The Disenchanted Garden - a new book by Brian W Taylor

    

An eighteenth century landscape garden, with lake, woodlands, statuary and buildings designed by Humphry Repton, Middleton Hall, as envisaged by its owners, and set out by its designer, was meant to be an enchanted garden in every sense of the word, but even before it was swallowed up by urban sprawl during the twentieth century, something had gone seriously wrong with that ideal.

The Disenchanted Garden. The lives and loves of people in a suburban park during the summer of 1983 and their involvement in events surrounding a tree planting ceremony to commemorate a sharp tongued local councillor's twenty-five years of service.

The e-book and paperback versions of this poignant tragicomedy about a group of painfully mismatched workmates are available from Amazon Kindle. Don't miss your chance to read one or other of them.

 During the 1960s 70s and 80s I worked for several different local authorities in London, and in a lot of different parks as apprentice, gardener, and then supervisor. Not all of my fellow workers had set out to follow a career in horticulture, some were failed actors, some were painters working in the parks during the summer months to earn enough money to spend the winter months painting, some were rehabilitating criminals who had served their time, some were just doing the job until something better came along - except that sometimes it never did. Some were just there to take advantage of the security of a job for life on the council, which was one of the perks in those days.
Job security, indeed the job itself, disappeared during the years when Mrs Thatcher ran the country, and you won't find parks or their staff like those depicted in my book anymore. Some might say that's as good thing, but I think it's a pity that that way of life has gone.
The people and events depicted in the book, those which really happened, are taken from several of the parks in which I worked and added to those which are purely fiction to make a story, the ones which are pure fiction are simply that. I hope they all gel together to make a story people will enjoy. It always makes me nostalgic for those times when I read the story again, and I do from time to time, because I enjoy it.