“To be happy for an hour, have a glass of wine. To be happy for a day, read a book. To be happy for a week, take a wife. To be happy forever, make a garden.” ANON

Out of sorrow come the green shoots of new life…

Molly’s perfect life comes crashing down following the unexpected death of her husband David. She is left alone with a big old house to maintain, finances in disarray and her hopes for happiness in a heap. But Molly is a survivor. Despite objections from her two daughters, Molly fears that the only solution will be to sell their beloved home. But as she finds herself drawn to the old neglected and overgrown walled rose garden and the dilapidated gardener’s cottage attached, she suddenly sees a future as she decides to restore them.
As the rose garden takes on a new life and starts to bloom again, Molly finds that she can look to the future with new confidence and hope.
By the number one bestselling author of Mother of the Bride and Three Women.

About The Rose Garden

Old houses and gardens have always had their own strange fascination, whether we are fortunate to live or stay in them or just visit them or simply catch a glimpse over a garden wall or a long driveway of a beautiful house from another era or a drift of daffodils or avenue of bright rhododendrons.
Old houses have their stories, their ghosts, their past as new generations and new families live in them and do their best to preserve and maintain them.
Each house in its own way is a story waiting to be told…
Love, loss, consequences, family and change are all elements that combine to make a story.
An old Irish country house and its up keep is a constant pride but also a pressure in these modern times. Then there are the gardens that come with such houses… lawns and avenues and ponds and lakes and walks and walled gardens and kitchen gardens to be cared for… and a rose garden.
I knew that in my book and in ‘Mossbawn’ the house I created there had to be a rose garden.
So there was a rose garden… abandoned, neglected, destroyed but nature has a way of overcoming immense obstacles as Molly Hennessy herself discovers as she sets to replant the rose garden and restore it to its former glory.

Rose gardens have always had a huge attraction for me as growing up my parents’ large garden was mostly given over to growing roses. When my sister and I played ‘horses’ we practiced jumping over beds of thorny rush bushes hoping not to get caught and tangled.
Everyday my father wore a rose from his garden in his button hole. Winter desolation and snow forcing him to opt for a jaunty sprig of purple heather rather than his usual rose bud. Our house was filled with roses. They were everywhere…vases, bowls, jugs, and glassware filled with reds and pinks and yellows and roses of all colours… their scent filling the rooms. It seemed like summer always…

Marita Conlon McKenna, June 2013