Reality and Metaphor

From the Garden of Eden to Monet's water lilies at Giverny - Penelope Lively considers the metaphorical garden.

Stephanie Cole begins this intimate meditation on gardening, literature and creativity.

Penelope Lively has always been a keen gardener. This book is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens: the large garden at home in Cairo where she spent most of her childhood, her Oxfordshire garden and the smaller urban garden in the North London home she lives in today.

In this intimate and eloquent work of narrative non-fiction, one of the UK's most cherished and admired writers uses the garden to break open the world for us, and examines how we might encourage our lives to bloom.

Abridged in five parts by Siân Preece

Producer: Eilidh McCreadie.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 2017.