The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,47

quite spry, but her real love is the vegetable garden and the greenhouses, which are outside the Grace Garden itself, through a gate at the bottom. I’ll show you in a bit, but first, perhaps we’d better go to the office, where you can see a blown-up photo of the original plan.’

He strode off through the gate and took the path past the Alchemist rose to the arched entrance, trailing me and the peacocks behind him.

Last time I’d visited the courtyard I’d been too focused on the coming interview with Ned to take in what was there, so this time I stared around curiously. It was a large, rectangular cobbled yard, the brick walls a little lower than those around the garden. Straight ahead was another arch, this one with a closed gate, which must lead to Old Grace Hall, for I could see the twisty chimney-pots and roof above it.

To my right, Ned’s office and a long building with a sign on the door proclaiming it to be ‘The Potting Shed, Private’, stood at right angles to each other.

There were more buildings against the wall on the other side and a smaller gate, presumably the visitors’ entrance. But there was no time to linger, for Ned had already thrown open the door of his office and vanished inside. I hurried after him, closing the door on the peacocks.

‘Here we are,’ said Ned, when I joined him in front of the corkboard wall. ‘The original plan of the apothecary garden, begun in the late seventeenth century.’

I moved closer. ‘I spotted this yesterday and thought that’s what it might be. You’re very lucky to have it!’

I studied the unusual layout, with a large circle within the square and a criss-cross of paths to the four corners.

‘I know I’m lucky to have it – and it’s a very early example of an apothecary or physic garden, especially so far out of London. I suppose I’d better give you a potted family history, so you can understand the context.’

I dragged my gaze away from the plan with an effort and said, ‘Go on then, I’m listening.’

‘The Grace family were local minor gentry – Grace was a corruption of a Norman name – and as the family fortunes flourished, due to a tendency to marry money, they remodelled the original house that was here into the Tudor one you see now.’

‘I’m sure this flat area must have been inviting for building on, but how did they get across the river, before the bridge was built?’ I asked curiously.

‘There was an earlier one of slabs on stone piers. You can just see the remains of it above the present bridge, where the channel narrows.’

‘I wouldn’t have fancied that on a dark night, with the Devil’s Cauldron waiting below!’

‘Nor me,’ he agreed. ‘Anyway, a bit later on, the then Grace heir excelled himself by marrying into the minor nobility, to a Miss Lordly, and the family decided this house wasn’t good enough any more and built Risings Manor on the hill opposite. That was when they changed their name to Lordly-Grace, too.’

‘How very pretentious! What happened to this house?’

‘They sold it to a Grace cousin called Nathaniel, a rollicking Elizabethan character, somewhere between an adventurer and a pirate – the distinction was a bit hazy back then. He’d made enough out of it to buy the Hall, marry and settle down here. And this is the point where it gets interesting, Marnie, because one of his descendants married a Tradescant, which is where the beginning of the Grace Garden lies.’

‘Not one of the famous London plant-collecting Tradescant family?’

‘The very same, and she too had a fascination with plants and their medicinal and culinary uses. Not long after the marriage, the walled garden that already existed here was enlarged and the plan drawn up.’

‘She must have been a girl after my own heart!’

‘She was certainly interesting. Uncle Theo found several of her letters about plants to and from her relatives in London, together with the garden plan, in a chest full of family documents. She corresponded with other keen gardeners up and down the country, too, and often exchanged seeds and cuttings. It gives us an idea of what she was growing here, though of course there were already herbals in print, like Culpeper’s, listing hundreds of plants and their uses.’

‘It’s wonderful to still have all that original material, though,’ I said. ‘It’ll really interest the visitors.’

‘I’ve put a bit about it in the garden guide we’re