I really bought this book because I love the illustrations by Clare Leighton, having just seen some of her work for the first time a few days before, obviously having been ripped out of books, I was amazed to stumble across the original book in an antiques/bric a brac shop.
What a find, not only are the illustrations lovely, wood block engravings, but the writing is beautiful too. Well, if you like gardens, plants and birds as I do, then this book is a treat.
It was first published in 1935 but my copy is a reprint from 1970 although I think there has been a more recent printing.
It’s an account of the writer’s experiences of making a garden from scratch in meadowland on a slope of the Chiltern Hills. It’s hard chalky ground and colder than any of the gardens in the sheltered villages, but the extra care and nurturing that the plants need just make each surviving plant all the more special for the owners.
Each chapter is one whole month, starting from April and it’s a plethora of plant names as they plan what they are going to have in the garden. A love of gardens and plants goes hand in hand with a love of wildlife as far as I’m concerned so it’s natural that the nesting birds feature almost as much as the plants do. I say ‘they’ because Noel is her companion and it was their garden, the book is dedicated To My Companion within the Four Hedges. Noel Rooke was also her teacher and he taught wood engraving to lots of people who went on to become illustrators.
One thing that is sad though is that details of all the many trees which they planted, especially the elms, make you wonder how many of them are still standing today. People always plant trees for future generations but there seem to be so many tree diseases going around the world now, it’s maybe just as well that they couldn’t look into the future. I wonder if anyone knows exactly where that garden was/is situated. I suppose it would be entirely different now anyway, it’s quite scary the way gardens revert to nature almost the minute they are left to its own devices, no matter how much love and care has been poured into them.
Anyway, I’m going to be looking for some more books by the author as she had a talent for garden writing as well as illustrating. Clare Leighton was the sister of Roland Leighton of Vera Brittain fame, they were supposedly engaged to be married before he was killed in the First World War. Clare Leighton moved to America in the late 1930s and became a citizen in 1945, her ashes are buried in Connecticut.
You can see some of her engravings here.