The Morville Hours: The Story of a Garden - Hardcover

Swift, Katherine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747592586 ISBN 13: 9780747592587

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2008

Synopsis

This is a book about time and the garden: all gardens, but also a particular one: that of the Dower House at Morville, where the author arrived in 1988 to make a new garden of her own. Katherine Swift takes the reader on a journey through time, back to the forces which shaped the garden, linking the history of those who lived in the same Shropshire house and tended the same red soil with the stories of those who live and work there today. It is an account which spans thousands of years. But is also the story of one life: of relationships tested to breaking point, of despair and loss as well as joy and achievement. It is a 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. The Morville Hours takes the form of the medieval Book of Hours, recalling the monastic past of the house. Each chapter is named after one of the Hours of the Divine Office, and summons vividly to life an hour of the day or night in the garden of today and in the gardens of the past, from the crunch of grass underfoot at midnight on a frosty New Year's Eve to the drip of trees in a melancholy March dawn; from a perfumed May Day morning when the whole world seems sixteen again, to the enervating heat of a Midsummer noon; from the bloom of blue-black damsons picked on a golden September afternoon to the smell of holly and ivy cut in the dusk of a cold Christmas Eve. Together they describe the arc of the gardening year, and the arc of a life, from darkness into light, and from light back into darkness once more.

About this title

Review

This is gardening writing at its best. Swift's prose brings the garden alive in all its details, scents and meanings. Her style is how I imagine the garden to be- evocative, heartfelt and magical.
-- Saturday Guardian, May 17th, 2008

`A journey back in time ... The writing is beautiful and evocative' -- Sunday Times

`A truly remarkable book that is both intimate and universal.' -- Peter Parker, Daily Telegraph

`Richly textured, like her garden, this is an intriguing, magical story of a place, a person and her plants.' -- Anna Pavord

`The Très Riches Heures of garden writing.' -- Sir Roy Strong

`This beautiful and gently compelling book affirms the simple truth that we are part of the earth.'
-- Nicholas Harberd

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 Preserving Our Printed Heritage: Long Room Project at Trinity College Dublin with Anthony Cains and Pergolas, Arbours and Arches: Their History and How to Make Them with Paul Edwards and Jessica Smith. The Morville Hours is her third book.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0747592586
• ISBN 13: 9780747592587
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384