In Santa Montefiore’s novel, a city woman moved to the country restores her family and the gardens help restore her and her family.  

“I particularly love Prince Charles’ gardens at Highgrove,” says The French Gardener author Santa Montefiore. “I used two of them as bases for the gardens in my novel. I've always loved gardens. My parents live on a beautiful estate in Hampshire, west of London. I grew up in the countryside.”

   In The French Gardener, Miranda and David moved to the country to give their troubled son Gus a better life. David works in the city and is only home on weekends. Their daughter Storm adjusts better than her brother to country life. They’re both bored. Miranda feels the dilapidated gardens are like her marriage, falling apart. Jean-Paul, the French gardener, returns. As they rebuild the gardens together, Miranda faces the challenges in her marriage.

   “My father spent a lot of time on the farm or playing tennis, golf, rackets,” says Montefiore. “I noticed them go their separate ways. A man came to rent one of the cottages. It turned out he was a gardener.  My parents began to develop the garden with him, together. They brought the vegetable garden back to life and all the things my mother had dreamed of doing but never had the manpower to do. I noticed the whole family come together in the gardens.”

   The garden is a reflection of life, the changing seasons like the ebb and flow of life. The four seasons are the anchor of the story. It travels back and forth twenty years, from 1980s to 2006. The French gardener, Miranda and Ava are the main characters. Ava was the former mistress of the house, a woman who had an affair with the Jean-Paul the gardener. You get caught up in both storylines. The book starts slowly. Jean-Paul doesn’t show up until page 66. Once there, Jean-Paul propels the story forward and backwards.

   “In the UK my agent sent my first book to lots of publishers and there was a bidding war, which was very satisfactory,” says Montefiore. “I then met two who offered around the same amount of money, and chose Hodder & Stoughton. In the USA, Simon & Schuster are fantastic and have such a good eye for covers. They’re so much more imaginative than the covers in the UK.”

   Santa Montefiore’s agent is Sheila Crowley is at Curtis Brown. “I sent my manuscript to four agents back in 1999 and was rejected by three, say Montefiore. “Jo Frank at AP Watt agreed to take me on.  When she left Sheila took her place. Then Sheila moved to Curtis Brown this year and I went with her.”

   “For this book I didn't have to do a great deal of research,” says Montefiore. “I read up about gardens and spent an afternoon with Georgia Langton, a professional gardener and a friend of my mother.”

   Santa Montefiore is based in London. She was born in England and has written ten books. She has two children who love to garden on weekends and holidays. “Every time they hear the roar of the tractor they run off to hang on it like monkeys,” says Montefiore. “They look for snails, caterpillars and ants. They spend more time in nature than in front of the TV or computer and are healthier because of it.”

The French Gardener: A Novel by Santa Montefiore

Trade Paperback, 432 pages, Publisher, Touchstone, June 2, 2009, Language: English

ISBN: 9781416543749