April 15, 2021
Making good on his vow that he would no longer catch moles for a living (How to Catch a Mole, 2019), Hamer here turns thoughtfully to the complex of plant and animal life he encounters over one calendar year in the 12-acre garden in Wales that he has worked for two decades, full time, for its elegant, wealthy, somewhat detached owner, the widow Miss Cashmere. From pruning hydrangea flowers or the blackened leaves of hellebores past their prime with an old pair of garden shears, to sowing hundreds of cosmos seeds in black plastic pots to be transplanted later, to scraping the mud from his boots and polishing them to a high gloss, Hamer has a canny way of divining the sacred in the quotidian duties of his day job. "I was raised to be nothing," Hamer says candidly, "but I've tried very hard to make being nothing into a good thing." Which might be all that any humble gardener could wish for.
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