Garden

Jane Austen loved a garden. She took a keen interest in flower gardening and kitchen gardening alike.
The Austens grew their own food whenever they could and had flower gardens wherever they lived, at their
parsonage at Steventon in Hampshire, their town gardens at Bath and Southampton, and when
they returned to Hampshire, at their cottage garden at Chawton. In Jane’s letters to her sister Cassandra,
we see her planning the details of these family gardens, discussing the planting of fruit, flowers, and trees
with enthusiasm. In the course of her life, she also had the opportunity to visit many of the grander
gardens of England: her brother’s two estates at Chawton and Godmersham, the manor houses
of friends and family, and probably even the great estate at Chatsworth, assumed by many to be the inspiration for Pemberley…

So begins the book
“In the Garden with Jane Austen,” by Kim Wilson,
author of Tea with Jane Austen,
published by Jones Books [2008]
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“Our Garden is putting in order, by a Man who bears a remarkably good character, has a very fine complexion & asks something less than the first. The shrubs which border the gravel walk he says are only sweetbriar & roses, & the latter of an indifferent sort;–we mean to get a few of a better kind therefore, & at my own particular desire he procures us some Syringas. I could not do without a Syringa, for the sake of Cowper’s Line.–We talk also of a Laburnam.–The Border under the Terrace Wall, is clearing away to receive Currants & Gooseberry Bushes, & a spot is found very proper for raspberries.” – Letter from Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen, February 8, 1807
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