"The emotional essence of the place"

The Guardian's Northerner Blog has a very thorough article on the Brontës' Yorkshire Garden at the forthcoming Chelsea Flower Show:

The garden's organisers have teamed up with the Brontë Parsonage Museum at Haworth to create a microcosm of the wild Pennine moors which surrounded the sisters. They wrote of them often, and not always in the wuthering terms which have created a worldwide image of bleak grandeur that is actually only part of the whole.
But were they actually competent gardeners themselves? To their surprise, the organisers of the project have come to the conclusion: No. Busy with their writing and preferring to tramp the narrow cloughs and wide-open moortops above the village, the Brontës seem to have let the parsonage garden go to seed.
The garden's designer Tracy Foster notes the absence of any detailed references to gardening in Charlotte's letters to friends – the most informative part of the Brontë Society's archive. Andrew Denton of Welcome to Yorkshire says:

She did not discuss gardening or the garden with her lifelong friend Ellen Nussey – and she would have done if it was a part of her life which had strong meaning. It is fascinating, given the sisters' love of the landscape that surrounded them and which provided so much escape and inspiration. Charlotte was a very adept painter of flowers too, but it seems she took little interest in trying to grow her own.

One passage in Nussey's Reminiscences of 1871, reprinted in Early Visitors to Haworth also goes further than the negative evidence of gardening failing to feature in the sisters' papers.

The Parsonage is quite another habitation now from the Parsonage of earlier days. The garden which was nearly all grass and posessing only a few stunted thorns and shrubs and a few currant bushes which Emily and Anne treasured as their bit of fruit garden, is now a perfect arcadia of floral culture and beauty.

She goes on:

The Brontës did not live 'in' their house except for its uses of eating, drinking and resting. They lived in the free expanse of hill moorland, its purple heather, its dells and glens and brooks.

It is these which Foster and her helpers are hoping to re-imagine in the cosy, cluttered world of the flower show. It's quite a touch call to summon up the sough of the wind or the cry of the curlew in London SW3, but optimism reigns. Foster says:

I've taken inspiration from the unique Yorkshire landscape that also inspired the Brontës. It has a captivating tension between beauty and bleakness and I'm trying to reflect. I hope to convey the emotional essence of the place that inspired the girls to write such wonderful works of literature, and also to encourage more people to rediscover Haworth, the Brontës and Yorkshire for themselves.

The latter notion is dear to the heart of Welcome to Yorkshire's chief executive Gary Verity, who says:

The Brontës' Yorkshire Garden will showcase to the world the wild and wonderful landscape of Yorkshire as a source of inspiration for some of the finest literary works of fiction. We hope it will encourage more people to rediscover this area of Yorkshire for themselves as well as seeing more of our county's wonderful gardens. (Martin Wainwright)

There are also a few videos: on last year's Yorkshire garden, on the dry stone walls being built up and on how it's starting to look, complete with its Brontë bridge.

Not altogether unrelated, a reader has written a letter on wind turbines to The Telegraph.

SIR – Years ago, a Japanese publisher commissioned me to write for a book about the Brontë sisters. My section dealt with their background, their family life and their inspiration – especially the Yorkshire Moors. My commission came via the British Council, which had seen the potential for tourism in Yorkshire.
Sadly, anyone who now goes on the Brontë tourist trail will be greeted by wind turbines. Brontë Country is no longer worth visiting. At a time when Britain needs tourism, destroying the reasons why tourists come here seems short-sighted.
Shirley Mowbray
London W2

And The Telegraph and Argus continues discussing the subject with 68% of its readers against more wind farms being built in the countryside.

That approval could lead to developer Banks Renewables building four 330-foot turbines on the green belt – despite concerns from the Brontë Society that it could damage views across the “unique” south Pennine landscape, which inspired Emily Brontë’s classic Wuthering Heights novel.
John Denham, president of the West Yorkshire branch of the CPRE, said: “We are strongly opposed to the turbines in Brontë Country and were quite horrified when it was agreed that they could put up the test mast to check the wind speed.
“We are very concerned about anything man-made that dominates the landscape.”
Residents have also spoken of their fears that moors above Bradford could become a “dumping ground” for large-scale wind farms. (Marc Meneaud)

Still locally, the Deccan Herald reviews the film The Trip:

On the way to these upscale restaurants, they stop to visit the houses of Coleridge and Wordsworth, and walk through the Yorkshire moors of Wuthering Heights, unable to stop themselves from talking about Roger Moore and other people named Moore. That’s the kind of non-sequiturs they often lapse into, and from your own experience of similar road trips, you know that this kind of nonsensical exchange comes from being a little bored and restless with constant travel and chattering companions. (Pradeep Sebastian)

The Hindu discusses new films taking on fairy tales such as Mirror, Mirror and Red Riding Hood and adds,

Even characters from classic literature are undergoing changes. [...] In the 2011 release of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is dark-skinned and the stormy and the grim surroundings from Emily Brontë's novel somehow find place in the characters. (Sohini Chakravorty)

We know what the journalist means but everything actually applies to the novel too.

The Wall Street Journal test readers on the current names of illnesses found in classic novels. What would Cathy's 'brain fever' be called nowadays?

The Daily Mail describes Twilight actress Ashley Greene as having 'that porcelain skin, pinched cheeks Brontë heroine kind of way' in a recent airport picture.

The Brussels Brontë Blog reports on the group's annual Brontë weekend. From cover to cover picks both Austen and the Brontës. Karins writes briefly in Swedish about Jane Eyre 1997. brulion be.el. posts in Polish about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. There's a book writes about Little Miss Brontë: Jane Eyre.