The China Garden is a 2009 novel by the Australian author Kristina Olsson.
[1] Laura returns, after many years living overseas, to her coastal home in northern New South Wales to arrange the funeral for her mother Angela.
Laura has deliberately removed herself from the place of her childhood and all that it represents to her.
She works as an arborist among the orchards of Umbria, but her sensitivity is such that she is moved to tears when she prunes fruit trees...A lighter touch might have struck the intended balance between fecundity and menace.
"[2] After the novel's initial publication in Australia by University of Queensland Press in 2009,[1] it was reprinted by the same publisher in 2011.