The Garden Stories

Sky, a nine-year-old girl, is lost and lonely. Her mother, Kirstie, lurching between bouts of depression and wild enthusiasm for the future, is struggling to cope after Sky's father left them. They move house time and again as Kirstie fixates on 'fresh starts.'

But Sky feels like the permanent outsider: she cannot fit into the boxes that she feels others want her to occupy. She is convinced she is a disappointment to everyone. She cannot be what her father wanted or he would not have left them, she cannot be what her mother wants as her passion for numbers and sums does not accord with the wild, artistic promise of her name. All she wants to do is to hide, watch the world go by and try to make sense of it. She meets a troubled elderly woman, and a man who can see beneath the ground and into apple trees.

The three stories are based on three gardens that Sky discovers: she learns from them that the only thing that matters is to live in the present. And that can be a gift for everyone.