Book pre-order: A Garden is not a Painting

Details

A Garden Is Not a Painting is a philosophical gardening memoir by Carolyn Robinson, who over three decades created two significant gardens on the New England Tablelands – Glenrock, an eight-acre garden built from bare paddock, and later Eagles Bluff, where she began again with the rare advantage of hindsight. Working across southern Queensland and northern New South Wales, she has spent a lifetime observing what a garden actually asks of the person who makes it.

The book takes its title from the realisation at its centre: a garden is not a painting to hang on a wall. It is alive, full of life and ever-changing – lived with, dynamic, adapted and reshaped over time. This is a book full of practical wisdom, but it is not only a how-to guide. It is a book about the ethos beneath the decisions: how to read a place before planting it, how to garden for drought without surrendering beauty, why the gardens that move us are almost always the ones shaped by a single pair of hands.

A beautifully made hardback, with photography throughout by Brigid Arnott.

This is a pre-order. The book launches in March 2027 at the Australian Landscape Conference and will be posted to you after launch. Payment is taken now to secure your copy.

Please make sure the postal address you give at checkout is where you’d like the book sent.

Postage charged at checkout. Prefer free postage? The Garden Entry + Book Pre-order bundle includes it.