Green Willow’s Secret by the Scottish author Eileen Dunlop was published in 1993. This book is meant for YA readers but is enjoyable to people of all ages I’m sure.
Kit had lived in Edinburgh with her parents and older sister, but a family tragedy has led to the father travelling to Australia and Kit and her mother moving to Maddimoss, a rural area. Kit isn’t settling in well and when her teacher tells the class about a Japanese exhibition she has been to the other pupils tell her that there’s a Japanese garden where Kit lives. Kit knows nothing about it but later when she gets home she does some exploring and discovers the remains of a very neglected but wonderful Japanese garden.
There’s a photograph of the garden in the house they are living in, as it was in its heyday, and there are people in the photo, including a Japanese man in traditional dress, but strangely he appears and disappears in the photo. There’s something slightly spooky about the garden. When Kit meets Daniel who is also not a local they decide to work on the garden together.
There’s a lot more to this book, but I don’t want to say much more other than that I enjoyed it. As it happens there is a Japanese Garden at Cowden, not that far from where we live and a hop and a skip from where Eileen Dunlop lived in the wee town of Dollar. I’m sure that is where she got the idea from because the garden at Cowden fell into neglect and was vandalised in the 1960s. As in the book the original Japanese gardener is buried in the local churchyard. You can read the garden’s history and see more photos here. It has fairly recently been brought back to perfection and is open to the public, obviously it’s a business too nowadays so you have to pay an entrance fee. It’s quite a few years since we visited, (you can see my blogposts on our visits here) I seem to remember that there was a small play area for youngsters who may not be so enamoured of the beautiful surroundings.
Thank you for the links to the Japanese Garden at Cowden. I spent an enjoyable half-hour tracking down the history of the garden and the people who designed, maintained, and restored it. The images on the Garden’s website are striking, but there’s something about the layout and the flora that isn’t quite right. My guess is that the designers had to make do with native trees, bushes, and shrubs, and there’s not much you can do about the backdrop of Scottish hills.
Janusz,
I think the problem is that a lot of the mature trees were in the original 1903 design, I’m fairly sure they would have been Japanese natives, as are all the newer trees and shrubs, plants from Japan and China do well in our climate, but there will be a mismatch in the scale until the new ones begin to mature. There are a lot of Japanese maples, cherry trees, azaleas and Japanese evergreens, but as you say, that round green hill backdrop doesn’t fit in well. The new garden was planned and refurbished by the Japanese man who wins a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show every year, so it should be authentic.
Oh, I love all your pictures of the Japanese Garden. I guess that was before I started reading your blog. How fun to think of Eileen Dunlop standing in Cowden where you were! Or even at the same time – she’s still alive, I think; same age as my mother, who is in good shape.
Supposedly I own this book but I don’t remember the plot at all. I suspect it was a gift to one of my younger sisters and I scooped it up when my parents sold the house. It must be in the attic. If I could just win the lottery and quit my job, I could organize everything in this house. But maybe I’d do all the traveling I haven’t had time for instead . . .
Constance,
I was sure I had seen her obituary recently but I can’t find it, so I must have been wrong about that, but I remember that I read she had been a teacher at Dollar Academy, or am I getting her completely confused with another Scottish author?! I don’t work but every day goes past and I haven’t done the things I said I would do the day before, and I have no excuses at all.
Someone on my school story list said in January that she is still alive. Apparently, there is a good interview with her in Folly Magazine but I have never subscribed.
Forgot to mention that in that same discussion, it was revealed that Eileen Dunlop was Josephine Kamm’s daughter-in-law!