Hillside of Roses continues the story of Susan Irvine’s love affair with roses.
When she had to leave the garden she had created at Bleak House, so graphically described in Garden of a Thousand Roses, she and her husband looked for a house a little nearer the city with a garden that would appeal to roses.
They found Erinvale - a dilapidated old house built on the side of a hill and surrounded by veritable nickels of blackberry, bamboo and Ivy - and she loved it!
So this story starts with a bobcat, dry stone walls and steps, and exhaustive and exhausting clearing. But it ends, as Bleak House ended, with an enchanting and unique garden, mainly of roses. For in this book Susan Irvine extends ours and her knowledge of the flowers that accompany roses - bulbs, perennials and annuals - and of trees, especially of the Rose family, that lend grace and definition to a rose garden.
