The Little Green Orchard by Lucy Devenish

Thanks to The Guardian 

Title: The Little Green Orchard 

Author: Lucy Devenish

Publisher: not known but printed in 1964 and priced at 7/6

Source book: The Wine of Angels by Phil Rickman (Merrily Watkins #1)

Lucy Devenish has written two books for children. The Little Green Orchard takes its title from the Walter De La Mare poem (look it up). Jane remembers reading the poem at primary school; she found it quite frightening and tells Lucy so. Good, says Lucy, children aren’t frightened enough these days. [I have to say that I read a lot of children’s books that really frightened me, and I find it hard to read some of them again as an adult.]

Lucy shows her books to Jane and makes her read them to help explain the spirit of the orchard. The Little Green Orchard has splodgy green watercolour cover art. A little girl, drawn in pen and ink, is shown surrounded by sinister looking trees. 

Lucy’s other book is a larger format with a happy looking landscape on the cover with smiley flowers, friendly looking trees and sunny hills. It’s probably aimed at 9 year olds. A small girl is walking along a path, looking kind of blissed out. The Other Voices is about a girl called Rosemary who has to go and stay with her grandparents in Herefordshire when her mother gets ill. Naturally the grandparents live on a farm so remote there are no other children and Rosemary is left to her own devices. She wanders the fields and paths talking to the flowers and trees and after a while it seems they are answering her, each with their own distinctive voices. Eventually of course Rosemary has to go home to the city. Her mother is better but she misses the countryside dreadfully. She catches a cold which turns into flu and she’s very miserable. When she feels a little better, her mother takes her to the local park and on the way Rosemary sees a single dandelion growing next to a street light. She realises that the voices of nature are there inside her. 

Hmm. I understand why Lucy Devenish has written this The Other Voices, but I can also see why her publishers told her they were looking for books about robots and spaceships.

The Little Green Orchard has Rosemary returned to the farm. It’s a few years later, Rosemary is older  and her grandfather has died. Rosemary is helping out on the farm and it’s nearly time for the apple harvest. For some reason Rosemary has never been into the orchard before. She discovers the orchard is the heart of everything.

Lucy Devenish is a big fan of the metaphysical poet Thomas Treherne. His writings are mentioned again and again in The Wine of Angels. According to Lucy these books are an introduction to Treherne’s world. He believed that higher consciousness is there for all of us. 

Thanks to Country Life