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Perch Hill: a New Life
The Smell of Summer Grass is based partly on the long out of print 'Perch Hill'. It is the story of the years spent in finding and building a personal Arcadia, sometimes a dream, sometimes a nightmare, by writer Adam Nicolson and his wife, cook and gardener, Sarah Raven.Adam Nicolson was determined to leave metropolitan life but the rundown farm in the Sussex Weald was not quite what he bargained for. The scenery was breathtaking and the rural neighbours charming but the hard end of real farming life was another matter - mud, cold, planning regulations and unco-operative livestock.But for the reader the whole enterprise is full of delight thanks to Adam Nicolson's frank, witty and touching, it is a testament to the importance of holding on to your dreams and turning them into reality.
304 pages, Paperback
First published April 29, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
June 26, 2014
This is Nicoloson's story of the house that he bought in the Sussex Weald, Perch Hill, with his wife Sarah Raven. He had just stumbled out from a divorce and was looking to put roots down in a place they could call their own in a part of the English country that he know and loves.
They pull everything together to buy the farm, and set about making it work for them as a part time farm and Sarah cutting garden business, He writes about the successes and the failures as they transform their landscape and property from a shabby home to a warm home. They struggle at times finically, but as Sarah's business grows, they have more opportunity to improve their lot there.
The house is deeply rooted in the landscape, being 400 or so years old, and the farm has existed for 100 years or so. Nicoloson tells of how he brings the practices of the past into the modern era from the hedges to the meadows that he brings back. He grew up loving this part of the weald too, as his family are from Sissinghurst, located around 15 miles away, and he feels a responsibility to those past peoples to use the land responsibly.
Was on the verge of giving this four stars, it is more of a 3.5. I liked the writing style and the way that he writes about this landscape, the people and places is very evocative, but I didn't think it was quite a good as Sea Room: An Island Life which is a wonderful book. I can recommend it if you love the Sussex countryside, as he brings it to life in a wonderful way.
They pull everything together to buy the farm, and set about making it work for them as a part time farm and Sarah cutting garden business, He writes about the successes and the failures as they transform their landscape and property from a shabby home to a warm home. They struggle at times finically, but as Sarah's business grows, they have more opportunity to improve their lot there.
The house is deeply rooted in the landscape, being 400 or so years old, and the farm has existed for 100 years or so. Nicoloson tells of how he brings the practices of the past into the modern era from the hedges to the meadows that he brings back. He grew up loving this part of the weald too, as his family are from Sissinghurst, located around 15 miles away, and he feels a responsibility to those past peoples to use the land responsibly.
Was on the verge of giving this four stars, it is more of a 3.5. I liked the writing style and the way that he writes about this landscape, the people and places is very evocative, but I didn't think it was quite a good as Sea Room: An Island Life which is a wonderful book. I can recommend it if you love the Sussex countryside, as he brings it to life in a wonderful way.
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June 7, 2020A story in the true Nicolson style about a man in the dumps, finding a home to build as a cocoon around himself, earthing himself and healing himself in the process. Nice thoughts about the interconnectedness with nature.
'I look at his rootedness - he is like human carrot -'.
'Surely the greatest pleasure in life is the process, simply, of getting to know, the sense that your mind, even the whole of your life, is in a small way at that very moment enlarging, like an amoeba putting out a foot and flowing its whole body into and through that extension of itself'.
'That is what springtime is: gratitude married to amazement'.
'I look at his rootedness - he is like human carrot -'.
'Surely the greatest pleasure in life is the process, simply, of getting to know, the sense that your mind, even the whole of your life, is in a small way at that very moment enlarging, like an amoeba putting out a foot and flowing its whole body into and through that extension of itself'.
'That is what springtime is: gratitude married to amazement'.
September 11, 2012
An excellent read, surprisingly dark in places.
January 26, 2014
3.5
Nicolson is a deep thinker and has the enviable ability to put those thoughts and feelings into words. His mind goes off at all sorts of tangents but we are able to follow him.
Nicolson is a deep thinker and has the enviable ability to put those thoughts and feelings into words. His mind goes off at all sorts of tangents but we are able to follow him.
July 21, 2016
A love song to the English countryside and a way of life that is disappearing. Highly recommended.
July 11, 2021
3.75
This book transplants you to the living/working/taking back of an English countryside farm. Bought to restore and to make into a beautiful life, with a “beating heart”.
This book transplants you to the living/working/taking back of an English countryside farm. Bought to restore and to make into a beautiful life, with a “beating heart”.
June 9, 2019
I like Adam Nicholson’s books, really loved his Seabird’s Cry, was inspired by Sea Window and fortified by The Mighty Dead. The prose is stylish without the style becoming the substance. Because there’s plenty of substance, too. Real life, lived things, important ideas and plans and things I can relate to. Or so I thought!
In this book the scion of Sissinghurst buys a run-down small-holding at great expense, his doctor-wife gives up her job to write a book, they’re in hock to just about everyone... but then on page 48 we’re casually introduced to the nanny. Hang on! I can just about imagine the financial hardships involved in buying your dream house, the belt-tightening that might accompany new, straightened circumstances especially when an important (and not insignificant) income source (a doctor’s salary) is lost. But a nanny? Really?
Later, he puts bells on his sheep. And wonders whether to admit doing so when BBC Radio 4 come round to record ‘On Your Farm’. Not yer average Sussex smallholder, then! Of course not. That’s not the point. The point is Nicolson writes honesty and memorably about all sorts of things, and you always learn something from his books without ever seeming to be taught. In this case I learnt that ‘nonino’ (as in As You Like It’s ‘Hey and a ho and a hey nonino’) is 16th century for a bit of how’s your father. Who knew! Well, probably most of you but it has escaped me. As had the fact that ‘economics’ derived from the Greek ‘oiko-nomos’: the law of the house.
All in all, though, the book is like a pot-boiler compared to many of his others. And had it not been by him there are elements that would be seriously annoying. But worth reading. Always worth reading.
In this book the scion of Sissinghurst buys a run-down small-holding at great expense, his doctor-wife gives up her job to write a book, they’re in hock to just about everyone... but then on page 48 we’re casually introduced to the nanny. Hang on! I can just about imagine the financial hardships involved in buying your dream house, the belt-tightening that might accompany new, straightened circumstances especially when an important (and not insignificant) income source (a doctor’s salary) is lost. But a nanny? Really?
Later, he puts bells on his sheep. And wonders whether to admit doing so when BBC Radio 4 come round to record ‘On Your Farm’. Not yer average Sussex smallholder, then! Of course not. That’s not the point. The point is Nicolson writes honesty and memorably about all sorts of things, and you always learn something from his books without ever seeming to be taught. In this case I learnt that ‘nonino’ (as in As You Like It’s ‘Hey and a ho and a hey nonino’) is 16th century for a bit of how’s your father. Who knew! Well, probably most of you but it has escaped me. As had the fact that ‘economics’ derived from the Greek ‘oiko-nomos’: the law of the house.
All in all, though, the book is like a pot-boiler compared to many of his others. And had it not been by him there are elements that would be seriously annoying. But worth reading. Always worth reading.
April 17, 2020
Loved this book for the quality of the writing and the quality of life it revealed
February 6, 2020
Beautiful writing about his experiences bringing a derelict old Sussex farm back to a new future which embraces its past. He's a toff (Lord someone or other) writes for the Torygraph, and clearly rubs some up the wrong way but I am becoming a big fan. Apart from the sumptuous writing I agree on his communitarian views. Enjoy also his book about childhood home Sissinghurst.
June 5, 2025
An enjoyable and interesting account of a couple who wanted a quiet peaceful life in the countryside of Sussex. They plunged all their funds into a neglected farm and restored it to health using natural means and lots of help from neighbours..
January 23, 2022
The book reads as an adaptation of the author's journalistic articles for the London Sunday Telegraph, as is probably inevitable. That is not a criticism. The author clearly has a hankering for the country life and an appreciation of the countryside – if it is suitably tamed into an image of bucolic niceness and of course it must be within easy travelling distance of London. The rural idyll needs to be moulded to conform to the requirements of affluent living.
It is a pleasurable read, comfortable and reassuring that, to the right sort of people, the dream of rustic simplicity added to a generous standard of living is attainable to those who have accumulated or can gain a supply of cash. The supply of cash becomes a bit of a question as the story proceeds. The author continually insists on his short supply of money to achieve his and his wife's ambitions and then quietly slips in a sentence or two that denies the statement. Near the beginning he is wondering how to pay for the dream property when he remembers:
“My mind returned constantly to those islands in Scotland... For 15 years I had owned them. My father had bought them 50 years before for £1,200 and he gave them to me when I was 21.”
It's the sort of poverty that the poor dream about.
And then after buying the farm, £432,000 plus legal fees and removal costs, the author is out shopping for a lawn mower and has his credit card declined. “I laughed it off, blushing internally. It felt like a castration. I needed to earn more money and I had a feeling we were veering, slowly but quite deliberately, towards a financial crisis.” In the next paragraph they have hired a personal nanny for their daughter. There must be something about economics I don't understand.
Overall the book is escapism into a world which for many is a fantasy. Pretend farmers for whom profitability is a bonus not a necessity, sitting in a landscape of ex-farms, now country villas and estates, which is becoming a rich folk's ghetto. It ends with our hero lying in his little private paradise of Slip Field contemplating his achievement, or perhaps he is really calculating the cost of a ten foot high boundary wall and electrified barbed wire fence to keep the riff raff out – or in. It depends which side of the fence you are on.
It is a pleasurable read, comfortable and reassuring that, to the right sort of people, the dream of rustic simplicity added to a generous standard of living is attainable to those who have accumulated or can gain a supply of cash. The supply of cash becomes a bit of a question as the story proceeds. The author continually insists on his short supply of money to achieve his and his wife's ambitions and then quietly slips in a sentence or two that denies the statement. Near the beginning he is wondering how to pay for the dream property when he remembers:
“My mind returned constantly to those islands in Scotland... For 15 years I had owned them. My father had bought them 50 years before for £1,200 and he gave them to me when I was 21.”
It's the sort of poverty that the poor dream about.
And then after buying the farm, £432,000 plus legal fees and removal costs, the author is out shopping for a lawn mower and has his credit card declined. “I laughed it off, blushing internally. It felt like a castration. I needed to earn more money and I had a feeling we were veering, slowly but quite deliberately, towards a financial crisis.” In the next paragraph they have hired a personal nanny for their daughter. There must be something about economics I don't understand.
Overall the book is escapism into a world which for many is a fantasy. Pretend farmers for whom profitability is a bonus not a necessity, sitting in a landscape of ex-farms, now country villas and estates, which is becoming a rich folk's ghetto. It ends with our hero lying in his little private paradise of Slip Field contemplating his achievement, or perhaps he is really calculating the cost of a ten foot high boundary wall and electrified barbed wire fence to keep the riff raff out – or in. It depends which side of the fence you are on.
March 25, 2022
4.5 stars
A very good book on Perch Hill, the 90 odd acre farm in the Sussex Weald that became a healing sanctuary for Nicolson and his wife Sarah Raven.
I love the story of how the move came about, how the family settled in, made changes, tried to rejuvenate old style practices, built up their agri-business and Sarah's flower/seeds business, all whilst making new friends (and some enemies!) and establishing a sense of community.
There is real determination and focus here, from Nicolson and Raven both.
A great, rewarding story.
Half a star taken off for Nicolson going shooting, admitting to shooting animals in his earlier days and engaging with fox hunting c***s despite being anti-hunt himself!
A very good book on Perch Hill, the 90 odd acre farm in the Sussex Weald that became a healing sanctuary for Nicolson and his wife Sarah Raven.
I love the story of how the move came about, how the family settled in, made changes, tried to rejuvenate old style practices, built up their agri-business and Sarah's flower/seeds business, all whilst making new friends (and some enemies!) and establishing a sense of community.
There is real determination and focus here, from Nicolson and Raven both.
A great, rewarding story.
Half a star taken off for Nicolson going shooting, admitting to shooting animals in his earlier days and engaging with fox hunting c***s despite being anti-hunt himself!
April 7, 2014
In 1988 Maria Harris wrote: 'Genuine teaching occurs when someone with knowledge and skill enables and empowers someone else to come into self-possession'. (Woman and Teaching 1988).
That quote came back to me, reading how Adam Nicolson learns to lay a hedge in The Smell of Summer Grass. In beautiful prose he describes how he rebuilds a Sussex farm and the surrounding fields. It then occurred to me that his respectful way of rebuilding, with a keen eye and heart for tradition, is an example of genuine teaching too.
That quote came back to me, reading how Adam Nicolson learns to lay a hedge in The Smell of Summer Grass. In beautiful prose he describes how he rebuilds a Sussex farm and the surrounding fields. It then occurred to me that his respectful way of rebuilding, with a keen eye and heart for tradition, is an example of genuine teaching too.
August 3, 2008
a writer and his wife buy a dilapidated farm in southern England-the book is their trials and tribulations to restore it to working state. Kind of like "A Year in Provence", but gentler, self-deprecating humor, more introspective. Very sweet!
December 14, 2020
The story of Adam and Sarah's journey to Perch Hill and then of how it was developed and restored to what it is today both as a garden and and as a traditional Sussex farm and woodland. Beautifully written in a self-deprecating and humorous style with his love of the landscape shining through.
August 7, 2014
'Loved it. Although Nicolson's farm is in England, the book reminded me of Peter Mayle's first book about Provence -- very entertaining.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews