Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3907 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

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

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

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

Customer Reviews

A book to savour
This book is a delight (as is the garden in real life) The author is knowledgeable and paints the most vivid pictures. It is a book about the area of Shropshire she lives in, how it has evolved through the centuries, the house and garden and her sensitive reconstruction of it. She is a lady after my own heart with interests such as history, gardens, cats, flowers, geology, weather....it is so well written, I highly recommend it.

A perfect book
This book is about far more than 'the story of a garden'. For me, it is that rare thing, a book that I did not want to put down and will certainly read again. It is written in such elegant prose with no superfluity almost to the point of self-effacement. The author's knowledge of so many diverse things is a constant delight to encounter. It is about gardening; about astronomy; about the roots of words and language; about the history of Morville and its environs; about the author's place amongst all this and so much more. I read as slowly as I could, not only to savour the text fully but so as to be able to go on sharing Dr.Swift's life and times in rural Shropshire for as long as possible.

Evocative writing
I'm something of an armchair gardener - all the pleasure and none of the work - and this book satisfied my liking to read about beautiful gardens. Its chapters are titled according to the monastic hours, echoing the house's monastic past. The author created a dreamlike garden out of a field beside her Shropshire house. The book is a description of the genesis of that garden with digressions into history, herbalism, religion and the uses and growing habits of the plants she seeks to cultivate. The writing is brilliantly clear and the garden comes to life as you read. There are line drawings in the style of illustrations from a medieval book of hours, though no photographs, together with a plan of the layout of the garden This is a book to be enjoyed by anyone who has an interest in gardening, history or the spirit of human endeavour. To create such a magnificent garden is truly a labour of love