The Last Garden in England(2)
Even standing amid the dust of a half-finished house, the Wilcoxes exuded polish, education, class. They were a golden couple, which—experience had taught her—made them all the more likely to be huge pains. However, they were paying customers who wanted a restoration project, not a brand-new garden, and they hadn’t even flinched when Emma had given them a quote.
“Andrew let me convince him that we should be on-site through the restoration work.” Sydney bit her full lower lip. “It’s been a bigger project than even we expected.”
Andrew shook his head. “Six months they said.”
“How long has it been going on now?” Emma asked.
“Eighteen months, and we’ve only done up one wing of the house. There’s so much still left,” said Sydney. “Darling, I was just going to take Emma for a tour of the garden.”
“I don’t want to bother you,” Emma said quickly. “I’ve been working off Charlie’s specs. I’m sure I can find my own way.”
“I insist,” said Sydney. “I’d love to hear your first impressions, and I have a few ideas.”
Ideas. All her clients had ideas, but so few of them were good. Like the man outside of Glasgow who insisted he wanted a tropical garden in the middle of Scotland despite her warnings that it would require intensive work to maintain. He’d called her six months after Turning Back Thyme had packed up and moved on to another job, complaining that every single one of his banana plants had died over the winter and wanting them replaced for free. She’d politely referred him to her contract, which stated she was not responsible for neglect on the part of the owner.
At least Highbury House would be different in that regard—a respite from all of the contemporary design projects she took on to keep the business afloat. A historic garden of some importance that had lain virtually abandoned for years, the Wilcoxes wanted to see it bloom again just as it had when it had been created in 1907.
Although they took up time and research well beyond her modern projects, Emma loved nothing more than sinking her spade into a restoration. She’d done battle against poured-concrete patios and cursed stretches of lawn previous owners had laid down because it was “easier” than doing any real gardening. In one particularly egregious instance, she’d ripped out a half acre of artificial lawn installed in the 1970s and re-created the eighteenth-century French knot garden through which ladies in powdered wigs had once strolled. She could make long-forgotten gardens bloom out of pastures and paddocks. She could rewind the clock. Make things right again.
Still, she couldn’t live on challenge alone, and since Sydney would be paying her bills for nearly a year, she would humor Sydney’s ideas. Within reason.
“I’d be glad of the company,” she said, putting as much enthusiasm as she could into her voice.
“Are you coming, darling?” Sydney asked Andrew.
“I would, but Greg said something about floor joists earlier,” he said.
“What about them?” Sydney asked.
Andrew gave a half laugh and pushed his glasses up. “Apparently we don’t have any in the music room. They’ve rotted straight through.”
Emma’s brows rose as Sydney’s mouth formed an O.
Andrew waved a goodbye, darted around the ladder, and disappeared through one of the doors off the entryway.
“I’m afraid that’s been happening a lot recently.” Sydney pointed to a pair of French doors that had been stripped of their paint and looked like they were waiting for a good sanding. “The easiest access to the garden is just through here.”
Emma followed her employer out onto a wide veranda. Some of the huge slabs of slate were cracked underfoot and weeds pushed up through the gaps, but there was no denying the view’s beauty. A long lawn rolled down a gentle hill to trees lining a calm lake. She squinted, conjuring up the old photograph she’d found in the Warwick Archives showing the garden during a party in the 1920s. There had once been a short set of stairs down to a reflecting pool surrounded by two quarter circles of box as well as a long border that ran the eastern length of the property. Now there was nothing but a stretch of uninterrupted lawn that held none of the charm that surely would have imbued Venetia Smith’s original design.
Excitement pricked the back of her neck. Emma was going to restore a Venetia Smith garden. Long before she’d become famous in America, the Edwardian garden designer had designed a handful of gardens here in Britain. Emma owed her career to a BBC program about the restoration of Venetia’s garden at Longmarsh House. At seventeen, she’d insisted that her parents take her there on holiday. While most of her friends were thinking about where they might go to university, she stood in that restored garden and realized what she wanted to do with her life.
As they descended the veranda steps, Sydney gestured to the western edge of the lawn. “There isn’t much of the shade border left.”
Emma walked to one of the gnarled trunks that made up the long straight path that ran the length of the great lawn. The cold, rough bark felt comfortingly familiar under her hand. “The trees along the lime walk look as though they’ve been well maintained.”
“That would be the garden service. Dad kept on the same company that Granddad employed. They do what they can to keep things tidy,” said Sydney.
Tidy but nothing more.