Down the Garden Path by Beverley Nichols

“It was not till I experimented with seeds plucked straight from a growing plant that I had my first success…the first thrill of creation…the first taste of blood. He is devastated, but the immediately starts putting it to rights, planning how it will look, researching in detail winter flowers, so that there is always flowers in his garden. The garden however, which Beverley remembered so well has been sadly neglected, and is nothing like it had been. He is met by Arthur – a strange, oddly behaved servant who provides him with uneatable food and stays in bed all morning.

Having quite rashly bought his cottage – because of the gardens he knew came with it –Beverley hurried down to view his new house, hardly able to wait to see the garden. It and the two sequels which follow were illustrated by Rex Whistler – and were a huge success. This book tells the story of the garden (and cottage) he bought in Cambridgeshire. In the early 1930’s Beverley Nichols was already a well-known writer – still quite a young man, he also had a passion for gardens, and it would seem, enough money to buy a cottage with large gardens in the country. It sounds rather vulgar, but it is true.” “I bought my cottage by sending a wireless to Timbuctoo from the Mauretania, at midnight, with a fierce storm lashing the decks.

However, I think I probably have the best books still to read, as it seems some people believe the other gardening trilogy starting with Merry Hall is better than this one. Having heard such wonderful things about Nichol’s warm witty writing from other readers, it seemed a good place to start. A book about gardening restoration is not something I would usually read, but there was something very appealing about this trilogy. Down the Garden Path is the first book in one of the two gardening trilogies that Nichols produced. Though some of his most popular works seem to have been his books of gardening and house restoration. That was pretty much my only experience of Beverley Nichols – until many years later – a few blogging friends began sharing their love of his adult books, their enthusiasm ensuring that I soon acquired some for myself.īeverley Nichols was an enormously prolific writer – journalism, politics, autobiography and novels. I think we carry the books we loved as children with us somewhere – though I’m hopeless at remembering the titles of many of them now.

I even remembered the author (as a child I thought Beverley Nichols was a woman, and it was many years before I discovered my mistake). I loved every word of that little book and have remembered it ever since. Way back sometime in the 1970s – when I was a very little girl, but already in love with books I read a book called The Tree that Sat Down by Beverley Nichols.

Down the Garden Path by Beverley Nichols