This account is included in the article In a Monastery Garden, by Albert W. Ketèlbey, in Music Masterpieces, Part 12, 18 March 1926, page 183: It is highly necessary to feel what one writes, and also to have the right kind of inspiration.

When I was writing In a Monastery Garden, one of my most popular compositions, I was for the time being an imaginary monk, and as in my earlier days I had had certain ascetic inclinations it was not difficult to get myself into a suitable frame of mind.

I had an idea, and when I returned home I set to work to draw a musical picture of the scene as it had impressed itself upon my mind - the chanting of the monks, the serenity and calm of the landscape, and the emotional aspect generally.

I have always thought it a great compliment that many clergymen have asked me to allow them to incorporate the "chant" section of the piece into their church services.

The following account was given in Radio Times, 4 September 1931, page 203: In a Monastery Garden was commissioned for performance in a seaside resort.

Ketèlbey's colleague, Herbert C. Ridout, has the following in Behind the needle, 5: Looking over forty years of the gramophone (in The Gramophone, November 1940, page 132): It was in October 1915 that we issued a record of a then unknown work called In a Monastery Garden, and I think we must have been animated by the wish to give our friend Albert Ketelbey's piece a good send-off, because the coupling on the record was the more famous Destiny waltz.

But there soon came a time when Monastery Garden stood quite well on its own merits, and became such a success that it pointed out a distinct path for its composer to follow.

I know Albert Ketelbey would have preferred [sic] to be identified with the more serious music he had composed and published (some of it under the nom-de-plume of Anton Vodorinski) and, but for a purely accidental happening in connection with his Monastery Garden, this might have well been the case.

In the summer months every year, when orchestral engagements in London were at their lowest ebb, Scoma himself conducted an orchestra of his own in Bridlington during the holiday season.

Being great friends with Ketelbey, Scoma asked him if he would write for him an original orchestral work that he could feature as a novelty in his seaside programmes.

Scoma repeated the performances the following season, and this time declared that he had been pestered with requests for it in published form, rather shrewdly, however, advising the composer against publication for the moment, urging patience until it had been thoroughly tried out.