The Garden Tour Affair: A Gardening Mystery (11 page)

But there is something more important than just fragrant plants: You need a feeling of being swept away. How do you achieve this? Do it with bold plantings, roses or not. With water. With a courtyard—but since few of us have a courtyard available, we may have to improvise. With secret places for lovers to meet and sit.

The garden will have two strong elements: the plantings and the structural fixtures, from which there are many to choose. Water, in the form of a pool or waterfall, is probably the most dramatic. A nine-foot-long bridge evocative
of Monet’s Giverney can now be purchased by gardeners and placed over that water in your backyard—and what is more sentimental than that? Classical-style statues can be a conspicuous romantic element, such as the ones showing fig-leafed but otherwise naked lovers with arms intertwined. Do not suffer a Victorian swoon if you have no courtyard; few of us do. But you can improvise. Build yourself a couple of fragmentary openwork brick walls: they need not, in fact
should
not, be perfect. They will create the illusion of an old courtyard. Then smother the walls with roses, tulips, and recurved lilies, and you’ll bring ancient Persia right into your own yard.

In the name of romance, more than one gardener has facetiously brought an actual bed to the garden and planted it with flowers. In one case, a gardener contrived an entire outdoor bedroom with wicker furniture, the focal point being the “waterbed,” which housed flat-growing miniature lilies. Pillows were fashioned of peat moss. Morning glories grew out of men’s bedroom slippers, and hanging plants festooned the bedroom walls, which were actually brick garden walls.

If you’re not this adventurous, you can add a gazebo to the yard—it’s another classic prop of romantic gardens. If you don’t have teenagers to worry
about, tuck it into a corner for complete privacy. And never forget the impact of a garden pillar or two, swarming with flowers. Pillars cannot be recommended too often, for they evoke not only romance, classicism, poetry, but also a bygone era when lovers were not quite so reticent to speak of their emotions as they are today.

Among the fragrant trees you might choose are magnolia, crabapple, black locust, pear,
Viburnum sieboldii
, sweet birch, Siberian pea tree, and
Catalpa speciosa
. Perfume-rich vines could include hop vine, moonflower, sweet pea, honeysuckle, and wisteria. Among the shrubs with distinctive fragrance: sage, barberry, allspice, blue mist, spirea, butterfly bush, sweet fern, Scotch broom, daphne, eucalyptus, lilac, snowball, many viburnums, and witch hazel.

There are hundreds of fragrant flowers, among them Tennyson’s favorite, the rose. Its frilly, voluptuous blooms, if selected for fragrance, cannot be equaled. An example: the magenta, many-petaled Bourbon,
Rosa
‘Mme. Isaac Pereire.’ Hyacinth, narcissus, nicotiana, lily of the valley, and certain hybrid lilies—notably Oriental and Madonna—also have an intense perfume.

Assemble flowers in big, graceful drifts rather than in a hodgepodge that looks as if you visited a nursery on bargain day. A sweep of pale pink astilbe, combined
with a wave of the grass
Miscanthus sinensis
, is unforgettable. Even a mass of prosaic lamb’s-ears
(Stachys byzantina)
will create a stunning gray-and-pink picture when combined with some lyrical, swaying grasses and the pink climber,
Rosa
‘New Dawn.’ Don’t go just by names. That means that love-lies-bleeding, or
Amaranthus caudatus
, won’t have a place in this garden. Though it has the proper nomenclature, this is a garish annual with flowers that are red, chenille-like spikes. It belongs in a garden labeled “eccentric,” not romantic. Love-in-a-mist
(Nigella damascena)
is much prettier. It produces a handsome drift of pastel flowers on feathery foliage, but is hardly bold enough to make a romantic statement.

White is one of the most effective colors in the garden, and shows up especially well at night, when romance is easier to come by and all other colors retreat into the dark. Float a few lit candles in your little water garden, highlighting the beauty of arrowhead, papyrus, lotus, and white water lilies such as
Nymphaea
‘Gonnere.’ The stage is set for almost anything!

As for shape, remember that flowers are like people: Some shapes are more memorable than others. The iris is classic, as are the sweet pea, the Oriental poppy, the lily, and the large and sensuous hibiscus. The unusual double red
Clematis viticella
’Purpurea Plena
Elegans’ lives up to its name. Other eye-catching plants are the single white
Clematis
‘Marie Boisselot’ and
Humulus japonica
‘Variegatus,’ the variegated hop vine with leaves in green, pink, and white.

The list goes on and on. Choose the plants carefully for this romantic place, and maybe the flowers will speak to you, as they did to Tennyson:

H
ER HUSBAND’S SOFT, OFF-KEY SINGING
finally woke her up. She realized he’d been at it for some time. “Wake up, wake up, you sleepyhead …”

Bill was leaning over her bed smiling, one hand tenderly shaking her shoulder, the other caressing her cheek. “Sleepless night, huh?”

She nodded.

“Janie’s dressed and gone. It’s time for you to get up if you don’t want your television crew to think you’re a slugabed.”

“Okay, darling.” Because of her silk
charmeuse gown, she could slide easily off the high bed and into Bill’s arms. He gave her a long, healing hug, realizing how exhausted she was. Then he released her, and she stumbled onward into the bathroom. While she slowly washed and dressed, he read her snippets from the local paper. Just as well, since she was too sleepy to tell him about last night’s adventure.

When they reached the dining room, everyone was at breakfast. They looked uniformly fresh, like choirboys and — girls. How could they all look like that? Louise knew some of them
had
to have been the night wanderers on the second floor of the mansion. She looked sharply at the men, trying in vain to observe sexual tension in the air. Only Jim Cooley referred to nighttime activity; she could hear him at the neighboring table, making some crack about “thumps in the night.”

Nora, in pale rose culottes and top, seemed as lovely and composed as ever. And not as if she had been up all night. Yet her expression was preoccupied. Had Jeffrey ever shown up? Or was Louise wrong about the woman’s predatory intentions?

A glance at her own reflection in a large antique mirror on the opposite wall made clear that she was the only one who had suffered from these nocturnal capers. Even after applying her makeup, she looked ravaged. Thinking along the same lines as an undertaker bent on making the corpse look good, she had put on a sporty dress in a flattering peach shade, with a touch of matching eye shadow. Bill, on the other hand, alerted that this weekend was casual except for a couple of dinners, was handsome and relaxed, and wearing his most historic, worn-out tennis shirt in faded navy blue. He loved being away from the sartorial strictures of the State Department and its buttoned-up-tight social scene.

It took her two cups of the Litchfield Falls Inn’s robust coffee to wake up, and two more to snap her into working
condition. They had eaten in the dining room because the rain made the veranda uncomfortably cool and damp; Louise was glad for its dry comfort.

“Why is it raining?” she muttered uselessly to Bill and Nora.

“It’s just a front passing through, darling,” said her husband, patting her hand. He was always anxious to keep her spirits up before she had to go to work.

“A little rain won’t stop your work, will it?” asked Nora.

Louise shook her head. “Unless it’s a hurricane, the show will go on. Marty Corbin certainly wouldn’t want us to blow a weekend’s work over a few raindrops.” Her temperamental WTBA-TV producer always labored under a skimpy budget. Each location shoot cut heavily into it. That was why only the cameraman, Doug, was flying in from Washington, and the rest would be a pickup crew from New York. Yet, she reflected, the very strength of her program was visiting private and public gardens throughout the country. A frown passed over her face. The show could use more funding so they didn’t always have to cut corners. Today, to save money, they would be without Marty, who had made the show the success it was. Big, dark-haired, and dark-eyed, his creativity and massive energy kept things at a high pitch. A shoot with Marty was like a good party, with everyone at their well-spoken best, full of body English and charm, but disciplined, and with no time for true party frivolity. With this modus operandi, he pulled from Louise and Doug and all of the crew their very best work.

But today, she and Doug would be running things themselves. Although Marty had expressed full confidence in them, the increased responsibility made her nervous. Her lack of sleep didn’t help much, and from the looks of it, they would start out with a “garden in the rain,” as the old song said. Just keeping herself from looking like a drowned rat would require a major effort: umbrellas borrowed from the inn, slickers, constantly hovering under shelters in between taping segments. And then, she thought drearily,
there would be a problem with the flowers: Too much rain was going to play havoc with iris!

On the other hand, if the raindrops stopped and the skies stayed gray, Doug would rejoice: a “shooter’s” sky, he would call it. Perfect weather for outdoor camera work, everything flat and uniformly lit, with maybe just a little battery-powered light pumped in as she did her walk-and-talks through the gardens.

Her spirits revived a bit when Barbara Seymour, walking slowly with what appeared to be stiff muscles, joined them at their table for coffee. She was not in costume this morning, just a faded but neat denim dress with a cameo brooch pinned at the throat. This encounter was just what Louise needed to get better acquainted with the woman. Barbara gave them a brief history of the inn, how her father had inherited it in a decrepit state and begun an enormous renovation. Louise, feeling more alert now, listened to the woman’s story and thought she recognized the plot: Single daughter of loving couple devotes life to father after mother dies. What a shame to live such a narrow life, thought Louise: Even in her mid-seventies, Barbara Seymour had a vitality that exceeded that of many younger persons. But she had funneled it all into this mansion.

And now her relatives were putting the bite on her to give it up for development. What a payoff for a life of sacrifice!

They had a pleasant exchange that included a recap of the Eldridges’ peripatetic history. “Yes,” Louise confirmed with a grin, “we’ve lived in seven houses—and six different cities around the world. Foreign Service people move a lot. And I have the credentials to prove it: Just give me a house, any house—I can pack it up in a day.”

Then, because she felt so comfortable and because she suffered from terminal curiosity, Louise couldn’t resist asking the question that was burning in her mind. “Barbara, did I hear that you might turn this inn over to the Connecticut Trust?”

Louise saw Bill roll his eyes heavenward: She knew how much he hated it when she stuck her nose into other people’s business. It was a CIA reflex, since he was always wary of questions himself. And yet, thought Louise defensively, he would be as curious as she was if he had been listening to the conversation at Barbara’s table last night, instead of dancing.

The elderly woman gave a nervous laugh. “You probably overheard our little postdinner family discussion. I wanted to turn it over to the state. I do not think my father would have liked this beautiful land becoming a housing project—even if it was tasteful. But my niece and nephew apparently don’t agree with me about this.” She gave Louise a weary look. “It’s hard to balance these things, you know. It turns out that it’s a perfect place for a development, if there must be development …”

“But if that ’snot what you want….”

“It isn’t. But maybe that’s what I
should
want. After all, as Jim says, you have to look at the general good of the community of Litchneld, which has to develop
somewhere
, apparently. Maybe I’m being selfish. After all, I’m old, set in my ways …”

Louise was appalled at the change in the woman, from the moment she’d stood victoriously at the top of the stairs yesterday, to now. Impetuously, she reached out and squeezed Barbara’s thin, blue-veined hand. “You are older, but for heaven’s sake, you’re not that old—not old enough to take yourself out of the game of life.” She groaned inwardly, appalled at herself for using such a cliché-ridden metaphor. Perhaps Jeffrey Freeling’s flagrant use of them last night had infected her.

A little smile flickered on Barbara’s face. “The game of life. That’s kind of—”

“Corny,” finished Louise.

“Well, yes, corny. But, Louise Eldridge, I can see you at ninety, still fighting the good fight.” She smiled. “There
I
go,
using a tired metaphor myself. But truly, I’ve always been a fighter, too, until this.”