The Green Fuse: Essays in Making Sense of Gardens

This fascinating dive into the cultural significance of gardens will feed your mind, spark your imaginations and leave you hungry for more . . . The references throughout are as earthy as they are highfalutin. It is a book that stretches and feeds the mind . . . [Dale] has produced an intricate, magical and deeply satisfying book that I will turn to again and again. -- Lia Leendertz * Gardens Illustrated: Books of the Year 2025 * The work carries the title The Green Fuse referring to a startlingly brilliant and ambiguous Dylan Thomas poem that single-handedly woke up British poetry in the 1930s. It’s an apt title for a brilliant book that explores the paradoxes, the symbols and the strange emptiness that abide in our gardens. Dale takes us in a thematic arc through a series of essays and interludes arguing that the garden is ‘a transitional mediating zone between us and nature’. His essays stand on their own as meditations on differing aspects of the meaning of key garden foundation myths. The writing is scholarly, yet lightened by whimsical and amusing asides . . . It’s all gloriously subjective yet packed with scholarship . . . New types of gardens will always be appearing, urban edgeland gardens, rewilded and climate-change gardens, but this book will remain a source for the ideas and myths that will probably be behind them. I’m certainly looking at my garden with new eyes since reading this book. Dale’s writing is entertaining, wise, scholarly and humorous and this is an essential work for gardeners and garden-makers of every stripe. -- Rod Madocks * Hortus * In The Green Fuse, Peter Dale poses the question of what gardens mean to us, then answers that question in brilliant and engaging ways. Organized around themes such as mazes and labyrinths, garden follies and music in the garden, with a series of remarkable interludes that transport the reader to gardens the author has visited and loved, this book offers a wealth of insight from an experienced gardener and gifted student of the literature of gardens from ancient times to the present day. Richly illustrated from an array of sources, including the author’s own photo archive, this book will delight both practical gardeners and readers curious about the history, culture and aesthetics of the garden. * Judith W. Page, Professor Emerita at the University of Florida and co-editor of Women and the Collaborative Art of Gardens from Antiquity to the Present * Imagine being taken by an old friend on a series of garden walks: an extended and endlessly fascinating conversation about nature, literature, music, art, religion; about history, power and money; about the world as it is and as we would like it to be. Peter Dale brings to the conversation a lifetime of accumulated wisdom and knowledge – it is erudite, witty, earthy, original and exacting. * Laurie Bristow, President of Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge * Pulsating with life and energy, The Green Fuse propels us through glades and mazes, temples, groves and trees. A declaration of love to gardens of every kind, mythical, physical, familiar and far-flung, Peter Dale’s book is eye-opening, thought-provoking and highly informative. The perfect guide to lead you down a garden path. * Fiona Stafford, Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and author of Time and Tide: The Long, Long Life of Landscape *