Oh, Joy! Another Book by Beverley Nichols

The colorful dust jacket from The Gift of a Garden. 

Don't worry - I didn't splay the book open; this is the jacket only.

I adore Beverley Nichols, the British author who writes so humorously about gardens, flowers, homes, cats, villages and the eccentric characters he meets. 

The trilogy about his efforts to restore Merry Hall, his Georgian home and its gardens that he owned in post-war England, are just about my favorite books. I own all three (Merry Hall, Laughter on the Stairs, and Sunlight on the Lawn) and often pick up one volume just to read a paragraph or two. Any page will do with Mr. Nichols as his writing is so delightful. I have written about him many times here at Belle, Book, and Candle.

I don't often come across his books, but yesterday I discovered yet another of his delights. The Gift of a Garden or Some Flowers Remembered was on the sale table at the library. I eagerly snatched it up and paid the overwhelming price of one dollar for it!

This is actually a condensation by Mr. Nichols of three of his gardening books starting with Down the Garden Path (which I have read in its entirety and wrote about here and here), moving on to A Thatched Roof, and ending with A Village in a Valley. All tales of his first garden in 1930s England and its cottage. With Mr. Nichols the garden always comes first.

This volume was published in 1972 and has a lengthy forward by the author written Forty Years On. It still has its colorful dust jacket which is amazing as in its previous life - before I got hold of it - it was a book from the collection of the public library in a small town about 30 miles from here. It is a farming community so maybe the inhabitants weren't too interested in reading about growing flowers in Great Britain. All the better for me!

I shall enjoy tripping about the garden again with one of my favorite authors. 

Rocks, Goldfish, and Grapes

Goldfish pond

You might be wondering if I will ever stop swooning over Beverley Nichols. Well, probably not soon.

So far in Down the Garden Path, Mr. Nichols's adventure in the garden of his thatched cottage in Allways, England, I have learned how to build a rockery and what plants to use to create cascades of color. And, if I ever feel up to having a pond dug in my yard, I know just how to fill it with twelve goldfish that will create little black fish and soon I will have an entire pool shimmering with gold. 

Not that I am apt to add either rocks or fish to my garden, but the knowledge of how to do both creates nice tidbits of conversation.

Mr. Nichols's neighbors in this undertaking are not quite as friendly and kind as the ones he inherited with Merry Hall. Most of them seem to irritate him which makes for some dazzling dialogue and internal harrumphing. 

I have even gotten to meet his parents. His father was apparently quite a knowledgeable gardener and has ample opportunities to pass on bits of fatherly wisdom to his more novice son. It was his father who discovered the grape vine almost smothered by briers, jasmine, and ivy. Within a year, Mr. Nichols was enjoying luscious purple grapes from the rescued vine. 

Another totally unexpected garden delight.

Down the Garden Path

Beverley Nichols's garden
in Allways, Huntingdonshire, England

Oh lovely. More Beverley Nichols with Down the Garden Path which was written 20 years before he bought Merry Hall and wrote about restoring that Georgian house and its gardens. 

Now I am transported to 1930s England to a small village which Mr. Nichols calls Allways. He has just purchased - pretty much sight unseen - a thatched cottage on a country lane. He once visited the cottage and remembered the gardens as bursting with blossoms. Not so now. Here is how he describes the garden upon his arrival:

I stepped through the window. Stopped dead. Blinked...Looked again...and the spirit seemed to die within me.

It was a scene of utter desolation. True, it was a cold evening in late March, and the shadows were falling. No garden can be expected to look its best in such circumstances. But this garden did not look like a garden at all. There was not even a sense of order about it. All design was lacking. Even in the grimmest winter days a garden can give an appearance of discipline, and a certain amount of life and colour, no matter how wild the winds nor dark the skies. But this garden was like a rubbish heap.

Oh dear. Mr. Nichols does have his work cut out for him. How wonderful for me. I get to dig about in the garden with him without getting my fingernails dirty. 

British Book Loot

I scored some big time British books today. First, I had lunch with a friend (and a big fan of Beverley Nichols) and she brought me her copy of  his Down the Garden Path which was first published in 1932, long before Merry Hall was even a gleam in his eye.

This is another garden creation story and one that I am not sure I have read. His books are slowly coming back into print (Yea! This one has a publishing date of 2005.), but it wouldn't matter if I had read it eight times before as I know I will be reeling along whatever path he chooses to go down.

Also, in the library's mystery section, there stacked all by themselves on a shelf were three crime thrillers by an author totally unknown to me:  Kyril Bonfiglioli. I love the titles: Don't Point That Thing at Me; After You With the Pistol; and, Something Nasty in the Woodshed (shades of Cold Comfort Farm, yes?).

According to the jacket blurb, this trilogy was a cult classic in Britain in the 1970s and features the Honorable Charlie Mortdecai, a "degenerate aristocrat, amoral art dealer, seasoned epicurean, unwilling assassin, and acknowledged coward."

I checked out all three as I was afraid I would love the first and then would have to wait to get my hands on the second and third books. I hope I am not to be disappointed.