Budding landscape architect Luisa MacGregor is stuck in a rut – she hates her boss, she lives with her sister, and she is still morning the loss of her fiancé many years ago.

So when she is given the opportunity to take on a parcel of land in a deprived area, she sees the chance to build a garden that can make the area bloom.

#TheForgottenGarden @sharongosling #RandomThingsTours @annecater @RandomTTours #blogtour 

Arriving in the rundown seaside town of Collaton on the north-west coast of Cumbria, she realises that her work is going to be cut out for her. But, along with Cas, a local PE teacher, and Harper, a teen whose life has taken a wrong turn, she is determined to get the garden up and running.

So when the community comes together and the garden starts to grow, she feels her luck might changed. Can she grow good things on this rocky ground? And might love blossom along the way…?

My Review

I’m not normally a sentimental old romantic but this book left me an emotional wreck. I cried buckets, but then I did have Covid when I read it, so that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

Luisa MacGregor is in a rut. After her husband Reuben died in an accident, she hasn’t been able to move on. Never having worked as a landscape designer, the degree in which she mastered, she works for a dreadful boss, lives with her sister Jo and has put her love life on hold forever. That is until she is gifted a piece of land in the rundown seaside town of Collaton on the north-west coast of Cumbria. She can turn it into a beautiful community garden – it was Reuben’s dream to do something like this – but can she make it work?

Well if she can’t we wouldn’t have a story, would we. But when she visits the land, she sees that her work is really cut out for her. She finds help in the most unlikely of places. First there is Cas, a local PE teacher who runs a boxing gym for deprived children, and Harper, a teenage girl whose life is taking a bad turn, with a drunken father and a shy, nine-year-old brother Max to care for.

But soon the community rallies round and the garden starts to bloom. I love Luisa’s Potato Planting Party idea (Harper still thinks she’s a loony), where local children (and adults) can plant a ‘seed’ potato or other vegetable, label it with their name and a date and watch it grow.

There’s a lot of information about plants and growing, but not too much, which I loved. It’s full of colour, scent and joy. We can take so much from growing things, and once the locals stop suspecting they are being used as cheap labour, they embrace the project with open arms. For some it changes their whole life. More tears I’m afraid. Though it’s Max that totally had me in the end.

But will it change Luisa’s life? And will romance blossom along with the garden? I certainly hoped it would but I’m keeping schtum.

Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours

About the Author

Sharon started her career as an entertainment journalist, writing non-fiction books
about film and television. She is also the author of multiple children’s books. Sharon
and her husband live in a small village in northern Cumbria where they run a
second-hand bookshop, Withnail Books in Penrith. She can be found on Twitter
@sharongosling.

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