolation and a guide to a happier life.

PRAISE FOR MARC HAMER:

‘Wisdom…patterned with Hamer’s gifts for observation, compression, and tone’ New Yorker

‘A sublime meditation on life, love, nature and family, woven with the wisdom of age gained through a life well lived’ Lee Schofield, author of Wild Fell

‘Wholly original… on how to live, how to be calm and content with only a little, in a quietly humming garden’ Daily Mail

Publisher Review

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 * Hamer lets us in; we learn what his tools feel like in hands hardened by decades of manual labour... But it is also an unlikely love story * Telegraph, on Seed to Dust * A fascinating, lyrical account of the loneliness and beauty of life on the margins * Times Literary Supplement, on How to Catch a Mole: A Life in Nature *