Thank you to my wonderful agent, Emily Sylvan Kim. I still laugh when I think about that long pitch session of not-quite-right ideas that was just wrapping up when I said, “There is this one idea I had about writing a book set around a historic garden that crosses a few time periods.” I’m glad we got there in the end!
To Kate Dresser, Molly Gregory, Jen Bergstrom, Aimée Bell, Jen Long, Abby Zidle, Michelle Podberezniak, Caroline Pallotta, Christine Masters, Jaime Putorti, Anabel Jimenez, Lisa Litwack, and the entire team at Gallery Books: I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to work with you on this book.
My family has been my biggest group of cheerleaders since long before a reader ever held one of my books in their hands. Thank you, Mum, Justine, and Mark, for listening to my frustrations, helping me work through plot points, reading early drafts, and generally being the most wonderful people I could ever have asked for.
I could not have written this book without a lifetime of inspiration from Dad, who let me play around in the dirt and deadhead the roses next to him when I was a little girl. Thank you for lending me your knowledge, playing research assistant, and letting me ransack your gardening books for inspiration. I can’t wait to keep learning from you in your own beautiful garden.
A Gallery Books Reading Group Guide
The Last Garden in England
Julia Kelly
This reading group guide for The Last Garden in England includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
Present day: Emma Lovell, who has dedicated her career to breathing new life into long-neglected gardens, has just been given the opportunity of a lifetime: to restore the gardens of the famed Highbury House, designed in 1907 by her hero, Venetia Smith. But as Emma dives deeper into the gardens’ past, she begins to uncover secrets that have long lain buried.
1907: A talented artist with a growing reputation for her ambitious work, Venetia Smith has carved out a niche for herself as a garden designer to industrialists, solicitors, and bankers looking to show off their wealth with sumptuous country houses. When she is hired to design the gardens of Highbury House, she is determined to make them a triumph, but the gardens—and the people she meets—promise to change her life forever.
1944: When land girl Beth Pedley arrives at a farm on the outskirts of the village of Highbury, all she wants is to find a place she can call home. Cook Stella Adderton, on the other hand, is desperate to leave Highbury House to pursue her own dreams. And widow Diana Symonds, the mistress of the grand house, is anxiously trying to cling to her pre-war life now that her home has been requisitioned and transformed into a convalescent hospital for wounded soldiers. But within the walls of Highbury House’s treasured gardens blooms a secret that will tie these women together for decades.
Topics & Questions for Discussion
1. Each of our heroines—Venetia, Beth, Diana, Stella, and Emma—is a transplant to Highbury. Discuss how each of them found “home” in Highbury. What pivotal moments do they share? How do the relationships they form help them each finally put down roots?
2. Class plays a significant role in each of the time periods. How is Venetia’s relationship with Mr. and Mrs. Melcourt different from the relationship Beth and Stella have with Diana? How is it different from the relationship between Emma and Sydney and Andrew? How are the relationships the same? Are you surprised by how much or how little changed over the course of 114 years?
3. Venetia suffers a miscarriage, Diana loses her son in an accident and adopts another, Stella never wanted to be a mother but finds herself a de facto mother to Bobby, and Emma has a complicated relationship with her own mother. Discuss how each woman navigates motherhood and how expectations of motherhood shift from Venetia’s time to Diana and Stella’s and finally to Emma’s in the present day. Do any of their challenges remind you of your own mother or your experience with motherhood? How have society’s expectations around motherhood changed? How have they stayed the same?
4. All of the women in the novel work and have ambition. Venetia writes that she appreciates how Matthew “doesn’t treat me as though I’m made of bone china or an oddity playing at being a gardener” (page 126). Stella expresses to Diana, “I wanted to go to London. To work and then maybe do more” (page 304). Diana herself is counseled by Father Devlin, “you are a woman of independent means. You may choose to live the life you want to lead. You could play the harp at every hour of the day, or you could run this hospital” (page 293). On Beth’s first day as a land girl, she “felt vital and useful for the first time in a long time” (page 33). And in present day, Emma proudly runs her own business. Discuss how each of these women breaks from expectation in order to pursue her ambitions. How are their struggles the same, even a hundred years apart? How are they different?
5. Matthew and Henry (and Charlie, to some extent) support the creativity and ambition of Venetia and Emma as they craft the gardens of Highbury House. Compare these relationships, and how these men assume a role secondary to the women. How does their support further the visions of each woman? Can you think of moments of hindrance?
6. Diana and Cynthia have a tense relationship. Cynthia is critical of Diana’s grief, and Diana strains under Cynthia’s attempts to seize control of her home and hospital in spite of Diana having once “been convinced that her future sister-in-law was perfect” (page 263). Discuss how this relationship differs from the other female relationships in 1944 (Diana and Stella, Stella and Beth, Beth and Ruth) and what you think it reveals about each of them. Where does their contempt come from, and how do they each use it to compensate for frustrations they have? Is their tension ultimately productive?
7. Which time period do you wish you could visit? Who from the novel would you most like to meet? Why?
8. Highbury House and its gardens is the only constant through each of the timelines in the novel. How is the house a character in its own right? What does it teach and give to all of the people who call it home—temporarily or otherwise? How is the pull of it the same or different for each of the characters? Are there any characters for whom it is more a prison than a sanctuary? Is there a place in your life that you feel has given you purpose, or perhaps driven you to look for more?
9. As Venetia is designing Highbury House gardens, Matthew discovers her theme for each of the garden rooms, remarking: “Each room represents the life of a woman. The tea garden is where polite company comes to meet, all with the purpose of marrying a girl off. The lovers’ garden speaks for itself, I should think, and the bridal garden is her movement from girl to wife. The children’s garden comes next. I would guess that the lavender walk represents her femininity, and the poet’s garden stands for a different sort of romance than the lovers’ garden.… Aphrodite, Athena, Hera. All of the pieces in the statue garden will be depictions of the female form” (page 149). And Venetia reveals that the winter garden represents her death. Discuss how each of our heroines—Venetia, Beth, Diana, Stella, and Emma—fulfill each of these seasons of a woman’s life. How do their embodiments of these stages differ? How are they the same? Is there a universality to their experiences of womanhood that are reflected in the garden plans?