Spring Rain

A wise and life-affirming memoir about the significance of gardens from childhood to old age, and how nature can help us heal. In Spring Rain writer and gardener, Marc Hamer, now in his sixties, shares his path to contentment from difficult beginnings. Through the prism of family gardens, he reflects on how we reconcile our childhoods with where we end up as adults. Growing up in a violent home, as a young boy Marc found solace and safety in his small back garden. In particular, in its shed, where he stumbled across an incomplete set of old encylopaedias. These books, and observing the plants and insects in his private kingdom, began his lifelong love of learning and openness to the world. Throughout his journey from youth to age, which included a period living homeless in the countryside, Marc has found the answers to life’s questions in the nature around him. While building his ‘final’ garden at his home in Cardiff, he looks back at what he has learned along the way, from his days as a child watching ants, to his later life as a professional gardener creating places of calm and restoration for others. This beautiful, moving memoir, with line drawings by the author, encourages us back in tune with the natural world and offers both consolation and a guide to a happier life. PRAISE FOR MARC HAMER: ‘This is a wonderful book about our relationship with the earth, with other animals and with our own troubled humanity. It has taught me a lot. I feel great love for it.’ Max Porter ‘A fascinating, lyrical account of the loneliness and beauty of life on the margins, a memoir of vagrancy’ Times Literary Supplement ‘Hamer lets us in; we learn what his tools feel like in hands hardened by decades of manual labour…But it is also an unlikely love story.’ Telegraph ‘A wholly original, semi-autobiographical book on how to live, how to be calm and content with only a little, in a quietly humming garden’ Daily Mail