A Wood of One's Own

by Ruth Pavey

A SUNDAY TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

'Delightful... Pavey writes with warmth and spirit, and brings this space to life.' Penelope Lively

'Captivating and grounded... If this book was not as much a pleasure to write as it is to read, I'll eat my hat and gardening glove.' Observer

After years spent living amid the thrum of London, Ruth Pavey yearned to reconnect with the British countryside and she endeavoured to realise her long-held dream of planting a wood.

Touring to the West Country in the late 1990s, Pavey found herself in the Somerset Levels. On seeing this expanse of reclaimed land under its wide, soft skies she was struck by its beauty and set-out to plant a wood, tree by tree. She bought four acres, and over the years transformed them into a haven where woodland plants and creatures could flourish an emblem of enduring life in a changeable world.

A Wood of One's Own is the story of how she grew to understand and then shape this derelict land into an enduring legacy a verdant landscape rich with wildlife. Interwoven with Pavey's candid descriptions of the practical challenges she faced are forays into the Levels' local history, as well as thoughtful portraits of its inhabitants both past and present.

Accompanied throughout by the author's evocative hand-drawn illustrations, A Wood of One's Own is a lyrical, beguiling and inspiring story; a potent reminder of nature's delicate balance, and its comforting and abiding presence.

'Draws together childhood memories, local history... and literary penumbra.' Sunday Telegraph

'Pavey's love for her small patch of land shimmers off the page [in this] narrative of warmth, honesty and great spirit made all the more beautiful by Pavey's own lively and accomplished drawings... this lovely book is itself a gift encouraging country-dweller and townie alike to marvel at the infinite possibilities at the heart of a single tree.' The Daily Mail , Book of the Week

'[In planting her wood] the satisfactions are many... her book is a gentle, generous extension of that... one all her readers can share in.' The Lady

'So beguiling... Pavey's writing is everywhere amiable.' The Times Literary Supplement

'A lovely story a super book.' Steve Yabsley, BBC Radio Bristol and Somerset

'A lyrical story of desire and determination, soft and gentle, warm and wise in a wicked world.' Camden New Journal

'Fascinating... [Pavey] bring us into a world of escape from the hurly-burly of towns... will be enjoyed by many readers.' Nudge

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Memoir, Natural History, Gardening, British Literature, Biography

256 pages, Paperback

First published September 21, 2017

About the author

Ruth Pavey is the Gardening Correspondent for the Ham & High (Hampstead and Highgate Express).

She attended the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford, and a selection of her illustrated works are included in A Wood of One’s Own, her first book.

Pavey has reviewed books and written features for publications including the Observer, Guardian, New Statesman, Crafts, and the Garden, and was a contributor to BBC Radio 4’s programme Kaleidoscope.

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extract from this review appeared by permission in the Spring 2018 issue of Little Gems magazine (Dublin).

(3.5) In 1999 Ruth Pavey bought four acres of Somerset scrubland at a land auction. It wasn’t exactly what she’d set out to acquire: it wasn’t a “pretty” field, and traffic was audible from it. But she was pleased to return to her family’s roots in the Somerset Levels area – this “silted place of slow waters, eels, reeds, drainage engineers, buttercups, church towers, quiet” that her father came from, and where she was born – and she fancied planting some trees.

There never was a master plan […] I wanted to open up enough room for trees that might live for centuries […] I also wanted to keep areas of wilderness for the creatures […] And I wanted it to be beautiful. Not immaculate, that was too much to hope for, but, in its own ragged, benign way, beautiful.

This pleasantly meandering memoir, Pavey’s first book, is an account of nearly two decades spent working alongside nature to restore some of her land to orchard and maintain the rest in good health. The first steps were clear: she had to deal with some fallen willows, find a water source and plan a temporary shelter. Rather than a shed, which would be taken as evidence of permanent residency, she resorted to a “Rollalong,” a mobile metal cabin she could heat just enough to survive nights spent on site. Before long, though, she bought a nearby cottage to serve as her base when she left her London teaching job behind on weekends.

Then came the hard work: after buying trees from nurseries and ordering apple varieties that would fruit quickly, Pavey had to plant it all and pick up enough knowledge about pruning, grafting, squirrel management, canker and so on to keep everything alive. There was always something new to learn, and plenty of surprises – such as the stray llama that visited her neighbor’s orchard. Local history weaves through this story, too: everything from the English Civil War to Cecil Sharp’s collecting of folk songs.

Britain has seen a recent flourishing of hybrid memoirs–nature books by the likes of Helen Macdonald, Mallachy Tallack and Clover Stroud. By comparison, Pavey is not as confiding about her personal life as you might expect. She reveals precious little about herself: she tells us that her mother died when she was young and she was mostly raised by an aunt; she hints at some failed love affairs; in the acknowledgments she mentions a son; from the jacket copy I know she’s the gardening correspondent for the Hampstead & Highgate Express. But that’s it. This really is all about the wood, and apart from serving as an apt Woolf reference the use of “one” in the title is in deliberate opposition to the confessional connotations of “my”.

Still, I think this book will appeal to readers of modern nature writers like Paul Evans and Mark Cocker – these two are Guardian Country Diarists, and Pavey develops the same healthy habit of sticking to one patch and lovingly monitoring its every development. I was also reminded of Peri McQuay’s memoir of building a home in the woods of Canada.

What struck me most was how this undertaking encourages the long view: “being finished, in the sense of being brought to a satisfactory conclusion, is not something that happens in a garden, an orchard or a wood, however well planned or cultivated,” she writes. It’s an ongoing project, and she avoids nostalgia and melodrama in planning for its future after she’s gone; “I am only there for a while, a twinkling. But [the trees and creatures] … will remain.” This would make a good Christmas present for the dedicated gardener in your life, not least because of the inclusion of Pavey’s lovely black-and-white line drawings.

Originally published, with images, on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Adri Joy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh. I was really enjoying this for what it was: genteel, privileged, navel-gazey but a fundamentally very readable and interesting memoir of one woman's relationship with the countryside.

Then it pulls out this little paragraph on page 243 (of 244):

It reminded me of a time when I was escorting some Hackney schoolchildren through the trees at Kenwood, in north London. When the white classical facade of Kenwood House came into view, suddenly a young girl clapped her hands and started dancing round in a circle, shouting, "It's so beautiful, I want to get married there!" She was of Caribbean heritage, so perhaps she was carrying some folk memory of desirable plantation houses (emphasis mine)

And, lol, excuse me, WHAT. Ignorant neo-colonialist British racism is the absolute worst and it VERY nearly made me DNF this a page from the end.

Would have been three stars but I'm not recommending anything that involves "maybe slaves admired plantations"???

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

After many years of the headlong rush of people and traffic that is London, Ruth Pavey felt that she needed to re-connect with the countryside in one way or another and having a small piece of England that she could call her own and maybe plant a small woodland would be just perfect. The best-laid plans of mice and men don’t always work out though and after a lot of searching and viewing fields that were not really going to be suitable a plot came up at auction. With around £10,000 to spend and an assurance that it wouldn’t go for more than that Ruth was stunned when it sold for £19,500. The wreck of a house and accompanying land sold for over £100k and that left a small piece of wooded scrubland. The opening bid was £2000 and after a few nervous moments, it was hers for the price of £2750.

She finally had her own woodland.

Having only visited briefly before, it was time to fully explore just what she had bought. It was a strange shape, squeezed in between an orchard, fields and ash woods and sloped facing the sun. As it had been uncared for there was a large amount of thicket and it felt dark, private and slightly intimidating. As she spoke to the people that owned it before and other locals, slowly the wood revealed its secrets to her. The first summer spent there gave her a better feel for the place and she begins to formulate plans of what would work best. A rollalong was acquired purely by chance and suddenly Ruth had a place to make a hot drink and shelter from the showers and maybe, just maybe, she could stay the night in her wood.

It took a number of years for Ruth to bring the wood into some sort of order, but it still had its wild and unruly elements to it and for her and her friends it was a place of solace, somewhere for reflection and to immerse themselves into the natural world. This is more than a book about her wood, as she explores the wider landscape around the Somerset levels and discovers the history of her patch and the people that used to own it. Ruth does not set out to turn it into a productive wood so if you are hoping for a book about woodland management or coppicing then you may want to look elsewhere. Ruth wants to make this a personal place and plants the woodland with fruit and other trees to remember people who have been significant in her life. It is a touching memoir written with gentle and thoughtful prose. I now am envious as I have always wanted a woodland I could call my own.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

A gentle memoir of one woman's desire to own and cultivate a piece of land in Somerset. Nature books aren't really my usual area of interest, but the author's tales were interesting enough to hold my attention.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

Once upon a time there was a middle-aged woman from North London, who liked the idea of a deep, dark wood. This woman happened to be a horticultural expert, and the Gardening Correspondent of the Hampstead and Highgate Express. She also had distant connections with Somerset. One day, around 20 years ago, she got in her car and drove to the Somerset Levels and bought a four-acre wood on a hillside, Sugg’s Orchard.

What she then did with the wood will either inspire, annoy or possibly even enrage you. It certainly annoyed me. I am no gardener, but I do understand that gardening is a brutal occupation (that demands a certain amount of creative destruction). I do however like deep, dark woods, unspoiled countryside and wilderness in general - and I have some connections with Somerset. In fact, as chance would have it, I’ll be in the Somerset Levels this week.

I expected to be inspired by this book - I’ve recently read a couple of other nature writers such as John Lewis-Stempel. But my take on A Wood of My Own began to change early on as it dawned on me that the author’s intention was not to just love the wood, experience it for what it was, understand it and live it - but to change it. Control it. Of course, that’s what gardeners do. Yes, I understand that woodland has to be managed. But this particular bit of Bucolic Bunburying began to strike me as absurd.

So, the lady buys a wood. It’s not been managed for 50 years, the trees are decaying, it’s full of nettles, there are brambles everywhere. This is a project. It’s a task that requires energy, direction, imagination, confidence and drive to see through. No doubt the author possesses these traits. What a story! Yet almost from the start the book seems to be as much about loneliness, fear and insecurity as it is about a piece of woodland. Ms Pavey buys an old caravan to put into the wood as a base. But she is frightened to sleep in it overnight and beds down with a torch, a mobile phone and a hammer within reach in case of intruders. Eventually, cold and the long winter nights drive her to buy a charming, rustic cottage in a nearby village.

But it’s what she does to the wood that makes me uncomfortable. Conservation, management, curation or prettying-up? She certainly gets stuck into de-wilding. Before long large areas are ‘cleared’. Ancient and unproductive apple trees are ‘given light’ - the ivy, undergrowth and vegetation are hacked away - and they die. Paths and tracks are driven through the brush. Native species of tree, perhaps centuries old, are replaced by exotic and non-native trees bought from garden centres. It’s only matter of time before the landscaping begins. At the point when she has brought in a digger to landscape a pond and is talking of creating an island with a duckhouse on it - I stopped reading.

You can see where this is going. Hampstead Garden Suburb puts on its green wellies and goes to Zummerzet. The wilderness is tamed, the countryside is tidied up. In my view there is far too much tidying-up of the countryside already, without it being written up approvingly in so-called nature books. She comes across as slightly patronising 0f the locals - I would be interested to know what the Somerset neighbours make of it all.

There are some nicely written passages, and a few interesting side observations on history, geography and local curiosities. Yes, we meet an escaped Llama. But surprisingly little on wildlife. If you are a gardener, a plant-lover and, possibly, a resident of Hampstead Garden Suburb, you may well love this book. If, however, you are looking for a paean to the glories of the unspoiled countryside, then this might not be for you.

[ReadsandThings · Rating 2 out of 5]

A twee read about an English woman restoring a neglected piece of woodland to former glory, this book would be just up my alley - or so I thought. But I ended up really not enjoying this at all.
Pavey purchases an old piece of woodland because she wants a place to plant trees. Of course, this piece of land was not really a wood (at least not in recent history), but rather an overgrown neglected orchard, with all its buried signs of human habitation beneath the thicket.
And this is where her vision went... astray? There are several ways to approach a piece of land like that, and according to personal preference, your view on which one is best may vary, but no matter from which way you look at it, hers seems odd.
You could restore the orchard. Free the fruit trees that are still there, delight in old varieties rarely seen these days, try to propagate them and possibly even make a profit form selling them.
Or you might take the view that now that it is already overgrown, a precious place of retreat for while animals and plants in an increasingly industrialized agricultural world, it should be best left wild; with only minimal human interaction to help it be the best wild place it can be. That is the view I would take.
But Pavey went in with the bulldozers (literally). She hacks and saws and destroys, burns hedges out of which 'hundreds of robins' flee. The fruit trees she has freed, die. She has a pond dug to make an island with a hut, and only succeeds in draining the water from the land altogether, depriving the animals of their main water source. She opens vistas by hacking down and burning trees. She tries to eradicate some native plants, calling them 'weeds', and yet goes in planting the land, which at this point can no longer be called a forest, with all kinds of invasive plants (such as buddleia, which spreads like wildfire, and is a native of the Americas, because the butterflies are so pretty).
By choosing this route, she neither conserves the orchard with its historical interest, nor the wood with its ecological one; instead creating a forest garden (a term which she refuses). Such is her prerogative as the land's owner; and I don't have to like it.
The coup de grace, however, was the shameful sentence mentioned in almost every review, in which she says that a Caribbean girl must like a large building because her DNA fondly remembers the days when her people lived on slave plantations just like that. That is just so wrong on so many levels, and I find it hard to believe that this could be published so recently, and even be nominated for the Wainwright Prize.
So I'm sad to say I did not like this book very much. The writing, too, which is often one of the best points of nature writing, was indifferent at best. Do yourself a favour and read some John Lewis-Stempel instead.

[Laura Macdonald · Rating 2 out of 5]

The beautiful cover lured me in to this book, but whilst I enjoyed bits of it, I found this account of a privileged woman who buys a neglected plot and sets about replanting it, turning it into a garden, basically, rather plodding and it never really drew me in. And then... on the second-last page, this statement:

"a young girl clapped her hands and started dancing round in a circle [...] She was of Caribbean heritage, so perhaps she was carrying some folk memory of desirable plantation houses"

Wait, WHAT??? In what way is this kind of racism acceptable? It does not add anything to the narrative, is offensive and I am astonished it got past Pavey's editor (the book was published in 2017, not 1967).

[Beth Bonini · Rating 4 out of 5]

What pleasure there is in learning another landscape and the stories that have grown from it.

This book is a highly personable mix of memoir and nature writing, as the title - with a nod to Virginia Woolf - suggests. Ruth Pavey, a longtime Londoner who is the Gardening Correspondent for the Ham & High local newspaper, brings together several of her talents in this book: a charming and self-deprecating writing style, delicate drawings and a down-to-earth discussion of trees and plants. The reader need not be hugely interested or knowledgeable about horticultural matters to enjoy it.

The book begins with a description of why and how Pavey came to buy a small 4 acre plot of woodland in the Somerset Levels. From the beginning, the project was more haphazard than planned, and its author readily admits to its romantic (even quixotic) nature. As her 20 year relationship with the woodland develops, she begins to realise how much the project is tied up with memories of her parents and an emotional need to be more connected to the countryside. Perhaps I am interpreting the book too personally, but it made me feel that our instincts - if only we will just follow them - will often steer us in the right emotional direction in life.

The book progresses somewhat chronologically, and is divided into chapters which describe various area of development in the woodland. There are also lots of nice bits about the neighbours she encounters, the history of the region and the changing agricultural usage of the countryside. Her sense of humour, and the personal details which sneak in, are really what brought the book to life for me.

Maggie Tulliver was not lucky in her men, a circumstance with which I can sympathise. It may be dull of me, but there is some comfort in having reached a stage in life when hopes centre more on meeting an otter than a lover.

Pavey's voice and remembrances are so quintessentially English, and I would definitely recommend this book to anyone drawn to anything to do with the English countryside.

[Mike Sumner · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has taken me an age to read this book, nothing wrong with the book. I have lost my reading mojo again. A shame because this is a delightful read as Ruth Pavey recounts her efforts to create a wood on a four acre parcel of land in the Somerset Levels that she purchased in the late 1990s. She talks about the challenges she faced often almost insurmountable. She also makes forays into local Somerset history and describes local inhabitants in a thoughtful manner. It is an inspiring story about nature's delicate balance and will suit anyone with a love of the countryside and its abiding presence.

[Cathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A north London garden writer buys 4 acres in Somerset, with some wood, a bit of old orchard and lots of scrub. Over the following 25 years, she transforms it into a woodland and writes a gentle, sunday afternoon read of a book about.
She's done something I occasionally fantasise about and perhaps suggests its not as hard as it sounds. In particular, she manages to get a small caravan onto the site to use as a shed. Regular readers of the Small Woodland Owners Group on facebook may conclude that to be almost impossible, though it was probably easier in Somerset 20 years ago than it is in Kent or Sussex now.
Restoring the old orchard to something more akin to a forest garden than a woodland is a nice touch.

[Paul Parmenter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Filling a wood with non native species strange....it was a wood not a garden.

[Jenna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Buying an abandoned plot of woods and field to restore with trees and wildlife sounds beautiful. Unfortunately this book was filled with so many endless tangents that reading it was much like how Pavey describes the woods when she first purchases it: overgrown with nettles and brambles, pathless, and much more work than she first realized.

I just wanted to read about trees.

[Carrie-Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous book. ❤

I stumbled upon this book in Waterstones a little while after I had discovered my love of gardening. Ruth's book appealed to me. I could understand her longing and dream to plant a wood.

I really recommend reading this book. It is an education in so many ways. Of history, of nature and how following your dream can throw up many hurdles but those tiny successes and moments of joy make everything truly worth it.

[Stewart Monckton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Splendid, slow moving book about a lady who buys a woodland / orchard block on the Somerset Levels.

The book is set between Langport and Aller - and maybe part of the appeal for me was that I once played ruby at Aller on a pitch that was so wet it probably constituted a drowning hazard!

This is a book about place, water and trees.

Recommended.

[Jim Kownacki · Rating 5 out of 5]

MS Pavey longs for a wood of her own and finds one in a 4 acre tract in the Somerset Levels. The book follows her decades long successes and failures in turning the overgrown orchard into her own Eden. Add in the local history and her personal history and it makes for a very enjoyable read.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book so much. I now must read the follow-up

[JBD · Rating 1 out of 5]

I rather wrongly thought this would be a cosy book where I could sit in my minds eye within the woods and feel a connection to the flora and fauna as the author spoke about her love and passion for it. Sadly, I felt horrified at times, along with sadness and boredom. Wildlife seemed very low on the list of priorities as she had hedges and great swaths bulldozed but hey, nice view! Planting whatever she liked, regardless if it was even a native species or not. She just reminded me of the DFLs (Down from London) that arrive in small towns, buy up property, Airbnb it to add to the already crippling housing crisis and open shops 3 days a week selling artisan jams only their friends can afford. Soo disappointed.

[Martin Edwards · Rating 2 out of 5]

not really the book for me it seemed more about gardening than conserving a wood.

[Sayo · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had issues with this book to begin with because of the writer's staunch refusal to acknowledge the issues with invasive species, acting as if people trying to educate her/others on the topic were the utmost inconvenience and just being fussy. But aside from that it seemed like a nice, simple book with cute sketches but THEN she pulled out an incredibly racist remark on the second to last page. Yikes.

[Betheliza · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fell at the final hurdle.

[Flint · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very twee, extremely British. I'm a brit myself, but Jesus, I never have been able to stand that stereotypical British quality of pompousness and oppressiveness.

I've always had this struggle with 'extremely' British stuff.

This book read like something I can imagine a group of women reading in a book group over a cup of extremely British tea while taking delicate bites from a scone. And they will pronounce scone as like 'cone' but with the S in the beginning. Urgh.

The scone is gone. Scone, gone. Not scone, cone.

I could imagine an audiobook of this narrated by Alan Watts with his pompous voice from the grave.


Okay, okay, so I'm showing my own prejudice here. Was the book good? Well, for me, it was hard to get past what I call the 'oppressive Britishness' of it. I went into this hoping for a book about the discoveries a person makes when they have a plot of woodland as their own and therefore can observe to their own heart's content.
When she mentions wildlife she has observed it's not concentrated on for very long and seems to be mentioned in an unenthusiastic manner. I suppose enthusiasm is hard to read on a page. I could be reading it wrong but it was my impression.

It was a human centred story which is well and fine to me but I like a bit of 'animals outside of us' centricity when reading books like this, or books where other animals are the central theme and teaches us to some extent what being human is.

The wood to her is a human centric endeavour, and I can't fault that completely. We're human centric because we're humans just as any other animal is 'centric' about themselves.
I just wish more people would realise that 'human centric' also entails we care about the way we interact with the environment around us because all those other animals and plants are helpful to us in our human centric quest for continued survival.

[Ginni · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this - the story of the restoration/creation of a wood in the Somerset Levels. The author’s paternal ancestors came from this watery part of South West England, where farmers have struggled for centuries to win back land from marsh and river. Ruth Pavey buys four acres of sloping scrubland, already partially wooded and with some ancient and decrepit apple trees. Eventually she also buys a cottage in the nearby village. This book is part woodland and gardening journal (she is obviously a keen and knowledgeable gardener, but wears her expertise lightly), part local history, part family history, with natural history observations and descriptions of local people who help Pavey with her efforts to achieve her albeit rather vague plans for her ‘little piece of England.’
I have always harboured a desire to buy a small woodland, but I think it is unlikely to be satisfied now. Reading books like this, and sponsoring tree planting, will have to do.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn't what I expected it to be, which is no bad thing. I thought it would be a memoir about how Ruth Pavey acquired a wood (which it is) and how she managed it (which it is), BUT she treats the space more as a garden rather than a wild space. At least that's the impression I got from the way it is written. There is a sense of tidying and control, of adding plants that wouldn't get there on their own, creating an entertaining space, albeit a wild one. I really enjoyed it though. I liked the history of the area of Somerset woven through. Pavey's writing has a nice balance to it, poetic, but not flowery; simple yet detailed enough. Some of her opinions I agreed with, could relate to where she was coming from, but others I am completely opposite. Again not a bad thing. There was something very comforting about this book, which will make me return to it again.

[Kerry Hennigan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Ruth Pavey’s “A Wood of one’s own” a small parcel at a time over the Australian winter and spring leading into summer, savouring the author’s quest to restore a piece of land in the Somerset Levels to woodland. It’s both a personal story as well as one of discovery, of history of the landscape, its degradation and restoration and the people she meets in process of achieving it. The pen portraits Pavey conjures with her narrative are evocative and inspiring. It’s a never ending journey for the owner of such a place, but what rewards there are along the way! If you love wild gardens or natural landscapes and enjoy reading of people’s interactions with, and reactions to them, you’ll love this book. As with Pavey’s wood, one should be patient in reading it, because the rewards are certainly worth it.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book in Waterstone's in England and just devoured it. I loved it so much. Others have spoken of the subject, so I will only say that what came home to me was the odd and different things people choose to put their love into from playing the violin or collecting porcelain or breeding dogs or deciding to help a wood grow and plant trees which will come to their full growth generations after the planter is gone...or perhaps fail and not grow. I thought it would be solitary work, but it wasn't in in the least....so many people became involved in it. In a way it belonged to the author's community. Who had planted there centuries before and walked under the trees? Most remains lost in time.

[Georgie · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Even today, if asked to explain the wood, I still grope about for words. Lately I have been trying out solace. Solace, not because I reckon my circumstances to have been hard. In the scale of the world's hardships, mine has been a featherbed. Nevertheless, loss is loss, grief is grief, and everyday life is rich in reverses. Some find consolation in religion or meditation, but I prefer to be out of doors, quietly busy.
I am not sure why we humans should take comfort from the natural world, harsh and implacable as it is, but there is something very buoyant about the company of trees, plants, animals, birds, insects all intent upon their own lives. As far as we know they just get on with it...without asking why. Perhaps some of this buoyancy transmits itself, helps keep us afloat too."

[Katy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book at a time when I needed a gentle escape, words that soothed and didn’t jar. It is the story of Ruth Pavey’s journey of finding some land to turn into a woodland of her own.

It takes place over many years and accounts each bit of progress, from going to the auction to buy the land, the first bit of clearing, the first night spent in the woods and the naughty llama that becomes her neighbour. She discusses the tree choices she makes and their progress, the successes and failures of creating a nature pond and the history of the surrounding area. Her description of her wood inspires a bucolic scene of countryside the way it was before motorways and pylons marred the landscape.

I particularly enjoyed her beautiful artwork dotted throughout the book and her map of the wood at the start (to me there is no better book than one with a map!). In my mind's eye I could ‘walk’ through the areas she started to describe. I also found the scattered anecdotes of the history about the Somerset Levels a lovely way of grounding her new wood by giving it a past.

There is a chapter about the old gnarled apple trees that she discovers, and this really struck a chord with me. I would love to have some old fruit trees and reading about her trying to save them and replicate them through grafting was delightful.

This book is a gentle and subtle read, leaving a feeling of content. Perfect for getting a blanket, snuggly socks and a cup of tea. If you want a book which doesn’t require you to think and just be transported somewhere idyllic to be told a story, this is for you.

[Snorki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pavey buys some acreage in Somerset, re-connecting back to her family roots. She wants to plant trees, and this book takes us through her journey of discovering the joys and trials of owning land, and working to achieve that dream. What I like about her approach is that she is not striving for perfection, that she recognises that some trees will die, that the creatures of the wood all have a role to play, even the "pests" and "weeds". It's not an attempt to re-create some nostalgic vision of the past, acknowledging instead that for many, those past days were of cold, hunger, oppression and toil. She learns about trees, she takes things slowly as this is a part-time effort, but throughout we are given a glimpse into the wonder and beauty of the wood.

[Peeter Talvistu · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not sure about this book. It certainly has its charming bits and the protagonist/author seems likeable. However, she doesn't have the erudition and nature-knowledge of authors like John Lewis-Stempel neither does she reveal as much about her life and connection with nature as, for example, Alice Vincent. It's mainly a book about somebody from the city who felt like she wanted to own a piece of land. There exists a certain connection to the plot, but it is never very hands-on or "conservationist". All things said, I will probably also be reading the sequel.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written book by a former school teacher who bought four acres of scrubland in somerset and proceeded to plant trees and make it her private woods. Along the way she meets neighbours and experts in the apple industry awakening her desire to add apple trees with a view to growing enough apples to turn into juice. The history of the area is included with a witty and nostalgic way that only a true lover of the english language can produce. I was lucky enough to visit my sister while she was living in the area in pill, Bristol and know Curry rivel, langport and surrounding villages. A lovely book and I hope Ruth pavey is still cultivating her trees and plants.