The Garden Tour Affair: A Gardening Mystery (4 page)

Teddy smiled, the assured smile of a young local man who knew and understood local truths. “They’ve heard we have the best food in Litchfield County.”

“And the most wonderful grounds.”

He put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Now, now, Miss Seymour, you’re familiar with the sin of pride. The priests always told me to avoid it. I know we’re good, but we can’t be the best at everything, can we?”

“Nonsense, Teddy, there’s nothing wrong with being the best,” she said jauntily, and swirled out of the room, casting a final glance at the shadow on the highboy as she went.

Teddy followed her, mimicking a drummer marching the troops to the day’s combat. “B-r-r-r-rump-pump-pump, b-r-r-r-rump-pump-pump …”

“Teddy,” she chastised gently, “you’re
outrageous!
”

G
ARDEN VISITING DATES BACK TO VERY
ancient times. It probably started when a Cro-Magnon man dropped over to his neighbor’s cave and admired his vegetable garden. All the while, he was snickering behind his hand because he knew
his
crops were better: They were treated with mammoth droppings.

Garden tours can be as informal as visiting the neighbor’s backyard, or as formal as doing the English garden circuit—the Chelsea Flower Show, Kew, Wisley, Gertrude Jekyll’s Hidcote Manor, Sissinghurst, Tintinhull, Kiftsgate
Court, and Jane Austen’s and John Brookes’s places. It is not a cut-and-dried thing: There are protocols, and primitive urges that we gardeners must curb.

While Americans’ lack of established, systematic garden tours has been likened to the lack of a “developed muscle,” Britons are just the opposite. Garden tours there are as well organized as the peerage, and they are listed in the famous Yellow Book published by the Benevolent Society for Gardeners. A Britisher is especially honored to be in the book, with the potent words, “GARDEN OPEN” alongside the name. The listing is about as important to a gardener as being knighted.

When an American horticulturalist commended a Britisher on the beauty of his lawn, the Britisher drolly replied, “Thank you. We’ve been at it for four hundred years, so we’ve had a chance to work out the kinks.” In terms of gardening, the United States is young, and sometimes a bit gauche about the results. Nevertheless, there are plenty of U.S. garden tours, in every state.

Your best American garden visit might be to one of the 500 public gardens. Here, in contrast to the crowds that jam places like Disney World or action movies, you will find beauty, tranquillity, and relative quiet amidst acres of trees and flowers.

Some people have trouble with garden tours, according to an expert tour guide. They become self-conscious and very arch, as the spirit of competition rears its ugly head. The tour guide is thinking, “I have something very good here in this rose bed,” while the visitor is thinking: “His roses are good, but mine are better.”

There are unspoken rules for garden visits:

• No stealing of plants.
  

• Praise a plant: This means you covet it. And in the private garden, the smart proprietor will dig you a division, knowing that constant movement and division will only make plants prosper. This won’t work in public gardens, of course.
  

• Don’t comment loudly on the garden’s failure to fulfill your expectations.
  

• Don’t point out weeds, or, heaven forbid, reach down and pluck a weed, as a nosy guest might pick up a dust curl in someone’s house.
  

• Leave unruly children and pets home.
  

• Never leave the path and damage plants, or pick flowers.
  

The tour guide wants to make an impact, whether it is a backyard gardener or the director of a public garden.
He or she wants a hushed reaction to the utter beauty of the flowers and trees. It is a combination of hubris and an altruistic desire to inspire others. For their part, garden tour visitors are on a hunt for the Holy Grail—looking for the perfect plants to put in an idealized garden. Garden tours can be likened to a show, and like most shows, the audience doesn’t care how you do it, only that the effect is magic.

For the latest on touring in America you should consult garden magazines or get a special book on the subject from your public or botanic gardens library. Such a book will give you a comprehensive look at garden events, from orchid shows to month-long house-garden tours. Certain subgroups of gardeners who are interested in one species or specialty, such as rock or water gardens, are very active: They talk back and forth over the Internet and make field trips together. Members of the International Water Lily Society, for instance, recently went to Brazil to do research on the DNA of the gigantic water lily, the Victoria. With these people, garden tours are not aesthetic idylls, but a higher calling, namely, the preservation of plant species.

L
OUISE HADN’T BEEN ENTHUSIASTIC
about dragging the whole world with her on this location shoot—despite her determination not to leave Janie and Chris home alone. Now there were Bill, Janie, Chris, and Chris’s mother, Nora—voluptuous, dark-haired Nora, who was not the happiest of women these days. But then that was probably why she had invited herself on the trip. Nora’s problems were so numerous and diverse that Louise almost thought of her as a female Job: menopause, failure to publish lately in those little poetry
magazines, severe marital problems—and on top of that the recent discovery that her widowed mother suffered from Alzheimer’s. All this made Nora’s behavior erratic: Louise didn’t know what to expect of her friend and neighbor on this trip. Having Chris and Janie along made it even more awkward.

Once they had picked up their rental car and left behind the hustle and bustle of the city, she began to feel better. Everyone, even Nora, was cheery and full of little jokes. The countryside rolled by, covered with thick woods and dotted with quaint, neat villages. With only the cars on the road updating it to the present, it was perfect, like a Currier and Ives print. So different from Washington, D.C., with its shaggy overgrowth and jungly vines. By the time they neared their destination, Louise was in love with the Litchfield hills.

“Bill, wouldn’t it be great to buy a little place and come here during the summers?”

Her husband looked at her and shook his head in disbelief. “Seventy miles into the state and you’re ready to become a Connecticut Yankee.”

He was a picture of comfort behind the wheel of the car, a little smile on his face, seat tipped comfortably back, blond head resting lightly on the headrest. Both his posture and his casual traveling clothes bespoke a man who looked forward to a vacation. He had just returned from Vienna, where his once-secret undercover work with the CIA continued. Now he handled the problems of strayed and stolen nuclear and biological materials from the former Soviet Union countries.
Nothing too serious
, she reflected wryly.
Just the future safety of the world
. Louise was glad to see he had put his work behind him for the moment.

“A little summer place,” she mused, “like that little farm we just passed.”

“Louise, I hate to disillusion you, but that place probably wasn’t a
farm
. This countryside has an element of a
Potemkin village about it. There are few farmers left, and those fields are kept mowed simply to preserve the feeling of old New England countryside. I doubt we could afford a property around here—I know for a fact Steve Forbes just moved into the neighborhood.”

Her enthusiasm retracted like a camera lens. “Bummer.”

Bill’s blue eyes glittered with mischief. “Unless, by chance, you want to acquire another big mortgage.” He knew she hated the mortgage they already had.

“No way. But we could rent a place for a couple of weeks.” She looked with a different eye at the visible parts of the unassuming farmhouses peeking from behind the enticing hills.

“I read that book you gave me on Connecticut on the plane ride home. I know you must have picked up a lot of history while you were researching your show—did you run across the fact that Litchfield was the home of the first law school in the United States, before even Yale and Harvard …” Still a history major at heart, Bill loved to act as the family’s Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

His little chronicle was interrupted, however, when they saw a colonial-era sign announcing Litchfield Falls Inn. He swerved into the wooded driveway, and from the moment they saw the mansion, Louise was smitten. It was immense, gleaming white, its Georgian architecture marked by graceful, round-topped windows. A wraparound porch on the first floor with steps pouring off it in all directions gave the impression of a user-friendly building with easy access to the grounds. When they walked inside, they were surrounded by the smells of fresh flowers, old wax, and fine food. This somehow made her feel quite at home—though her home, she had to admit, didn’t smell anywhere near as good as this well-tended place.

They were greeted by a trim, middle-aged woman named Elizabeth, who introduced herself as proprietor Barbara Seymour’s assistant. Elizabeth did a good job of masking her
surprise. “Of course it’s no bother that you’re early,” she assured them with a little too much vigor. Of course it
was
a bother: The rooms weren’t ready, but they could wait on the veranda with tea. Instructing them to leave their luggage in the imposing two-story foyer, Elizabeth guided them through the first floor, pointing out objects of interest. Louise thought the mansion looked unchanged since its construction two centuries before, but Elizabeth informed her that it had been remodeled at some point from a huge home to a country inn.

“We’ll just peek in the library,” Elizabeth said, as they reached the first room off the foyer, “and then you can return at your leisure.” They came in and stood at the edge of the Oriental carpet. The collection of books covered the walls from floor to ceiling. Scattered among the furniture were pedestals holding vases and humorless marble busts. A fire, unusual for July, blazed in the huge fireplace, apparently to fight the rising New England damp.

Then they saw the cat. Louise, Nora, and Janie all emitted joyful noises, as if they had discovered a baby on the premises. “Ooh,” cried Janie, “what a cool cat!” It was an enormous gray and black-striped tabby, sitting in its old wicker basket near the fire. As they watched, it majestically rose, stretched its back into an unbelievable arch, then drifted behind a leather couch.

“Don’t mind Hargrave,” said Elizabeth, laughing. “He has sort of an attitude—thinks he owns the library. Not too social, and quite old, in fact. But he seems to have lost most of his sense of curiosity, so he won’t bother you.” Then she led them into the living room.

Dull gold wallpaper with simple designs of pineapples and flowers covered the walls there. It made a fine background for the eighteenth-century pianoforte and other antique furniture, which included a magnificent mahogany highboy. The woodwork, with double-mitred corners, was the labor of a master carpenter, and the walls were hung
with dark oil paintings depicting drama and drownings on the Atlantic seas. Scattered artfully about were several lovely old vases and bowls, some filled with bouquets of verbena, petunia, and scabiosa in quiet pastels. Despite this beauty, Louise felt a chill.

“It’s almost spooky, isn’t it?” she said to Nora.

Nora gave her one of her Mona Lisa smiles. “Yes. There could be ghosts here.”

Overhearing them, Bill said, his eyes twinkling, “They can’t be that scary: They’re probably Congregational ghosts, since they made up a good part of the population back in the old days,” Louise rolled her eyes.

Beyond the living room was a sunroom. It was filled with overstuffed furniture covered with gently faded chintz and strewn with plump matching pillows, in what Louise knew was the most venerable East Coast decorating style. Beyond that was the huge veranda. Scattered with an array of antique wicker chairs and tables, it obviously served as the outdoor dining room in good weather. Now it served as a waiting room.