Fencing Paradise

At the Eden Project 'Nature' is not as elsewhere - it is as once an actual garden and an imitation of Nature in a place that was recently derelict and sterile. Sitting in Eden's Biomes, Richard Mabey finds himself pondering the myth of the original garden of Eden - and this leads him to explore the range of stories humans have woven about plants over centuries. In this remarkable journal of visits to Eden during 2004, Mabey transports his reader from Cornwall to the Mediterranean to the Tropics, from Old World to New, from present to personal memory, to new perspectives on our collective artistic and emotional past. Sensuous and evocative, exquisitely written, his new book challenges the reader to look differently at the world, and our place in the landscape.