The Best of Intentions by Caroline Scott

1932: When gardener Robert Bardsley arrives at Anderby Hall, an Elizabethan manor house in the Gloucestershire countryside, it is home to ‘Greenfields’, a community of artists and idealists.

Robert has been employed to revive Anderby’s famous roses and restore the topiary garden, but he also soon befriends the other residents: from colourful neighbour Trudie, who makes a formidable cocktail and keeps her late-fiancé’s ashes on the mantelpiece, to composer Daniel, recovering from the horrors of the Great War. The only person he can’t win over is Anderby’s schoolteacher, Faye, who finds him . . . perfectly vexing.

But just as Robert starts to feel at home, the residents discover that the old orchard has been sold to a property developer who has plans for an estate of Tudorbethan bungalows. Can they find a way to keep their creative community alive or will the new housing development put an end to the spirit of Greenfields?