Richard Mabey

We regard gardens as our personal dominions, where we can create whatever worlds we desire. But they are also occupied by myriads of other organisms, all with their own lives to lead. The conflict between these two power bases, Richard Mabey suggests, is a microcosm of what is happening in the larger world.

Rooted in the daily dramas of his own Norfolk garden, Mabey offers a different scenario, where nature becomes an equal partner, a 'gardener' itself. Against a background of disordered seasons he watches his 'accidental' garden reorganising itself. Ants sow cowslip seeds in the parched grass. Moorhens take to nesting in trees. A spectacular self-seeded rose springs up in the gravel. The garden becomes a place of cultural and ecological fusion, and perhaps a metaphor for the troubled planet.

While 'Lark Rise to Candleford', Flora Thompson's much-loved portrait of life in the English countryside, has inspired a hit television series, relatively little is known about the author herself. Here, Richard Mabey retraces her life and her transformation from a post-office clerk who left school at fourteen to a sophisticated professional writer.

When Richard Mabey, Britain's foremost nature writer, fell into a severe depression, the natural world – which since childhood had been a source of joy and inspiration for him – became meaningless. Then, cared for by friends, he left the cosseting woods of the Chiltern hills for the open flatlands of Norfolk and started to write again. He found exhilaration in discovering a whole new landscape and gained fresh insights into our place in nature.