The Garden

The legendary countercultural growers who never stopped changing the world.

The Garden explores the transformative journey of the 1970s countercultural farmers and growers whose radical practices redefined how we grow and eat today.

• Countercultural Roots: Chronicles how a generation influenced by psychedelics, Eastern philosophy, and reactions to Vietnam, the Oil Shocks, and DDT sparked a deep interest in sustainable farming.

• In-depth Exploration of Influences: Covers movements like the organic food revolution, Permaculture, back-to-the-land initiatives, radical ecology, and the impact of thinkers like Rudolph Steiner on 1970s communities.

• Impact on Today’s Agriculture: Through interviews with key figures, The Garden reveals how these visionary growers, often without farming backgrounds, pioneered alternative agriculture and influenced modern sustainable practices.

• A Legacy for the 2020s: Highlights the enduring impact of these farmers, providing inspiration for today’s efforts to reconnect with nature and rethink sustainable living.

Perfect for readers interested in organic farming, environmental history, or the cultural legacy of the 1970s, The Garden tells the untold story of how counterculture reimagined food and our relationship to the earth."Matthew Ingram has preserved and enlarged a corner of history which few have visited or are even aware of."
– Albert Bates

"Matthew Ingram has not only investigated a huge amount of material and talked to many people, he also has an ability to bring it all together in a way that makes sense and is fun to read."
– Charles Dowding, No Dig

"With The Garden, Ingram recuperates an even more transgressive gesture: the counterculture's attempted rethinking of our first culture, agriculture."
– Jay Stevens, author of Storming Heaven

"For those of us searching for sustainable solutions to complex and overlapping problems, this book provides forgotten information and lessons from the past for the dilemmas of the present and the future."
– Ian Wilkinson

"The idea of gardening and farming as acts of revolution and dissent may be unfamiliar to many of us, so it’s great to have Matthew Ingram’s brilliantly readable book celebrating the unexpected ways that individuals, communities, and movements have, simply by growing their own food, found green-fingered ways to stick it to the man.”
– Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, River CottageMatthew Ingram wrote about music at his cult blog, Woebot, which got mentioned in Slate and The Guardian. He penned a column for FACT magazine, and some reviews and articles for The Wire. With fellow blogger Mark Fisher he set up an online forum called Dissensus. Then for a five-year stretch he put out a series of well-received sample-based records as Woebot playing live with his colleagues Ghost Box, and at the ICA and Barbican. Ingram had always followed influences through music and found that those connections started to lead him altogether out of the field. An animator by trade, in 2017 he made a twenty-minute documentary Vitamin C, then, following the same angle, wrote a meaty book Retreat about health and the counterculture. Recently, like many others since the COVID pandemic, he has been interested in gardening. Today he runs the urban gardening blog Sick Veg.