THE PLOTS WHERE WRITERS BL

photographer Richard Hanson document the roles gardens have played in the fiction of 20 influential authors. Some, such as Beatrix Potter’s Hill Top, Virginia Woolf’s Monk’s House and Jane Austen’s gardens, have been chronicled recently, but others – Ted Hughes’s Lumb Bank for instance, Laurence Sterne’s Shandy Hall, and EF Benson’s garden at Lamb House in Rye – provide new insights into their owners’ work and inspiration. Some of these gardens are just the backdrop to a good story, but for other writers, their landscape was the actual source of their fantasies and creations. Few who read Rebecca can doubt that Daphne du Maurier had lived with the blood red rhododendrons that the heroine first sees on arrival at Manderley; and we can all believe that Roald Dahl’s fascination for growing fruit trees triggered the idea for James and the Giant Peach. Though few of these gardens were worked by the writers themselves (John Clare was the only writer who actually earned part of his living as a gardener), their spirit Seeds of fiction: clockwise from left, Dickens’s chalet at Rochester; E F Benson’s view of Rye; Dahl’s Gipsy House; Rupert Brooke’s Grantchester Folly; Beatrix Potter’s Hill Top (below) imbues each place. Bennett told me she loved the special atmosphere of her chosen gardens, especially if she was already a fan of their owner’s work. But she admitted that it wasn’t until she visited the farm at Ellisland, north of Dumfries, that she understood Robert Burns’s poetry. This farm and its landscape were his roots. He wrote: “It is not a palace… but a plain, simple Domicile for Humility and Contentment.” She also enjoyed Laurence Sterne’s Shandy Hall, at Coxwold, near Thirsk in North Yorkshire, even though she confessed to never having got past chapter two of Tristram Shandy. Here, the curators have turned the gardens into a wildlife sanctuary, creating an environment to encourage moths, bees and butterflies. Abundant, slightly eccentric and wild – it echoes Sterne’s view of the world. Although … congratulating Jekka McVicar on selling the onemillionth copy of her Complete Herb Book. this is not a re-creation of his original garden, admirers will pick up references to his life and work. My favourite chapter in the book was on John Ruskin’s garden at Brantwood on Coniston Water, in Lakeland. The views must have been a great respite for Ruskin, when tired of the world. He worked to clear the land, enlarge the harbour and build terraces, setting up a productive patch called The Professor’s Garden, which mixed herbs, fruit and flowers in an experimental way. An