Laura Acosta asked Kate Morton:

This question contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

Kate Morton A: Hi Laura, Eliza's garden as it's described in TFG is from my imagination, but I was inspired by a real life garden when I was coming up with the idea for the novel. I'd already decided the story was going to feature a cottage by the sea, and had started casting about for the perfect English coastal location. I'd read and loved books like Five go to Smuggler's Top when I was a child, and was hoping to find somewhere that suggested a similar history and sense of mystery.

One day, while I was surfing about on the net, typing in search terms like 'forgotten' and 'garden' and 'smuggling' and 'coastal', I came across a link to a place called 'The Lost Gardens of Heligan'. I think I probably drew breath and then followed the link as quickly as I could! It turned out that Heligan was a grand estate in Cornwall, owned for many centuries by a family called the Tremaynes. Along with the house and farms, Heligan was also home to the most glorious formal gardens. Generations of green thumbs had scoured the globe bringing back samples of the world’s varied vegetation, and a team of thirteen gardeners was in charge of maintaining the estate.

In 1914, however, when World War I broke out, the entire garden staff enlisted and none returned. The Tremayne family moved away and the garden grew over. It wasn’t until late in the twentieth century that a garden archaeologist, who had grown up nearby, returned home and rediscovered the entrance to Heligan.

I found the story incredibly poignant and loved the idea of a garden that had been locked and forgotten. Not only had my book gained a setting (Cornwall!), but I decided that my clifftop cottage simply had to connect to a walled garden!

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