The Garden and The Gate explores the Elizabeth Silverton’s New England Estate: the landscape, histories, and living architecture that shape both novellas:
Through the Yew Hedge and Through the Iron Gate.
As a former garden designer, I’ve always believed landscapes carry memory. Here, I’ll share the botanical knowledge, mythological threads, and horticultural foundations woven through these books. Some posts will focus on specific plants or garden spaces. Others will approach the threshold between history and myth. We adopted or otherwise displaced people understand how institutions shape (and often seal) the stories we rightfully inherit. I hope such passages will resonate.
Although both books can stand alone, Book One provides rich backdrop of the Silverton world and its characters to enhance your experience of Book Two.
I invite you to step through …
Through the Iron Gate: The Rosemere Records
PROLOGUE
This is the Iron Gate I have known since infancy, since Sarah Caldwell carried me through it, and over the Red Arch bridge to campus to show off her adopted baby.
I remember Grandma Helen’s warm hand as I toddled through the Gate onto the Cedar Lane sidewalk. Charles Hawthorn has always tied the unruly rose onto this brick pier.
Over twenty years ago, on an icy morning, Sarah was here to tour the Medieval Garden with James when the latch stuck. As she shouldered into the iron scrollwork, the rose bloomed black on thorny, bare canes.
The plaque on the iron gate read: Please Close Tightly
Today, under this dark autumn sky, long canes oscillate against moving storm clouds. Persistent black rose hips cling. Lifting the latch, I lean into the ancient iron of the place of crossing. The languid complaint of the hinges reminds me that, for those who pass through with patience, the garden passes through them. Ellen’s memory carries me.
Rosmarinus officinalis. Boundary marker, threshold plant. “Plant at entry points where protection is required, but passage must remain possible. The scent steadies tremors in those who cross.”
Excerpt from CHAPTER 1
The Blue Book
I turned fifteen that September, nearly a year since Ellen left me for the second time. Late Autumn light slanted into the Keeper’s Cottage front windows, gilding the weathered oak dining table. Charles unfolded one extra leaf and added three chairs to the Hawthorns’ usual three. I helped Margaret open and smooth her antique linen tablecloth, and lay her best stoneware and stainless steel ware while she lit candles in pewter holders. Fragrant beeswax flames danced over the rustic centerpiece of fall’s final flowers in the blue glass jars Margaret cherished.
I had stopped by the Guest Cottage on the way to my birthday gathering. The morning glory vine cascaded over the porch rails, its blue flowers defying the late September chill. The black rose stem we had found on Ellen’s pillow, a token of her passing the previous Samhain, now held dark hips on long, vigorous canes. Charles had rooted the stem in a pot by the door of my mother’s temporary dwelling. He had brushed frost from that single, surviving bloom. After one season, the black rose now trailed across the railing. James hadn’t yet moved into the Guest Cottage and would be home in the Keeper’s Cottage after his day in the Archives.
Sarah and Helen met me at the Keeper’s Cottage, my second home. Mom was carrying the spice layer cake Helen baked in the Manor’s trusty AGA oven. Margaret was ready with fifteen candles, and she sifted powdered sugar over the top of the fragrant, dark cake.
Ellen’s absence filled the room. At my fourteenth birthday party at the Hawthorn’s home, she had placed a gift on the sideboard and said, “Birthdays matter in our family.” Our family. The words filled my heart. They meant more now, weighed down by the loss of the Fairchilds I knew only from Ellen’s heritage stories.
Cedra had been less visible since the Third Council last Winter Solstice. Estate magic seemed to have waned with as her presence decreased. When I asked after Selwyn and Eleris, Cedra waved away my inquiry: Other duties, other realms. She was either unconcerned or masking trouble. I might catch a glimpse of my Dryad Mentor wearing overalls in the Apothecary Garden, or in the Greenhouse, dressed the Abbess in her brown robe and hood to propagated herbs and roses.
In Elizabeth Silverton’s brick-walled rose garden, Cedra protected her hands and arms with long gloves against the thorny hybrids. She sedately pruned and clipped; wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat to shield her face and silver braids. In her long, blue chambray dress covered by a canvas work apron, she bore a strong resemblance to the Foundress in the old photograph Helen had found in the Archives. then rested on the rustic cedar bench before retreating into the cedar groves.
