Indeed, by the time these words are published, I may already have been discovered floating under a clump of James Brydon nymphaeas, a variety of water-lily which is described in the catalogues as a deep old rose pink that somrtimes seems flushed with crimson.

It suggests that Nichols was not much of a hands-on gardener and his ‘gardening’ books are rather more fictional than they may at first appear. As we all know, the only way to plant daffodils is to pile them onto a tray, and then to run out into the orchard and hurl the tray into the air, planting them exactly where they fall.I’m used to humourous garden literature being more about the journey and the gardener himself rather than what the garden is composed of, so such guidance was surprising but welcome. A later trilogy written between 1951 and 1956 documents his travails renovating Merry Hall (Meadowstream), a Georgian manor house in Agates Lane, Ashtead, Surrey, where Nichols lived from 1946 to 1956.

Nor as season gives way to season, and as the bedroom floor sinks more sharply, tilting at an even acuter angle, does one take so much pleasure in emerging from bed, as it were, on skis, and sliding down a highly polished slope towards a lattice window. User contributions are not fact checked and do not represent the official position of Historic England. After all, sometimes it’s the first volumes in sets that are hardest to find, because so many people think they are going to read the series but then don’t follow through.Helen Chesnut Vancouver Province 19981206 You'll find laughter on the stairs and everywhere else Nichols takes you as he renovates his old home and garden. You don’t go to Beverley Nichols for gardening hints, unless you are a beginner too, but for his enthusiasm, wonderful descriptions and for sheer entertainment. However, his writing is so lovely that it really doesn’t matter if you don’t like gardens – you’re just happy to follow his adventures! Following the end of the war the author moved to Merry Hall (a property in Ashtead, Surrey) leaving Allways, the suject of an earlier successful trilogy.

I am totally in love with Beverley Nichols and was thrilled to find on a trip to London a couple of years ago a hardcover copy of his book “Twenty-five” a collection of anecdotes of people he knew. G. Wodehouse, Beverley Nichols (a man) takes us on the adventures of moving into his new home, Merry Hall, in the English countryside. All round the property there were huge elms, which from today’s perspective, now that these majestic trees have disappeared, sound wonderful. Along the way we meet Oldfield, the very talented but taciturn and somewhat difficult gardener; Gaskin, the long-standing and nearly superhuman manservant; Miss Emily and Our Rose, nosy and perpetually disapproving neighbors; and the beloved cats One and Four. Lol…poor pianist too, he has my sympathy, we had a loft conversion and we take our lives in our hands every time we stand up straight under a window, I swear I have repetitive brain injury syndrome!Whenever I’ve asked about for recommendations of good gardening books, Nichols is invariably mentioned, either for the Merry Hall trilogy or the earlier Down the Garden Path, both semi-fictional chronicles of his gardening efforts at his homes.

That would indicate it’s my computer – but then I don’t know why your computer would see the same thing? There were lots of odd little green arrows all over the place and they don’t seem to be on any other sites I go to, so I don’t think it’s me…. Boards have light edge-wear with slight rubbing to surfaces and spine is presentable with minimal crushing and tanning.We visited a number of gardens, the most famous of which included the Botanical Gardens in Oxford, Stourhead, and Kew, and a handful of less famous ones. He said; ‘ As soon as Constable had finished painting them they should have been rooted out of the British Isles’. That sounds a good description of the prose in which many of the passages in this book will doubtless be written. It’s interesting how two people can have such different experiences of and opinions about particular individuals.