‘A really lovely story that will stay with me for a long time.’ NetGalley reviewer
One of my favourite childhood books was The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The idea of a lost garden intrigued me and, many years later, I’ve loved writing The Italian Garden, my own secret garden story.
The idea for the book had been in my mind for some years and, initially, I’d intended to set it in Scotland. I even made a research trip to the Highlands, where I fell in love with the wild landscape, the lochs and the abandoned castles. A loch played a vital role in the story.
I pitched the idea to my agent and publisher, along with several others for new books,. They liked the garden story but chose my proposal for the Spindrift trilogy; a story in three parts about an artists’ community in Cornwall at the turn of the twentieth century.
Three years later the Spindrift trilogy was finished and it was time to pitch my latest ideas to my publisher.
While writing the third book in the Spindrift trilogy, set during the Great War, I became very interested in this pivotal point in history for women and how they had to step into their menfolk’s shoes after they had gone to the battlefields. Once the war was over, many women were left widowed or without the expectation of marriage or a man to provide for them. Once the men that did survive the war returned home, there was the difficulty for women of finding employment to support themselves.
Read here about The ‘Surplus’ Women of WWI
My publisher offered me a contract for a series of three books about the stories of WWI widows. The first is The Lost Daughter of Venice. I chose to set the first in the series in Venice because it’s a wonderfully romantic place for a heroine to make a new life and find love. I suggested that the rest of the series might be located in Italy for the same reason.
It was at this point that I put forward the idea that Book 2 might be the Scottish story that I’d previously pitched, but set beside Lake Como instead of on an imaginary island in a Scottish Loch. I was given the go-ahead and the revised storyline became The Italian Garden. I am currently writing the third book in the series with a working title of The Stars Over Rome set in – you guessed it – Rome!
In June 2022 I visited Bellagio on the shores of Lake Como to research the settings for The Italian Garden. The story’s heroine, Violet, is employed to restore an English-style garden that had been hidden away after a tragic death sixty years before. I wandered around the town, imagining how it might have looked in 1919 and took boat rides along the shore to choose where to set my imaginary garden. I visited the gardens of Villa Melzi and Villa Cipressi in nearby Varenna, taking photographs of the surroundings that brought the story to life for me. Some of these inspired scenes from the book and, especially once you have read The Italian Garden, the gallery of photos below will help you to imagine the settings.
The Italian Garden
Lake Como, 1919.
The garden of Villa Marchese was once a sight to behold. Now, overgrown and unloved, the flowers that once bloomed are nothing but a reminder of the tragic events of Flora Marchese’s death.
When horticulturist Violet Honeywell is commissioned to restore the once exquisite garden, she immediately accepts and sets off from London on a life-changing adventure in Italy.
Violet is enchanted by the Italian way of life, and under the beguiling warmth of the Bellagio sun, she falls in love with a man who can never truly be hers – Flora’s grandson.
But when a discovery at the Lake uncovers buried truths that have haunted the family for decades, Violet starts to delve deeper into the dark secrets of their past, and she quickly begins to realise that not everything in the Marchese family is what it seems . . .
