WHEN MATTS MAKE BOOKS

This is quite a long-running series, now! 

Not talking about the When Mates Make Books posts, of which there are countless, but specifically When Matts Make Books. 

Matthew Ingram has done a bunch, the prolific bugger that he is: the two blog compendiums The Big Book of Woe and  The Bumper  Book of Woe; the 1970s Lost Rock Albums monograph; his first print book Retreat: How The Culture Invented Wellness; and then The "S" Word,  a collection of writings about spirituality in alternative music. Not forgetting the graphic novel TPM.

And now here's the sequel-not-sequel to Retreat  -  a book about  the nexus of counterculture and horticulture - that comes out in the first week of April:

The Garden: Visionary Growers and Farmers of the Counterculture

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.

Endorsements:

"I admired Retreat. Fluid and intelligent and... I could go on! The new Matt Ingram is even better... 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

"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 Cottage

"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

“Matthew Ingram has done all of us who care about ecological growing and a better world a big favour in this compendious but highly readable history of the gardening counterculture and its personalities. His in-depth, warts-and-all account of these past efforts will be endlessly informative for new generations wrestling with the demons of agricultural change, cultural change and climate change in our present, sobering times.” - Chris Smaje, author of A Small Farm Future

"A fascinating and detailed account of the extraordinary people prepared to counter the march of depletive systems. Matthew Ingram beautifully describes the alarm bell ringing for hippies and far-sighted visionaries prepared to stand up for soils and sustainable practices. The Garden sheds light on the characters and events that have shaped the use of our land. 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, FarmEd

"Matthew Ingram has preserved and enlarged a corner of history which few have visited or are even aware of. He narrates, with the page-turning excitement of a mystery novel and the first-hand accounts of those who witnessed it, a pivot point that had enormous implications. If we get through the converging crises of this decade, our future will be profoundly better as a result of the shift he describes." - Albert Bates, The Farm

Buy it here

There's a book launch  - open to the public, just register at the link - taking place at the Onion Garden in SW1 on Tuesday April 8 6.30pm

I've not had a chance to give it a proper peruse yet but I do know that Matt's gone at the subject with his usual deep-diving passion. 

Here's a mix Matt made of thematically attuned music and here are liner notes for the mix at Sick Veg. As he notes: 

Both “Retreat” and “The Garden” have large discographies in the back. This forms part of my mission to reconnect people’s interest in this music with the ideas to which it was originally conjoined. These ideas were what gave it its power.

Sick Veg is a think tank and grow lab that he's started, whose areas of investigation include  Agriculture, Community, Ecology, Food, Growing, Health, Nutrition, Organic, Practice, Regenerative, Soil, Spirituality, Therapy, the Urban, and Wilderness.

It's also a blog. And crikey, he's been posting there for a while now - images, videos and micro-essays. I had no idea. 

Here's a nice one on the gardens of his childhood. 

There's a YouTube channel as well! Flashback to the days of woebot.tv

As of now there's just the one video up there, about Stewart Home's book Fascist Yoga.