Lynch moved from England to Switzerland when her husband took a job in Zurich. Suddenly she had to navigate daily life, including frosty locals and convoluted bureaucracy, in a second language. The wording of her residency permit pigeonholed her in a way she was uncomfortable with: “a foreign housewife of no specific religion.” The sense of displacement was exacerbated by her lack of access to a garden. Gardening had always been a whole-family passion, and after her parents’ death their Sussex garden was lost to her. When she left for Switzerland she deposited cuttings from her garden and her parents’ with friends, with no idea when she might again have a garden of her own. As it turned out, two years later she and her husband moved to a cottage in French-speaking western Switzerland and cultivated a garden idyll, but it wasn’t enough to neutralize their loneliness, and they returned to England five years later.

Much of what Lynch has to say about trying to find genuine connections as an expatriate rang true for me – and I realized how lucky I am to have never had a language barrier to contend with. She describes the gardens she has known in such rich, intimate detail. (Even though she says it’s impossible to be an armchair gardener, I like reading about gardens more than I do actually working in my own.) Paradise Lost and Milton’s circumstances provide an unexpected metaphorical palette, and again and again Lynch asks what it means for a person or a plant to be transplanted somewhere new, and what it takes to thrive. Her elegant writing reminded me of Diana Athill’s and Penelope Lively’s, and the exploration of the self through the garden is reminiscent of Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29.

Fellow gardeners will be familiar with the saying ‘Right plant, right place’. What we learn (usually through bitter experience) is that, however hard you try, if you put a plant in a place with the wrong amount of light, moisture or soil acidity it will never thrive. In Where The Hornbeam Grows, the author explores this notion through her own personal experience of being uprooted from her accustomed habitat and transplanted to somewhere new and entirely alien – in this case, Switzerland.

In the first part of the book, following the death of her parents, the author bids a nostalgic farewell to the garden where she grew up and makes the move to Zurich in Switzerland with her partner, Shaun. In a section entitled ‘Uprooted’, she describes the difficulty of adjusting to life in Zurich – the grayness and lack of green space – and to being without a garden, just a window box. The reader gets a very real sense of how important gardening and being in touch with nature has been to the author’s well-being. It’s in her DNA, as it were.

It becomes apparent that it’s not only the absence of a garden that contributes to the feeling of displacement. The author writes with insight (and some humour) about the difficulties she and Shaun face in integrating into Swiss society, whether that’s struggling to pick up linguistic nuances or navigating the intricacies of social customs and manners. I have to say it presents a picture of Switzerland as insular and rather unwilling to openly embrace people of other nations that I found quite surprising.

A trip to the Jura sees the couple finally light upon a place where they feel they can live and, importantly, build a home and a garden. It’s a place to which the author feels an immediate emotional connection. Beth Lynch describes how, over the next few years, she starts to create a garden. She writes evocatively about the plants, local wildlife and surrounding landscape.

There are many references to Milton’s Paradise Lost throughout the book, a work which the author has studied extensively. (The detailed references at the back of the book are testament to this academic rigour.) Talking about the garden in the Jura, she notes, ‘I think the garden led me back into Paradise Lost… because it is the poem of a gardener. One who gardens, who has an affinity for gardens, who thrives on small negotiations with the natural world. Organising, tending, eliciting, pruning: a garden, a poem.’

Although the author and her partner have found a home and a garden in an area they love, they still find themselves, despite their best efforts, set apart from the local community, what the author describes as ‘a cultural disconnect’. In the section entitled ‘The Limits of Paradise’ the author reflects on her realisation that she is lonely. ‘Not just alone… Lonely: lacking ‘conversation’, a being amongst people.’ She admits ‘in time you must acknowledge that you have failed to integrate, for this society is at odds with who you are… It’s a pity, and it is nobody’s fault.’ The couple reluctantly conclude they must leave Switzerland. ‘This is why, even with one another for society, paradise is not enough for Adam and Eve. Paradise is not enough for anyone.’

I loved Where The Hornbeam Grows not just because, as a gardener myself, I can’t imagine not being able to tend and nurture plants, but also because it provides a fascinating insight into the challenges people can face when moving to a new country. It’s also beautifully written with lovely descriptions of plants and the natural world.

A beautiful written book and a wonderful story.
Thank you to both NetGalley and Orion Publishing for my eARC of this book in exchange for my honest unbiased review