The Morville Hours

by Katherine Swift

In 1988 Katherine Swift arrived at the Dower House at Morville to create a garden of her own. This beautifully written, utterly absorbing book is the history of the many people who have lived in the same Shropshire house, tending the same soil, passing down stories over the generations. Spanning thousands of years, The Morville Hours takes the form of a medieval Book of Hours. It is a meditative journey through the seasons, but also a journey of self-exploration. It is a book about finding one's place in the world and putting down roots.

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

384 pages, Paperback

First published May 6, 2008

About the author

Katherine Swift lives at The Dower House, Morville Hall in Shropshire. She worked as a rare book librarian in Oxford and Dublin before becoming a full-time gardener and writer in 1988. She was for four years gardening columnist of The Times, and has written widely in the gardening press, including an acclaimed series on the gardens and landscapes of Orkney for Hortus. She is the author of The Morville Hours, a Sunday Times bestseller. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/author/kath...

Reviews

[Diane Barnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book probably deserves more than 3 stars for the research and scholarship alone, but it was my bedtime reading for a few weeks, and suffered from my drooping eyelids and lack of focus. I did enjoy it though and went to sleep with garden visions in my head. I was also exhausted personally by all the work that went into creating such a magnificent showplace.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

My parents lent me this memoir of restoring and reinventing an extensive garden at Dower House in Morville, on the Welsh border. It is structured like a book of hours, with chapters titled Vigils to Comline. Swift recounts the history of Morville itself, her work on the garden, the wildlife in the area, and her own family history. The style of the book is rich, dense, and dilatory. Perhaps it was the reading on trains, but I found the history of families who owned Morville over the centuries very hard to follow. There were a confusing number of different men named Arthur. Conversely, I found the descriptions of Swift designing and creating the garden vivid and beautiful. She brings the place to life with her sensual portraits of the plants, weather, and wildlife, as well as how the garden makes her feel:

The mornings are cooler now, with night-time temperatures hovering a degree or so above zero. When I open the door in the morning the smell of quinces wafts across the garden - sweet and musky on the chilled air. The cold breath of condensation lies on the redberries of the honeysuckle. I cross the lawn, my footsteps trailing behind me in the cold dew. Spangled spiders' webs lace the tapestry hedge. The quinces are furred like cats, weighing down the little trees like great golden pears. One or two lie in the silvered grass. They will hang on the trees until late October or even November, perfuming the air around the house. But once picked they will not keep. Cooked, their plump goldenness is transformed into the dark red of cornelian. Raw, they light up the garden like lanterns.

The elements of personal memoir, of her upbringing and parents, are moving when they appear tucked around the rest of the narrative. Unlike my parents, I am no gardening enthusiast and don't have one of my own. Nonetheless, I can appreciate the work and love that go into gardens and enjoyed visiting this one via The Morville Hours.

[Elizabeth]

An unusual book and a lovely one. Katherine Swift’s writing reminds me most of Ronald Blythe’s in that they both effortlessly mix gardening, local history and geology, local history and lore, personal stories, literature of ages past, and the Church Year and local church life into a narrative that flows along like a meditative stream, philosophical and peaceful.

The overall structure of the book is Katherine’s story of creating a garden at the Morville Dower House in Shropshire, England, and she divides the book into the monastic hours of worship and prayer: Vigils, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. These in turn correspond to the time of year from January to December, so there is a lovely subtext reflection on the meaning of time and how we as humans inhabit time. This is a book that rewards slow reading and contemplation. The writing is beautiful and rich in allusions. It’s a celebration of the variety of life, from old varieties of roses and apples to the unique story of each person who graces the pages.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, beautiful book. The prose reads like poetry, and I read phrases over and over, willing the book not to end. Full of fascinating information about gardens and church history, geology and the natural world, all told in a lovely rambling way. I shall definitely be looking out the sequels.

[Lindsey Preston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a beautiful book! An absolute pleasure to read and meander through the seasons of a garden brought back to life.
I’d go as far as to say it’s starless as in ‘priceless’.
A difficult book to rate, you just have to read it to experience it.

[Мария Бахарева · Rating 5 out of 5]

Это было чертовски долгое чтение (я её периодически откладывала, плюс очень много неизвестных слов), но оно того стоило!

[Penny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm always envious of multi talented people. I'd settle for just the one! Katherine Swift is a gifted garden designer and gardener, plus she writes like a dream.
I liked the mixture of personal memoir mixed with a journey through the Book of Hours, a nod to the Monastic history of the house.
The book is structured as it works through the Monastic day and the gardening year, and yet has an unstructured feel - one minute we are wandering through the garden, then we might be exploring the history of the house, the area, the county of Shropshire itself..........recommended.

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not an easy read, even if you're as interested in e.g. colonial botanising shenanigans as I am. I finished it in a hot tub during a pandemic, and that got me through the last few chapters. Phew! But there's a lot that I love and appreciate about this book:

I love that she structures the book around the medieval Book of Hours format - I've since tried to seek out images of real Books of Hours because I find them so fascinating. I love systems that mark the passing of the seasons, and she conveyed beautifully how keenly she felt the passing of those seasons at Morville.

I also enjoyed the sense of learning a lot of British history through the events near/at this one very old house, events happening to/around its inhabitants.

Finally, I loved the gargantuan project she took on, dedicating a section of the garden to each of the known or probable historical inhabitants, designing a garden space as they might have known it, or as an homage to what gardening looked like in their time - pretty wonderful.

Thank you to the friend who first gave me this book - you know who you are!

[Rosie Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Morville Hours is primarily a book about how the author created a garden at The Dower House in Morville, Shropshire. However, it is much more than a book about gardening; author Katherine Swift has researched and included the history of the land, the house and many of the people who have lived and worked in and around the area.


At times the writing is quite poetic, while on occasions it seems to lose a thread or pick up a random point, but it suits the style of the book. Swift has also chosen to set out the chapters as they reflect the monastic Hours, a system and book which has survived since the Middle Ages. It adds comparisons to events in the gardening calendar and is an interesting addition to the book.


I found this a slow read, mainly because of its non-fiction aspect; the pace is very different from a piece of fictional work, but it drew me in and I enjoyed reading it very much. Certainly the garden ideas gave me great inspiration, especially reading it in February when I am on the cusp of Spring planting plans.

[Jose Santos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um livro muito interessante, autobiográfico, sobre a mudança da autora, uma bibliotecária especialista em livros raros em Oxford e Dublin, para uma bonita casa na Inglaterra rural, no condado de Shrospshire, junto a uma mansão histórica. Com essa mudança, a autora torna-se jardineira a tempo inteiro e cria um jardim elaborado a condizer com a propriedade cujos registos históricos remontam a quase mil anos atrás.
A primeira construção na propriedade foi um mosteiro habitado por religiosos. Com o tocar do sino da igreja, hora a hora, a autora imagina um Livro das Horas para os religiosos do mosteiro que já não existe. Os Livros das Horas apareceram na época medieval e eram livros de orações, de cânticos e que incluíam uma agenda das festas religiosas. Eram decorados com iluminuras e muitas das grandes casas senhoriais tinham os seus Livros das Horas personalizados, com os santos das suas devoções e as atividades diárias e anuais das propriedades e das famílias que nelas viviam gerações após gerações.
A escrita não é das mais fáceis mas é muito bela, quase poética. A autora, como os anteriores habitantes, descreve-nos como passa o tempo na nova casa, as suas tarefas, a história da aldeia – Morville – e dos seus habitantes, muitos já desaparecidos mas sempre presentes e outros ainda vivos e muito carismáticos. A planificação do jardim e a sua construção não acontece sem alguns imprevistos narrados com mestria e graça.
Como um Livros das horas, a autora descreve os vários acontecimentos que fazem hoje parte da história de Morville Hall e do seu jardim, que hoje em dia está aberto ao público e é muito visitado.
Um livro muito bom que equilibra bem a história com o folclore e tradições culturais do lugar, assim como a natureza nas suas mais variadas ciências. No entanto eu gostaria que o livro tivesse mais detalhes sobre o jardim e sobre as plantas do jardim. Talvez esses detalhes tenham sido deixados para um outro livro da autora que ainda não li, o “The Morville Year”.

[Saffron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always have a book by my bed for those nights when sleep does not come as easy as others. It has to be something calm and sedate so it can lull me into slumber. This book is perfect for the end of the day.

The chapters are split into sections based on the Medieval Book of Hours but fear not all Atheists, this is in no way a religious, preachy book. Instead it uses the hours to connect to seasons in the garden. These garden stories are then intertwined with tales of the authors family, people in the village, past owners of the Dower house the garden belongs to and other interesting facts about local lives past.

Within the chapters there are many natural pauses and stopping points that make it a perfect night time read. A couple of pages a night is easy to achieve without losing your way because the author created it to be read in small sections. It is very easy to dip in and out of. I was sorry to get to the end as I enjoyed the meandering way the book flowed, I am pleased there is a second book The Morville Years to follow.

Definitely a book I will read again, over a long period of time no doubt!

[SukiG · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful concept, insightful writing about gardening as the world goes through its seasonal rotation like a Medieval book of hours. Gardening enthusiasts will rejoice. However, by the last third of the book, the botanical details began to weigh on me, and I faced finishing this book with the same grit and determination, sans pleasure, as a homework assignment.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Swift's capacious curiosity makes this a compelling read. The story ripples out from her personal experience to the histories of the prior owners, to geological and cosmic time.

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Morville Hours is a sanctuary of a book. As a lover of epic high fantasy novels, this book is very different from what I normally read. In the midst of a hectic schedule, though, reading The Morville Hours feels like you've found a quiet space of calm and reflection. The book is a collection of stories - ranging from classical myth to natural history to personal reflection, this book is a deeply intimate and beautiful nonfiction read for those who are interested in everything.
Katherine Swift has a rare talent for lyrical, rich writing. Her imagery is vivid and atmospheric, so you can easily close your eyes and see exactly what she is trying to communicate. It felt like I was standing in the garden with her, breathing in the smell of the garden and all the stories that came with it.
I loved this book and found it to be a lovely, serene change from the genres I typically read. I highly recommend this to any and all readers!

[Eden · Rating 4 out of 5]

2021 bk 8. Swift provides beautiful images to the reader's mind. Her stories of the people of Morville as they lived and worked the land through the ages are intertwined with her own story of recreating the garden. The book is divided by the months of the year as told through the medaeval books of hours. Faith, gardening, and life are indivisible in this book as she talks of monks, landowners, mistresses, gardeners, laborers, farmers, and merchants in the same way as she talks of hedgerows, furrows, orchards, vines, flowers, and weeds. The book is lovely, but has its dark spots when talking of her parent's relationships, mental illnesses, poisons used as weed control, and powers used for the bad in controlling a community and county.

[Joanne Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about gardening and the structure of this book is based on the Book of Hours at the historic Morville estate. This book is a memoir mixed with history, focused on gardening. The author resided on the estate and gardened there for 20 years. I loved it but this is not a book for everyone because of its slow pace. Excellent historical research and reference. My favorite parts were her observations of the constellations. This was a book selection of comfort Book Club

[Iulia · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5*

Much as it pains me, I have to confess I derived less pleasure out of reading this book than I had anticipated.
It's entirely possible that I came to Swift's account with the wrong expectations. The Morville Hours is just as much a history book as it it a book about the creation and development of a country garden. This is probably why it didn't quite do it for me - it's too meandering and scattered, too much a mixture and a blend of this-and-that, here-and-there, now-and-then. Swift jumps from geology to history to nature writing to personal memoir, and although I understand the intent behind this disjointed narrative choice, I still found it a bit aggravating. She goes from a tidbit of local medieval history in one paragraph, to the story of her father in the next paragraph, and from there on to talking about the moles in her garden. Her writing is beautiful, albeit too heavily evocative for me. This isn't a criticism, it's simply a matter of personal taste.

"Gardens are about people first and plants second. Like our multi-layered language, gardening is made up of different elements, bits and pieces from far and near, now and long ago, taken and incorporated into the vocabulary of plant and tree, the grammar of path and hedge."

"Long before I began the garden I knew that there would be certain ways, certain routes through it - stopping places, vistas, views, curving paths, straight paths, right angles, detours and diagonals. [...] I knew only that it would be a garden where you took your time."

"it is the creative power of the imagination - selecting, rearranging and unifying - that transforms the trees into a hedge, stones into a wall, experience into art."

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was our latest Gardening book club choice, one I have tried to read before and not got very far with. Being a book club choice means I persevered with it and I am glad I did.

Katherine Swift was a rare-book librarian at Trinity in Dublin and her husband, Ken, a bookseller in Oxford. In order to lure her back to this country, they found a house where she could make a garden and Moreville House ended up being the lucky recipient of Katherine's thoughtful research and reading about gardens.

This isn't a garden book that will tell you what to do with sandy soil or which plants to use in shade, rather a very site specific treatise about the land, its people, history and geology with some botany thrown in for good measure. It is the sort of book that has a range of information that you could bring out on a quiz night and astound everyone such as the country name for daffodils is Lenten lily because they bloom in the liturgical season of lent or that there were 38 vineyards in Britain before the Romans arrived. The climate then was that of a warming one and so we are now and have vineyards again.

The book is structured around a book of hours used by the Benedictine monks who used to live on the land. It is a book of prayers for the different times of the day and so works neatly to fit the months of the year and for each 'prayer' or chapter to be a reflection and meditation upon the garden and how it ended up being there at that time of the year. In fact the structure is like that of a formal garden, neat, clipped hedging in the form of the times of prayer or seasons but inside each season or prayer there is a lushness and a billowing out of plants and people, history and geology. As readers, we are reading Swift's reading of the landscape and it anchors her to the land and the garden.

I have seen it written that the book is a journey of self-exploration or that it is part memoir but all of these seem a generous description of the nuggets of her life that we are allowed to peep at behind the plants. Her writing about the garden is rich and descriptive with perhaps some of the longest sentences I have ever read, there are a lot of colons and semi-colons, but the writing about her family is greatly contrasted: short, spare, often tense or terse and never ever with any sense of her feelings about the situations other than love for her father. The nearer we get to the end of the book, the more she says until at last she explains that she has tried to tell the story of 'why I am as I am'. She mentions friends and local people often, but of her husband there is little other than his understanding about her need to make a garden until she says that in 2008 the lease on the property would be due and they thought they would go and make a garden by the sea. She then says that he left before that and I was left wondering whether their marriage was over, had he died, did he have Alzheimers? As a reader, you have to do a lot of the heavy work about her life which is in complete contrast to reading about the garden. She has definitely done all the hard work there.

The writing is wonderful but at times a little too rich. I couldn't sit down and just read, I had to parcel the book up and read it bit by bit, a certain amount each day so that I didn't tire of it. She has very clear sentence patterns and once I had found them, I couldn't stop noticing them. There are wonderful images,

The cat flap in the kitchen door lifts open, horizontal: the cats flatten their ears and narrow their eyes before breasting the tide of freezing air like Christmas Day swimmers taking the plunge.
p62

and the idea of a Norman deed to the house, parchment paper with formal language, dense with contractions and suspensions and conditions 'like an airline ticket to another world.

She is big on the idea of 'threeness'

Only in the eighteenth century did Morville attain that sort of stability: Morville's was a tale of lost heirs, heirs defrauded, heirs dead before their time; of childless couples, bachelor uncles; of a succession that zigzagged, backtracked, skipped generations; of a house eventually surplus to requirements, bought and sold; its library, archives, contents all scattered
p94

She is a lister, with all sorts of ways of listing

Pippins and pearmains, costards and codlins, leathercoats and russets; silver and white, rose-pink and carmine, pearly grey and apple green - the apple blossom of old England, now in flower once more in the gardens of Morville: Geneting and Gillyflower, Calville and Catshead, Quining and Quarrenden, the branches clustered with flowers like posies carried by school children.
p151

Yes, there are parts that are overwritten and could have been edited a bit more firmly but Swift is a wordsmith and I greatly enjoyed that element of her writing.

There were also sections that spoke to me as a gardener. The challenges of knowing when a pear is ripe, 'my pears are a mystery to me. We just don't speak the same language', and the temptations of seed catalogues

First to list the seed saved or unused from last year. Then to list what new seed needs to be bought. And then, only then, cautiously, to open the catalogues, with their honeyed promises of shapes and tastes and smells; their coloured photographs of laden baskets and ripe pods, purple aubergines and ruby chard; yellow flowers of courgette and soft sweet flesh of parsnip; leeks like thighs and lettuces like the frilled red skirts of cancan dancers; flowers like butterflies, like birds, as blue as lapis lazulis, as dark as bitter chocolate. And every year, despite my resolutions, I fall, succumbing to their thousand-and-one temptations and ordering far more than I need.
p63

I know this is a bit over-the-top, leeks like thighs is not an image that works for me or all the birds and butterflies, but I do understand that feeling of wanting to try everything and believing everything the catalogue descriptions and photos tell me.

This will not be an easy book to discuss in book club. I can't think of questions that can be asked of it and us as readers. I do want to follow-up on any thoughts others might have about the sort of person Swift might be based on the little information that we got in the book. Swift is an expert in reading the land and I wonder if we can read the landscape of the allotments in the same way. What do we know about its geology, history and people?

[Bowerbird · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book written about a garden didn't seem like a special read but what a delight it is - It has soul! A Brief History of Time, full of human interest.
Katherine Swift is able to draw on so many different sources - local history and characters, the lives of the common people and monastic life; the changes brought about by religious turmoil, war, new ideas, the enclosures etc and of course the development of the earth itself to make the growing medium and the plants she puts into her garden.
This book is appropriately like a pot-pourri of scents and distilled memories, her own and a haunting collection of folk memory; a legacy of the past which in turn creates our future.
It is not a quick read because each chapter is complete in itself, each related to the time of year and an ancient Book of Hours, but what a beautifully refreshing book to have on the shelf, ready to dip into.
I picked this book up from my local library - mainly because my daughter lived near Morville for several years. Now I plan to buy several copies as presents for friends and one for my own bookshelf of course. And I must also visit Katherine's garden in the near future.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book's structure of twelve chapters linked to the months of the year and Medieval Books of Hours worked very well. I loved following Katherine Swift's creation of her garden with its different rooms and how she placed this in the context of the history of this part of Shropshire and her own family. Knowing the area from my childhood this chance to revisit was a delight. The formal structure of her book reflects the formality of her garden style, which is not my own. But I could easily identify with her frustrations and rewards as a gardener and the sadness of her having at the end to let go. I bought this book as a treat to myself and in this respect it has lived up to my expectations. Beautifully produced and written.

[Auntie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am listening to this on my kindle while traveling and I am fascinated with it. It is very different from my normal type of reading but I love the sound of the reader's voice and accent as she pronounces the many botanical names of flowers both old and new. this is more a botany or gardening lesson and I actually ordered a hard copy of the book for future reference. It is soothing and evocative of another time - follows the style of a "book of hours". Quite compelling for me and perhaps very boring for others who have no interest in historical gardening, the history of place and a leisurely meandering thru a book.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, how I loved this book! Using the structure of a monastic book of hours to reflect Morville's heritage, Katherine Swift blends gardening, history, and memoir, with some of the best nature writing I've ever read; I occasionally even quoted Swift in writing to friends, particularly with respect to her appreciation of winter—not something you encounter too often in gardening books! The Morville Hours was perfect bedside reading for the past year; I started it in January and retreated into its civility and beauty on many a night, finding it to be a tremendous solace during a turbulent time.

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look into the history of gardens, Morville & Bridgnorth, and British Christianity. Full of interesting information presented well. I look forward to May Day when I will be visiting the garden in question!

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

The magic of books: this one turned an avowed anti-gardener into someone who was riveted by a garden. A book to be savored.

[Jacqueline · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had really mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, I think Swift is an extremely gifted writer. On the other hand, I think she may have tried to weave too many threads, and they seemed to sometimes end up in knots. (Perhaps they all came together in reality, but at least in my over-taxed teaching brain, they sometimes didn’t). As is often the case with books that have multiple threads, I found some of them fascinating and some of them dull. I loved every part where she wrote about her family, her reflections on gardening, and her experiences in the garden. I tended to feel bored when she went into the obscure past of the landscape or the people who once lived in the area.

All that said, my copy is replete with book darts, and I think these passages will be an anchor for me when I need fresh inspiration or conviction of how essential the garden is to my life. The final chapter alone is worth reading the rest of the book.

“And it’s true: you can change the colour of your tulips, you can forswear roses in favour of dahlias, you can even move house and make a new garden, but you can never leave yourself behind. For it is the eye that becomes jaded—the mind, not its object. Even for Traherne it was a struggle to retain that freshness of vision, to protect it from the eroding sea of experience. As he constantly reminded himself, ‘I must become a child again.’ But even if we cannot see all anew each year, we can each time strive to see it deeper, differently: the experience can be enriched, not impoverished. A rose at forty or at eighty means something different from a rose at twenty; we naturally bring to it more associations, whether personal or literary or historical, more ‘back story.’ And if we can’t see Venice twice for the first time, neither can we step into the same river twice—the world is perpetually changing, renewing itself. See how different a single rose, a single petal can be, not only every year, but every day, and every hour of every day, as the world turns around it—in all weathers, in every season, bud and bloom, calyx and corolla. All we have to do is look.”

[Agnes Goyvaerts · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a jewel of a book, so much enjoyed reading it. Katherine Swift gave such a deep insight into the history of the garden at Morville House in Shropshire, you really feel part of the whole project. The book is full of interesting information and thought. I liked where she drew a parallel between the enclosed Medieval gardens of the past, being a shelter for humans from wild animals, boars and bears and wolves, and a place where people could feel safe from the world around them, or a monastic garden where one would be far away from the temptations of the presumed wicked world, contrasting it with today's world where the garden can also be a place of refuge and stillness, away from the surrounding noise, but also importantly, where gardens are now a place of shelter for wild creatures that are threatened by our modern and industrial way of life.
Katherine Swift paints with words, illuminating what nature does give us daily again and again, things of beauty, joys so simple. I quote one of her 'paintings' "I stand in the doorway at midnight, salty smell of wet earth and lavender. The gravel glistens in the beam of light from the half-open door".
Katherine also drew attention to the work of real painters, such as Bottichelli's 'Primavera'. She draws our attention to shapes in the garden, to form and to vistas. She follows the Medieval Book of Hours to shape her own story, and you can see the seasons unfold also as the story progresses. She talks of the great variety of trees, flowers, shrubs, bulbs and tubers which she plants. But also of the people that touch her life while living and creating at Morville house gardens.
I simply loved this book, it gave me much joy and held my interest until the very last word.

[Edoardo Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

To say this is a book about gardening is like saying The Odyssey is a book about travel. Yes, there’s a garden in it, and much practical information and knowledge of plants, soil, weather and fauna, but that’s merely one strand to a book that is a veritable tapestry of interweaving narrative threads. Among them are the history of Morville, the history of gardens and gardening, the monastic hours and monasticism, life as a newcomer to a village in Shropshire, the turning of the seasons, the turning of the heavens, splinters of autobiography and shards, like shattered glass, of the lives of two parents who imprinted their lives and passions, for good and suffering, upon their daughter.

As an exercise in writing, it’s close to perfect, both in its command of language and in the weaving together of these different narrative threads into a single story. In its emotional impact, particularly in the ways that unthinking comments from parents can sink a soul, it’s devastating. No one reading The Morville Hours is ever likely to forget that passage when, slipped casually into conversation, Swift’s mother says that giving birth to her daughter ruined her life. But these fragments of soul glass are counterbalanced by the serenity of the hours of prayer, the cycle of the seasons and the labour, always renewed, always new, that is the garden itself.

A book to read, slowly and well.

[Kitty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps it is because I am trying to create a garden of my own at the moment, but I loved this book. It tells the story of the creation of a garden at Morville in Shropshire over twenty years, using the medieval Books of Hours to provide a narrative arc driven by the months/seasons and the daily 'hours' of religious houses. The author succeeds in interweaving memories of her peripatetic childhood with the (well researched) history of Morville - from the glaciers which formed the valleys where it stands and the soil she digs to the people who lived there from medieval monks to Victorian spinsters - together with poetic descriptions of the plants and characters she discovers as she puts together her garden. The passion she has for this project shines through in the heady prose; the fruit trees have characters almost as rounded as those of the humans who form part of this landscape and community. There are a myriad of fascinating facts - from religious feasts and ancient traditions that have merged over centuries but persist in the celebration of nature and harvest today. It is a life-affirming book; as the author brings forth beauty and abundance, she also finds identity and community - roots, finally, after a fractured past.

[Pollymoore3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up in a charity shop thinking it was a historical novel, perhaps along the lines of Rumer Godden's "China Court". But instead it's a beautifully written account of how the author made a garden, practically from scratch, for the National Trust, recreating older styles of garden within it. (I'm still intrigued as to how she achieved this massive project when she had no money; this is never explained. Magic?) Actually, on a re-read, I noticed it is explained, but in a very throwaway fashion!
Horticulture, geology, history, family memories, local lore and much more besides make a glorious pot-pourri, or perhaps a patchwork quilt, of a book, based around the monastic Hours or services throughout the day.
Other books about making gardens sprang to mind, notably "Memory in a House" by Lucy Boston, and also "A Garden in My Life" by Cynthia Ramsden, about a garden in North Derbyshire.
Then occurred one of those synchronicities or happenstances: the very next book I picked up, completely unrelated, featured a family called Morville on the very first page ("The Heir of Redclyffe" by Charlotte M Yonge). As my dear brother might have said "Th'art entering the Twiglet Zone, tha knows".

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was given to me by a friend shortly after it was published. I didn't rate my books on Goodreads then, but from memory, I think I had the same reaction to it on first reading as I did this time around.

It's beautifully written. The language is dense and rich, yet it's a butterfly of a book, skimming from one topic to another, alighting for a few moments to scatter some interesting facts and then flitting off again to a new subject.

I think this is why I can't rate it higher than three stars. I really want to love it, but I can't. It's well-researched, well-written and covers an immense array of topics, but it doesn't really delve into any of them in detail. At it's core, the book is supposed to be about the making of a garden, and yet after reading this twice, I don't feel I know what the garden is like - I could probably walk round it all day and if no one told me it was the Morville Dower House garden, I wouldn't recognise it. Nor do I feel like I know any of the people who inhabit this book - the villagers of Swift's time or the people who lived in the Dower House over the centuries. For all its beauty, this book is too insubstantial and leaves me feeling unsatisfied.