Virginia Woolf’s Garden: An Intimate View
Posted in Shop/Book Reviews on December 23 2013, by Joyce Newman
Joyce H. Newman holds a Certificate in Horticulture from The New York Botanical Garden and has been a Tour Guide for over seven years. She is a blogger for Garden Variety News and the former editor of Consumer Reports GreenerChoices.org.
For gardeners and those who love Virginia’s Woolf’s literary works, there’s a gorgeous new book with exquisite contemporary photographs, written by Caroline Zoob, called Virginia Woolf’s Garden: The Story of the Garden at Monk’s House, out this month from London publisher Jacqui Small LLP ($50.00) and available in NYBG’s Shop in the Garden.
Monk’s House in the Sussex village of Rodmell was Virginia and Leonard Woolf”s country retreat from 1919 until Virginia died in 1941. She wrote most of her major novels at Monk’s House and drew inspiration and comfort from the lush foliage and beckoning brick pathways weaving through various ‘garden rooms.’ A terrace with millstones, a fishpond garden, an Italian garden, a walled garden, and a flower walk were all created by the Woolfs over the years, starting from an overgrown three quarters of an acre behind a little house, with an orchard and an old tool shed that became Virginia’s writing room.
Author Caroline Zoob and her husband Jonathan actually lived and worked at Monk’s house for more than a decade beginning in 2000 as tenants of the National Trust, planting and tending the gardens, looking after all the buildings, and opening the house twice a week to the paying public. Their deep understanding of the place and what it feels like to physically be there makes this book very special.