The Hands of a Gardener

How you learn to be Capable

As you trek to school, surprise yourself
by glimpsing stories swimming downstream
to a lake where they’ll be lost until you fish them out.

Lancelot, your teacher smiles, do you know
where that name comes from?
Although you’re only five, you talk of land and trees,
of woodsmen, of the pride of being a servant,

of what it means to be a Brown. There is another story,
he says, and that’s how you hear of honour
and maybeoneday, until you’re already squinting

into the future, repositioning the rises, falls,
trees and rivers, and when you tell your mother
how you’d like to move the hill in front of the house,
she does not laugh, but looks out of the window

as if she sees the light too. You walk to school
through rain, walk to church through rain.
Rain is needed to keep our lands green, the preacher says,

and you start to think about water.
What if we could control it, you ask your teacher,
what if we could turn the weather on and off.
It’s by scaring your teacher that you learn

control is something you can have if you pretend
you don’t. Power exists only if it’s not questioned.
And stories don’t have to be spoken aloud to be heard.

But God, your teacher says, is the one who holds the Order
and although you agree, if you hold your head
a certain way, rearrange the view,
you know you can rewrite even this story

and that planted deep inside is Beauty too.

Published: 11 June 2026
ISBN: 978-1-905208-58-6
Pages: 66

Lovers of landscape will relish this enthralling collection of poems. Threading ideas through contoured landscape garden vistas, Sarah evaluates what matters to society. Did Brown drain grazing ground to create expansive, sinuous ‘rivers’ merely to boast breathtaking reflections of Nature’s magnificence? Might he have also watered emerging buds of freedom for women – including his wife and daughters? Sarah’s storytelling engages with every touching detail. The Hands of a Gardener helps us fathom how and why her genius muse left such priceless ‘sense of place’. – Steffie Shields MBE, author of Moving Heaven and Earth: Capability Brown’s Gift of Landscape

From the very first poem, with its surprise of sensuality, we know Sarah’s portrait will be an intimate one. In a collection that is as engaging as it is innovative, we are steered by Salway’s insight and reflection, gifting us a deeper understanding of one man, his family, his longings, his life’s work. – Rebecca Goss, Poet

The Hands of a Gardener is a compellingly original lyrical tale of the life of Capability Brown and the spell he cast over fashionable society in the eighteenth century… I recommend a double read through, followed by many dips into favourite poems that will make you gasp, laugh or gaze longingly out at the horizon. – Marian Boswall, author of The Kindest Garden

‘A new look at Capability Brown’ – Kent Life, August 2026

Kent writer Sarah Salway explains why she’s taken inspiration from the life and work of the brilliant garden designer for her latest book of poetry.

Read online