"As I stand at my kitchen sink and look across at what we
optimistically call our herb garden, to one side I see an old wooden
sign on which are carved the words 'Arthur's Garden'. Arthur doesn't
live here. My wonderful great-uncle died nearly thirty years ago having
spent most of his long life in the Victorian terraced house in which his
mother had brought up eleven children. The sign had stood in the garden
there for decades, a gift to the man who'd always cherished that small
patch of Kent, creating a riot of glorious colour which lit up the row
of long, narrow strips that tumbled down to a line of back gates from
which you could look across the lane to the local coal yard below."
In Arthur's Garden, Pam Rhodes collates a heart-warming collection of
songs and poems, advice and tit bits about the glorious, very ordinary,
English garden - told through the life of her Uncle Arthur. This is a
gardening book, with a story.