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The roses had been tended by Orwell’s hands. Still thriving, their paper-thin petals offered continuity and connection
REVIEW
What Orwell’s garden can teach us about beauty and endurance
In the spring of 1936, as he settled down to write The Road to Wigan Pier , essayist and polemicist George Orwell planted roses in the garden of his new home: a cottage in the village of Wallington, Hertfordshire.
In the autumn of 2017, as she was recovering from illness, essayist and polemicist Rebecca Solnit visited that cottage and found the roses – a traditional symbol of evanescence – flowering almost 70 years after his death.
Those roses filled Solnit with a “joyous exultation”. They had been tended by Orwell’s hands; their scent had filled his nostrils. Still thriving, they formed “a sort of saeculum”, their paper-thin petals offering continuity and connection.
She was also struck .
