BOOK CLUB
BETH LYNCH’ S CAMBRIDGE
THE ARCHITECT ON CASTLE HILL
I met my husband Shaun here in the nineties, when we were students and the pub was the County Arms. We go here from time to time, and though the pub is scrubbed, remodelled, airy and renamed, the old panelling is familiar beneath its light paint, and we can still pinpoint the table positions where certain evenings were spent with friends more than 20 years ago. HARVEY & SON I was overjoyed, returning to Cambridge after all these years away, to find the stall still thriving. Jo Harvey’s expertise and infectious enthusiasm make it impossible to walk past without buying a gaura or salvia (which I’ve done recently despite having, as yet, no soil in which to plant them). facebook.com/HarveyandSon MIDAN WORLD FOODS We used this Histon Road shop as students, and when we were first married we lived nearby. We are so fortunate to have it as our local shop again. It’s a treasure trove of subcontinental, Middle Eastern and Italian ingredients, an amazing range of breads and flatbreads, bunches of the freshest coriander – and the staff are so friendly.
Now resident in Cambridge after a long absence from our city, Beth is enjoying the prospect of building another garden in the space behind her new home. “It’s the blankest canvas I’ve ever had. I’m finding that incredibly exciting, but also rather difficult: there’s so little to start with,” she says. “There’s an iris I was going to bin, with very tired-looking leaves. I didn’t get around to removing it and it’s emerged with these unbelievably rich, dark purple, velvety flowers – so I’ll be keeping that. It has to have a quince tree, and there’ll be a bit of grass left, full of clover and violets – but yes, I haven’t quite worked it out yet.” One section of Beth’s book sees her express fondness for a specific plant stall found in Cambridge’s central market, and it comes as no surprise to discover – despite a lack of space in which to plant anything – the author has paid multiple visits to her much-loved plant suppliers. “I’ve already been there!” she laughs. “It’s Mrs Jo Harvey, of Harvey & Son: they’re the most wonderful plant people. The stall I used to go to when I was in Cambridge all those years ago is still there. I hadn’t seen her for nine, ten years – we’re both a bit older, but their plants are still amazing. I haven’t been able to buy as many yet as I’d like to, but I’ve succumbed to temptation and already have a few things in pots on the patio – she managed to flog me an amazing salvia… It’s lovely that they’re still there: it’s a real sense of reconnecting.” It’s fair to say that Beth’s book has a whole host of characters besides the author and her husband: the hellebores, aquilegia, geraniums and other plants found in her gardens are so vividly and compellingly drawn, it’s hard not to stop reading and note them down. One of the key motifs of the book concerns the treasured cuttings, seeds and sometimes entire plants that Beth saves from her parents’ garden before selling the house,
and their continued adventures either in Switzerland or in the care of friends and family. It’s extremely gratifying to hear these plants and their descendants have already found their way back to Beth’s new Cambridge space. “All of the species have survived, one way or another, and will be the core plants in the new garden,” says Beth. “There was a bit of an issue with a hellebore, a treasured plant of my father’s – I passed it on to a very dear friend who lives just outside Cambridge, and by her own admission she put it in entirely the wrong place. It needed damp shade, but instead it sat on a patio in baking sun: we had quite a chuckle about that while the book was being written. Last week, we dug up the hellebore and it’s become the most enormous, thriving plant you can imagine. It’s now in a pot, in a shady space on my patio, waiting to be planted. It’s the original that had roots in the soil in my parents’ garden – that feels significant. Also my friend is just really relieved: she said, ‘Oh, I can finally sleep again – it’s not such a burden!’” Beth laughs. Where the Hornbeam Grows is a contemplative read that will be particularly enjoyed by keen gardeners and nature lovers, but even the least green-fingered reader will warm to Beth’s memorable, almost poetic meditations on family, sense of self and finding one’s place in the world. A book to be enjoyed in the summer, in as green a space as possible. l
“Writing was something that I found bizarrely rooting”
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C A M B S E D I T I O N . C O . U K
J U L Y 2 0 1 9
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