Outsiders: A Book of Garden Friends

To launch his new book 'Outsiders' in London, Ronnie Blythe will be in conversation with Christopher Woodward, director of the Garden Museum.

'Outsiders' is Blythe's reflection on a lifetime in gardening. For several decades he has lived at Bottengoms in Suffolk, the farmhouse where the painter and plantsman John Nash created a garden in the 1930s. He will talk about the friends and gardeners who have inspired him: Nash, Cedric Morris - and Beth Chatto, to whom he has dedicated this book. Blythe is also one of the country's greatest writers on place, and he will evoke the changing seasons and sensual delights of the garden and the farm landscape beyond. He is a columnist for Church Times: what is the 'spirit' of a place?

Ronald Blythe is a poet, novelist, historian and critic, who came into the limelight with 'Akenfield' forty years ago.

The talk will be followed by questions and a book signing; it will also be a last chance to see the retrospective of Beth Chatto.