The Restoration Garden
This is a family story of loss and tragic fallout which endures through generations of secrets and misunderstandings. Beginning in the present day, redundant landscape architect, Julia, arrives in England with her five-year-old nephew, Sam, in tow. Her contract, drawn up by Andrew, the Havenworth estate owner’s godson, is to restore the once-famed gardens. Very little of the gardens remain, but Julia has confidence in her ability. That is until she meets Havenworth’s owner, 92-year-old Margaret Clarke, who specifies that the gardens be returned to their former glory – exactly! – plant by plant. Doable but expensive, Julia thinks, but then she is told that there are no photographs or drawings, no records of any kind. Margaret’s past seems as much a mystery as the forgotten garden.
Blaydes’ novel weeps with regret, guilt, things said which cannot be unsaid. Emotional turmoil invades both Julia’s memories of her dead sister and her commitment to raise her nephew, and Margaret, who is haunted by past mistakes. As past bleeds into present, Julia becomes determined to fulfil Margaret’s last wish. But Margaret seems equally obsessed and distressed by the plan, while her fragile health worries her godson. We are swept into seven-year-old Margaret’s 1940 world, but the focus, which would usually be on Margaret, is on Irene, Margaret’s older half-sister, a lonely artistic soul who the Clarke family (bar Margaret) ignores and shuns.
This is very much Irene’s story, but aspects of both timelines entice—we watch Julia create digital horticultural wizardry, while Irene imbues her pages with magic of a different sort, all the while unwittingly walking into a future without sister Margaret. The author cleverly ties her protagonists together. This is an easy novel to get lost in. It tickled my personal love of gardens, and stoked memories of the stunning Lost (and recovered) Gardens of Heligan.
